At a time like this, when neo-fascist wannabe dictators are setting people against one another for their own political gain and financial enrichment, I think it more important than ever to celebrate and help perpetuate sharing communities. One such community was the Valley Studio, a movement theater school that flourished in Spring Green, Wisconsin throughout the 1970s. The Valley Studio had, without exaggeration, a tremendous influence on my life. Starting with my first visit in 1975, it introduced me to a new circle of creative friends, many of whom have been part of my life for the past (yikes!) half-century. Many others would say the same thing. Thank you to Jef Lambdin for all his work chronicling this history and for allowing me to share it with a new audience. This article first appeared in the Association of Movement Theater Educators Newsletter (Spring 2012, Volume 20, Number 1).
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In the 1970's one could study movement theater at many studios and colleges throughout the United States. Carlo Mazzone-Clementi had his Dell'Arte School of Mime & Comedy in Blue Lake, CA. Jewel Walker, Moni Yakim, Bob Francesconi, James Donlon, Bari Rolfe and others were teaching at universities. Samuel Avital had his Le Centre du Silence in Boulder, CO; C.W. Metcalf his Magic Mountain Mime School in Tallahassee, FL; and Tony Montanaro shared his work at his Celebration Mime Theater in South Paris, ME.
When one considers all of the movement theater training offered at that time, one studio stands out: The Valley Studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin. This hub of movement theater exploration was the brainchild, passion, and vision of E. Reid Gilbert. From 1970 through 1979, the Valley Studio blossomed in the Wyoming Valley of Wisconsin, seven miles south of Spring Green and forty miles west of Madison. From a small beginning mime class in a barn, the Studio grew to include three main facets: year-round instruction; summer workshops by master teachers such as Mamako Yoneyama, Ken Feit, William Burdick, Hovey & Judy Burgess, Jacques Burdick, Peter Hoff, Carlo Mazzone-Clementi and Tom Leabhart, as well as a touring performing arts troupe, the Wisconsin Mime Company, which was later to be known as the Wisconsin Mime Theatre.
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| Valley Studio 1972. Photo by David Herwaldt |
How It All Started
According to Reid Gilbert, "In 1969, I brought several of my Lambuth College theatre students to participate in the Uplands Arts Council's summer program, mounting several productions in the Gard Theatre in Spring Green. That year my family and I stayed in the Spring Green area for me to finish my doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin. The next spring, a new friend of ours, Dr. Dean Connors, asked me if I could use part of his house to teach mime to his daughter, Susan, and his house boy, Ben Rogner. He had secured the architectural services of Herbert Fritz, an associate of Frank Lloyd Wright, to design an upgrade of an old house and barn on the small Newton Farm on the Upper Wyoming Road. The barn loft provided an excellent studio space for mime instruction. That autumn, Ben and I began occasional performances on the road. The next spring, Dr. Connors said that the commute to Madison every day for his work in St. Mary's Hospital was too onerous for him, so he suggested that I invite more students that summer and to use the whole facility."
Reid Gilbert Before
Now Reid was no stranger to theater and particularly to what we today call Movement Theater. He'd studied Modern Dance with Charles Weidman in 1958, Mime with Etienne Decroux in 1959 and Japanese Noh with Sidayo Kita in 1964. He'd been a Visiting Lecturer in Mime at the National School of Drama in New Delhi, India, in 1965-66. He had received an STM in Religious Drama from Union Theological Seminary in 1963 and completed his Ph.D. in Theatre at the University of Wisconsin just as he was beginning the Valley Studio. So he brought all of this training and experience to bear as he created the Valley Studio.
