Patron Spotlight: Joni Wilson and Harold Williams

Joni Wilson and Harold Williams are long time employees of the University of Mary Washington, and long time patrons of UMW Theatre. For our second ever patron spotlight, the Department of Theatre & Dance asked Joni and Harold to come in for an interview.

T&D: What are some of your favorite productions you’ve seen here in Klein Theatre?

Harold: I can’t think of the name of it, I’m 63 so my memory is a little rough.

Joni: Yeah, you’re asking the wrong people to remember things!

Harold: Was it last year there was one sort of a coming of age story –

Joni: Spring Awakening!

Harold: Spring Awakening. That’s the one. I loved that one.

Joni: We usually like anything that makes the audience sit up a little straighter and think about what’s going on. We’ll typically have our daughter with us now, and she’ll bring a friend, and it’s great when a show gives us an opportunity for conversation. There probably aren’t many things we haven’t talked about with our daughter; we’re pretty open with her. Theatre makes those moments that are just perfect opportunities for those kinds of conversations. So much of theatre is just a slice of life. I think those are the kinds of shows I like the best, I like the serious subject matter.

Harold: That one was a very emotional musical too; the songs that were in it were very touching and heartfelt. I just know when it was over I was exhausted! We saw Gregg [Stull] afterwards and you could tell that he was really proud of the show. There were so many people congratulating him.

Joni: When we talk to people who haven’t been to see a show here, we think: “Oh my god, what is wrong with you?!” You know, we’ve found there are really significant perks to working at a university, being around young people all the time, and there’s always so much going on. There’s always someone who knows something you want to know, and you have access to it here, and then there are things like this theatre. We’re a small-ish school, but we put on some awesome productions.

Harold: What were some of the other ones we liked?

Joni: The one about Matthew Shepard, The Laramie Project. That just was, for that time even more so than now, was a little radical for a production at Mary Washington. We had the protesters show up on campus, which is definitely one of the aspects of theatre you don’t always think of, where it’s a social commentary meant to get people to think. It’s not the kind of show where you’re just entertained and singing along. It’s a moving piece, and it certainly was when they did it here. I was very proud of them for taking that on.

 

T&D: What was it like being on campus when the protests around that show were going on?

Harold: It was the Westboro Baptist Church, they were here on the other side of College Avenue from duPont Hall protesting The Laramie Project.

Joni: Not being directly involved with Theatre, you know, just being someone who worked on campus, it made me very nervous. I didn’t know what to expect from them. I was afraid that it could be violent, and it made me very nervous for our students. It’s hard for me not to get parental in a situation like that. I’m always shocked that there are people out there that feel that way, or that have that much hatred in their heart and I don’t like when our students are exposed to something like that.

Harold: Part of what was so great was the support that came from the students here. The Westboro group was outnumbered 10 to 1.

Joni: The community really came together then too, I’m always proud of this community when it does that. I was proud of the stances the Fredericksburg community was taking, and it’s beautiful to see the local community and the university, or college at the time, really come together. That was a really poignant production for me because of that.

 

T&D: How would you describe UMW Theatre’s place within the Fredericksburg community?

Joni: I certainly have a good number of friends who come now to the see the shows put on in Klein Theatre. I don’t know if it’s just my age – that now I’m the age of people who usually go out to the theatre, or whether it’s really starting to catch on in the community. There have definitely been some shows that really caught the community, like Always…Patsy Cline. What a hit!

Harold: I forgot about that one, but that’s another one that we really enjoyed.

Joni: Having the local girls [Emily Burke & Taryn Snyder] star in that really helped too! What a fun show. It really was an example of how high the qualities of productions are here. The quality is definitely greater than the audience expects.

Harold: Normally if you want to see a professional production, you have to go to Richmond or Washington, but you don’t have to: we have it right here. I consider what goes on here to be as professional as you get.

 

T&D: So, you have a daughter who’s interested in theatre?

Harold: We definitely have been educated more in the theatre since our daughter, Sky, started getting involved in theatre. We’ve been together 23 years, and all during that time we loved to go see plays. It was just a good thing to do, and we enjoyed it.

Joni: It’s a different view.

Harold: Yeah, you’re looking at it from a different perspective. We generally try to take her to as many shows as we can.

Joni: She definitely made a difference for our interest in theatre.

Harold: She had no idea she wanted to do theatre at all, until the 8^th grade. As a part of her advanced English class, she was required to participate in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She could either help make the set or act, she decided to act, and was cast as Puck!