Early '70's Growth and Expansion
Into this mix came Barbara Leigh (Co-Founder and Artistic/Producing Director of the Milwaukee Public Theatre). According to Barbara, "I was at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, working on my dissertation about Jacques Copeau's Théâtre du Vieux-Columbier. While working, I realized that mime was kind of the origin of the training so I began searching for a mime class. Of course, what surfaced in Paul's Book Store in Madison was a little notice about Reid Gilbert doing a mime show at some church. I'm like, 'Oh my God, I have to go to this!' So I went to the show and I thought 'This is so fabulous. I want to do this!' So of course Reid was offering mime classes, and I took the classes and just totally fell in love with the art form. Reid invited me to come out to the Studio. I started working at the Studio. Gradually I started working more and more with Reid, and we formed a duo. We travelled all over the state giving performances. I became the Associate Director, and it went from there."
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| Spider & Fly, Barbara Leigh & Reid Gilbert, from collection of Barbara Leigh |
The Studio grew from the one main building and a renovated barn. In 1972 the Valley Studio was incorporated and an office and apartment extension were added to the house. Still later an upper dorm and then a lower dorm were built. All the while, Reid was advised by the architect Herb Fritz on all the additions. Fritz even advised where to place the one-room school house which was bought by the Studio and moved onto the property from about a mile up the road. Subsequently Dr. Connors donated the facilities and twenty acres to the not-for-profit school.
What Reid Brought to the Work
Speaking of Reid Gilbert, Barbara Leigh offers, "One of the things that really drew me to Reid was the way that he taught mime. It was the whole concept of respect. He talked about how the word "respect" came from the Latin spectare "to look", re "again": to keep looking again and again. That concept has been a beacon for me." Tom Leabhart (Professor of Theatre and Resident Artist at Pomona College in Claremont, CA) adds, "Speaking of what Reid brought to all of this, well Reid had this wonderful country kind of wise, sort of like an old country doctor, or old country judge who was there dispensing his wisdom. He believed in the whole person, that everybody should do chores. So we all took on chores. The spirit that Reid brought is exemplified in his wanting to call the little performances Sharings. That's a very Reid kind of thing." John Towsen (author of the book Clowns) recalls, "One thing about Reid was that he was so very open to everything. He took to heart Mao Tse Tung's phrase when he said, 'Let a thousand flowers blossom.'"
Terry Kerr (Education Director, Children's Theatre of Madison) observes, "He was very open to all kinds of disciplines. I loved that about Reid. We'd experience something and then try to realize it in whatever fashion seemed appropriate; whether it was a spoken piece, a mime piece, a dance piece, a silent theatre piece, or not." Ronlin Foreman (School Director of the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, CA) remembers, "It was Reid's conviction concerning Community that set the tone and the atmosphere of the Valley Studio. He believed that it was an artist's personal responsibility for caring for the place, including regard for and maintenance of the studios, preparing meals, conserving resources, as well as being self-reliant and collegial. Reid emphasized that the Artist/Performer must be a responsive citizen of the world. Studying there meant a commitment to contribute to the community that sustained the place."
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| Reid Gilbert in his office. Photo by David Herwaldt |
The Wisconsin Mime Company/Theatre
In the early '70s Reid Gilbert and Barbara Leigh, as the Wisconsin Mime Company, shared performances at schools, colleges and arts venues. Barbara Leigh stated, "We were the beginning of the Wisconsin Mime Theater. Actually during the summers the students from the studio became part of the troupe as well. It had all kinds of people in it. But during the year, just the two of us were touring." As you can see from the following list, during these early years many performances and residencies were in Wisconsin, but the Company did work throughout the Midwest including workshops and performances at: Wisconsin State University, River Falls; Viterbo College in Racine, WI; University of Wisconsin, Madison; St. Lawrence Seminary in Mt. Calvary, WI; Mercy College in Detroit, MI; Flambeau High School in Tony, WI; and Waunakee Elementary School in Waunakee, WI.
Barbara Leigh left the Valley Studio in 1974 to form her own company, Friends Mime Theatre. As Leigh was leaving, other performers joined the company. This would prove to be the model for the company over the years as company members would join, contribute, and move on. Even Reid's relationship with the troupe would eventually change. "After a while, I didn't perform with the company. When Tom came in 1976 I backed out a little bit. I got more involved with the administration of the Studio, etc."
According to Terry Kerr, in 1974 & '75, "There were five of us. It was Johnny Aden, me, Kay Doobie Potter, Susan Chrietzberg, and Reid. For the couple of years while I was there we did hundreds of school residencies. We would go out and do workshops and then perform at the end of the day for school assemblies. That was really kind of our bread and butter. We had a longer touring show that we did with all five of us, so we had duets and solos as well as some pieces that included the entire company. We even had some pieces that were just the four of us without Reid. We had a pretty collaborative approach. Pretty much we each composed our own work and then Reid would act as the director. He'd give suggestions and influence the work." Reid Gilbert adds, "We did the booking ourselves. I did it, and then we got Nina Edming, who was running the office."
For an idea of the company's performances during this era, check out this program:
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| From the collection of Barbara Leigh |
| In 1976, Reid wrote to Tom Leabhart to invite him to work at the Valley Studio. According to Leabhart, “How this all happened was I was at the Mime Festival in Viterbo, WI (the International Mime Festival and Institute held at Viterbo College in LaCrosse, WI, in the summer of 1974). I met Reid at the Viterbo Festival. I went there from teaching at the University of Arkansas. There in Wisconsin I saw Jacques Lecoq perform for the first time, and I saw these wonderful dark clowns from Eastern Europe. So that gave me the idea that I wanted to go there and see what other work was going on. So when I got back to Arkansas, I applied for a grant, which I got. So I went to Poland for three months and Czechoslovakia for two months. While Sally, my wife, and I were in Poland we got a letter from Reid. It said, ‘Would you like to come here to the Valley Studio?’” |
“So Sally and I talked about it. We were young. I mean the University of Arkansas was my first job, so the Valley Studio was only my second job! I went back to the University of Arkansas, looked around and said, ‘I’m ready for a change.’ So there were these negotiations with Reid to bring with me some members of the mime troupe already at the University of Arkansas. I don’t remember exactly how many of them finally came to the Valley Studio, but there were Robert Sucher, Susana Hackett, Meg Partridge, Karen Flaherty—I don’t remember the exact number, but there were five or six.”
As mentioned earlier, it was at this point that Reid stopped performing with the troupe. With Leabhart at the helm and the addition of the new members, the Wisconsin Mime Company changed its name to the Wisconsin Mime Theatre and expanded its repertoire to add corporeal mime. Tom Leabhart notes, “We had a kind of a mixing of genres. Some of the pieces were more clown pieces, and then others were more corporeal mime pieces. We mixed them together.” Karen Flaherty (former company member who is now retired and lives in New York City) adds, “We opened the eyes of a lot of people because we would do things with words. One of the works was from a piece, a play called Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters by Gertrude Stein. That was Tom’s idea.”
When the group would go on the road, they’d “use an old red school bus and tour to places like Green Bay and Fargo in the midst of winter. It was quite an adventure! Joe Daly would go with us as our driver and Stage Manager,” said Susan Chrietzberg (Professor Emeritus at the University of Memphis). About the bus, Tom Leabhart adds, “Well, I don’t know if they bought it especially for the occasion, but we had a tour of the South. We toured for six or seven weeks through places like Alabama and Mississippi, all on the bus. We’d sometimes even sleep on the bus. Joey was the bus driver on that tour, with Susan Chrietzberg, Robert Sucher, maybe Val Dean, Karen Flaherty for sure, maybe Joe Long. Yeah, there was a big group all on the bus. I think there must have been a couple of places to lie down on the bus. I don’t think everybody could sleep at the same time. I think we slept in shifts.”
A review in the Wisconsin State Journal from that time period remarks that the performance titled Mimeworks was “designed as a showcase for various styles and techniques in the art of mime developed over the past several decades. Two solo pieces, The Carpenter and The Washerwoman are highly stylized portraits of the noble spirit of work created by Etienne Decroux. The mime company applied mimetic stylization and movement in two spoken pieces—one, a macabre and zany bedtime story by Gertrude Stein, and the other a work which explores the injustice of sex-role stereotyping in children, called William’s Doll.”