Joni: And that was it.

Harold: That was it. Forget being a writer, forget being an English major, two weeks after Midsummer, she auditioned at StageDoor and was cast in Alice in Wonderland. She put so much into it that the director at StageDoor, Matt Armentrout, gave her even more to do in that production. She took off from there.

Joni: She’s never not been involved in theatre since then.

Harold: She’s done 6 or 7 plays at StageDoor, and once she got to high school she started auditioning there, and got a part in just about everything. She’s President of the Drama Club, and just so involved. I have to say, it’s been great having Gregg and Brandon [Prendergast] as resources for her here, giving her chances to sit in the booth during rehearsals and performances. She’s gotten to stick around and listen in when the directors give notes after dress rehearsals. She’s gotten to do a backstage tour at Ford’s Theatre in D.C. They’ve definitely given her opportunities to get involved with theatre at a higher level.

Joni: We love hearing stories about the students that get involved here, like who was the one from Spring Awakening who played baseball? I can’t remember his name…

T&D: Nick McGovern?

Joni: That’s him! He blew us away in that show, and then hearing Gregg tell us about him, and how he was a baseball player and realized he had such a passion for theatre and started focusing on that instead. When you hear about those kinds of things, and what theatre can do for people, helping them break out of their mold…that’s something we’ve seen it do for our daughter. It builds skills. We can tell when she’s sometimes in an uncomfortable situation, but that ability she has to perform can help get her through those moments. Recently she got up and spoke in front of the school board, totally unplanned, and people were taken aback by how articulate she was for someone so young, and she made some pretty important things plain to people who weren’t listening. That’s the kind of thing theatre does; if she never sets foot on a stage again, she can develop that presence or that ease with public speaking or communicating. What job doesn’t have moments where those skills come into play?

Harold: She has a skillset that can apply to so many different jobs. Time management, working with others, critical thinking, tackling a problem at the spur of the moment. All you have to do is look at those posters at the end of the hall [on the third floor of duPont Hall] to see that students who majored in Theatre here at Mary Washington are finding jobs in so many fields.

Joni: It just shows how important Theatre is to a liberal arts education.

 

T&D: How has your relationship with the UMW Theatre faculty been?

Joni: I’m always so impressed by what Julie [Hodge] does. There was a year when they were renovating Klein Theatre, and so the Scene Shop was housed over in Facilities, where our offices are. Julie would come through the lobby over there, and one day she came in with a leaf rake, and an old cover for our outdoor lighting.

Harold: The cover was like a globe.

Joni: When we came and saw Romeo and Juliet after the renovations were done, we saw that the leaf rakes had been turned into these big ornate fans! The light cover had been turned upside down. That’s not how I think of things; I’m very literal. Once I see something I sort of expect it to stay the way it is. Harold is an outside the box thinker, and to me that stuff is just so impressive. It’s magic to me.

Harold: They suspended that globe upside down, from how we normally see it, with four cables and she put a fake candle

inside that flickered. She made it look like something you’d find in the period of the play, something that at that time if you wanted overhead light, that’s what you would use. When we would see her walking by with these supplies we’d ask, “Well, what are you gonna do with that?” and she’d say, “You’ll see!”

Joni: It’s also great to hear from her or anyone else from the Theatre Department every once in a while and be able to help out; we’ll get a call saying, “We need a tree,” or “We need a fence,” or “We need a something” and I’ll say “Oh! I know where we can get that!” I love that involvement that we have that we would get outside of a university setting.

Harold: I’ve also had some chances to work with Jon [Reynolds] and Gregg and they’ve been great. They’re nothing but appreciative of the support we can offer from Facilities. Anytime we’ve done anything for the department, they thank us a thousand times and you can tell they mean it.

Joni: Kevin [McCluskey], who does the costumes, I just love being around when he and Julie get together. They are funny! He’s taken me down to the costume shop, and I was so impressed by the work they do down there. It’s always nice to talk with someone who’s excited about the work they do. I don’t have that kind of imagination, I just figured they rent costumes for the shows but they make just about everything for each show!

Harold: Gregg and Brandon have been great in the last year and half, because I’ve come in many, many, many times to pick their brains about our daughter sticking with theatre in college.

Joni: “Do we need to panic that she wants to be an actor?”

Harold: They have sat patiently and given me good advice every time I come by.

Joni: They’re a great resource to have.

 

T&D: What’s your favorite kind of candy?