Talking about the company at this point in time, Leabhart recalls, “I remember enjoying the work. I enjoy working with good heart. I think we created work from all starting points. I think it was sometimes that different people would bring an idea to the company. I can remember that Robert Sucher made a very long clown piece with Karen Flaherty which I looked at more than a couple of times, and made suggestions. At certain moments it was more like a collective. I think that is a good way to describe it. I think other pieces, for example The Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters, was done through improvisation. I selected certain moments and we tried to keep those and added on different things. I think improvisation was always the basis for the creation.”
Karen Flaherty remembers, “As a company member your life was segmented. It did depend on what style you were practicing. So Doobie (Kay Doobie Potter) and John (Aden) would often do their own rehearsals and creative work. I would often work with James Van Eman and Meg (Partridge) on things. I eventually did learn Table, Chair & Glass, a Tom Leabhart piece. I learned some from Meg, and some from watching Tom teach class. As company members it was expected of us to create pieces and get booked and get out on the road. Tom directed Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters. He saw that as being the centerpiece of other things that woud then work around it. He also would perform Table, Chair & Glass, and Washerwoman and Carpenter.’”
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| Meg Partridge, James Van Eman, Susan Chrietzberg, John Aden & Karen Flaherty. From the collection of Karen Flaherty |
When Leabhart left the Valley Studio in 1978 to become a Resident Artist at Grand Valley State Colleges in Allendale, MI, many company members went with him or moved on to other projects. The mime company was again fundamentally changed. As the Studio closed in 1979, company members included Dennis Richards and others.
It must be noted that in addition to the Wisconsin Mime Theatre, there were other performing programs offered by company members and teachers at the Valley Studio. Tom Leabhart remembers them in this way, “For example, John and Doobie had a children’s show, a school thing, which they had leftover from before I got there. So they were very important in the Madison schools. They performed a lot in the Madison schools. Reid was still doing his solo show. Reid had two or three solo shows. He had his pantomime show. He had something with folk music with David Crosby, the musical director with the symphony. So all of these things were going on.” Also, while the Period Dance master teacher William Burdick was on the faculty, he shared performances of his Dances of the Court and Theatre throughout the region with a cast of company members and students.
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| L–R: Janis Wikoff, Joe Daly, Kare Lunga, Tarn Magnuson, Adrienne Gilbert, Joe Long, Kay Doobie Potter, and Dennis Richards performing at University of Wisconsin, Madison. Winter 1978.From the collection of Tarn Magnuson. |
Year-Round Study at the Valley Studio
Although the focus of the training at the Valley Studio began with summer workshops, Terry Kerr recalls, “1974 was the first year of Reid’s idea to have a year-round program at the Valley Studio that students would be there through the winter.” As the program grew, Gilbert and other company members, as well as guest instructors, would teach in those winter months.
As well as teaching mime and self-mask, Gilbert recalls, “When Tom Leabhart came I thought it would make more sense for him to teach the specific Decroux technique because he’d studied longer and later than I had. So I invented a new course. I just taught what I called ‘natural movement’ which was really fun for me! I just developed it. I was actually delighted with that discovery.” Full-time classes would continue to be taught at the Studio through 1978, and into 1979.
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| Tom Leabhart teaching class in. 1977. From the collection of Tom Leabhart |
Summers at the Valley Studio
Summer sessions were where the Valley Studio really made its mark on training in the United States. Barbara Leigh, commenting on early sessions, says, “There were quite a few different classes in the summer. It was really run with specific sessions each hour. We’d get up and there were early morning stretching and yoga sessions—sun salutation kinds of things. Then we’d also wash the floor. Reid, having studied in the East, had this practice of washing the floor. So we’d do that. Then we’d work with these various teachers on all different aspects of Movement Theater. The sessions would usually culminate in a performance by the students.”