Joni: Chocolate!

Harold: Milk Duds.

Joni: We love getting chocolate from this place in King George, Mary’s. They have every kind of chocolate you can think of. All kinds of fudge, candy, chocolate covered nuts, chocolate covered chips, just anything you can think of that’s got chocolate in it.

Harold: That’s actually where we got the cupcakes for our wedding.

Joni: We didn’t have a wedding cake, we had wedding cupcakes.

Harold: We just decided we didn’t want to do the traditional wedding stuff. We’ve been together 23 years, but we’ve only been married 9 years. We did an outdoor, nighttime wedding with cupcakes.

Joni: Cupcakes and barbecue!

 

T&D: What’s your favorite word?

Joni: Right now, I have two, because I’m working on them. “Love” and “kindness.”

Harold: My favorite word is “retirement!”

T&D: Where do you sit in the theatre when you attend a production?

Joni: In the middle, not right up front, but actually it’s different for both of us.

Harold: It’s actually changed for me, because I’ve had bad knees for 30 years, so I like to sit towards front on the aisle, but I had knee surgery and we had to go to the other side on the aisle. Close to the front though, probably five rows back.

Joni: Klein has good seats everywhere though.

Harold: I’ve actually sat towards the back of the house before, and still had a great seat. One of the reasons I’m not crazy about sitting right up in the front row is that every once in a while, shows involve the audience and I…don’t want to do that.

 

 

T&D: Are there any productions that you haven’t seen that you are hoping UMW Theatre may take on in the future? Which one(s)?

Joni: I don’t know; y’all have done so many.

Harold: Good gracious. I think I’ve only seen a few Shakespeare shows; I always enjoy those. We’ve seen our daughter as Puck in Midsummer twice now, and I liked that play a lot. I love anything by Tennessee Williams. Streetcar, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, or The Night of the Iguana.

Joni: Pithy social commentaries are always the plays I prefer, but I don’t think I know enough of what’s out there, especially contemporary stuff.

 

T&D: If you could work in the theatre in any sort of job for one day, what would you want to do?

Harold: I think I’d go more towards the technical side of things. I’ve done some volunteer set building at StageDoor and down at the high school, and I enjoy that work. I’ve always known how to build a house, but learning about building flats, and different parts of a set really interests me.

Joni: He’s really good at thinking outside the box and that used to make me crazy because I’m so literal! A friend of mine said to me once, “If I’m ever going to be stuck on a desert island, I want to be stuck with Harold, because he can take anything and make it into something,” and it’s really the truth! He would be really creative doing set stuff. He also does all of the decorative stuff in our house.

Harold: Which isn’t much!

Joni: He has an eye for that stuff; proportion, color, style, the whole thing.

Harold: Working down at StageDoor with Matt Armentrout, he’d just give me an idea of what he wanted, and he would just let me go with it. Working with Mark Wright ’02, a Mary Washington alum who teaches theatre at James Monroe, he knows what he wants and gives me a specific vision to work on. The magic of theatre is that it just has to work, and look great from the audience. That’s something I’ve learned working on sets and sometimes working with limited resources.

Joni: And that’s why I could never do it, because I’ll look up close at every detail, and say ,“That kind of tree doesn’t have that kind of bark!”

Harold: That’s the magic of theatre!

Joni: I’d also love to be an usher, one of those people that seats you. They can really set the whole mood going into a show, and I’ve had some really great experiences with the ushers here, that are normally students. I think that’d be a neat experience.

Harold: I think in a dream world, I’d love to be a director. I’m so interested in the choices that get made and what goes into the little things. Whenever I see a show I have a moment or two where I think, “I would have had them do that differently,” and it makes me wonder what goes into those choices, or how someone knows what needs to be rehearsed first or more.

Joni: I think I’d like to act.

Harold: She always says she’d like to act, and I always say, “But we wouldn’t remember our lines!”

Joni: I don’t think I’d be any good at it, like I don’t think I’d get on stage and be a star, but I just think it looks like fun. The other thing that I wouldn’t be able to do, but I’d love to do is create sets. I just wanna do the things I know couldn’t do! I could knit something or make something out of paper, but I’m not very good at painting or cutting things with power saws.

Harold: I don’t know if I’d want you cutting anything with a power saw!

 

Come see Lady Windermere’s Fan, and you may bump into Joni and Harold in about the fifth row back! Windermere is running though April 19^th. Look out for our next patron spotlight in the fall!