As early as the summer of 1972, students could study mime and mask with Leigh & Gilbert, music with Karlos Moser, improvisation with Gloria Shapiro, and acting with Joan Graves. “I think the example of the passion of the teachers who came to Valley Studio and the incredible diversity and creativity that they exhibited were all just very inspirational,” states Leigh.
In 1974, the summer faculty included Charles Weidman—Modern Dance, Nilimma Devi—Indian Dance, Robin Reed of the Reed Marionettes—Puppetry, Judith Burgess from Stanford—Acting, and Dr. Bella Itkin, artistic director of the Goodman Children’s Theater—Acting. That summer several teachers from the International Festival of Mime in LaCrosse, WI, also stopped in to offer workshops and master classes, including Mamako Yoneyama.
At the end of each summer session the students would share their work in workshop productions, or sharings. Throughout the summer these sharings would be supplemented on other weekends by performances of professional performing arts groups. For example the calendar of events for the summer of 1972 included a classic film series as well as the following performances: The Capitol Trio String Concert; Gestures of the Heart—a performance by Reid Gilbert and the Wisconsin Mime Company; Souvenirs of Opera; The Eye of the Beholder—a dramatic collage; and a Showcase of Total Theatre: Opera…Mime…and Drama! The summer series of 1978 included: The Bacchae directed by Jacques Burdick and starring Peter Hoff; The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra; William Burdick’s Dances of the Court & Theatre; The Corporeal Mime Theatre directed by Thomas Leabhart; Lucknow Kathak performed by Lalli; and the experimental Timewheels directed by Richard Cohn. With performances such as these, the Valley Studio was able to attract the support of townspeople and locals from the surrounding area who came to count on the great entertainment offered up by the Studio and its students.
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| William Burdick & Company on the outdoor stage, 1978. From the collection of William Burdick |
Students were attracted to the Valley Studio by the caliber of the instructors as well as the focus on craft that the rural setting enabled. Reid Gilbert begins, “I’m not sure how I ever got those teachers, but boy was I ever lucky! I had some fantastic teachers. Someone would tell me about someone else. Mamako Yoneyama, how did I get in touch with her? I don’t know. And of course, Carlo… We had people there teaching karate, and then William Burdick teaching Period Dance, and then of course Jacques Burdick was teaching and directing there in 1978.”
Remembering his studies there, John Towsen says, “First I went there with Fred Yockers, my clown partner. We went to study with Carlo. He was the draw for us. In later summers I studied other disciplines. Neither Period Dance nor Corporeal Mime was exactly up my clown alley, but I was trying everything. So, me, klutz with no sense of rhythm, I’m studying dance and corporeal mime. You don’t have to be good at something for it to expand your sense of yourself and what you can do. Yes, there were practical things I learned that I could list, but also it was a self image and sense of limits that it affected. There I was studying with this famous dancer from the Graham Company! I was studying new things that I didn’t even know existed but then it was the multiplicity of them that was also kind of staggering, like Joe Martinez doing Stage Combat and doing the Mao Tze Tung warm-up, then William Burdick doing Period Dance. You had your warring schools of mime and pantomime, South Indian dance, your mask makers, your commedia dell’arte, your puppeteers. Whatever they had, as a student it was like you went through a door and there was this whole larger world of things.”
Ronlin Foreman recalls his summer of 1977 at the Valley Studio, “The fact that there were a lot of things being offered at the Valley Studio was a plus. I did Carlo and Tom Leabhart at the same time, but I didn’t recognize Carlo at the time, so I was mostly only there for Tom. I had been really interested in Decroux’s work, especially since the Viterbo Festival. I was trying to find myself in that form. So I went to study with Leabhart. I do remember one other class though where we did work with a Commedia scenario. I remember being terrified because I was not a good reader, and I didn’t come from an improvisational background, and was given a script for Arlecchino. Ended up with Carlo being complimentary to me about doing whatever it was that I did. I remember being a little stunned. That opened up a door with my engagement with Carlo over the years.”
All participants at the Valley Studio, students and teachers alike, realized that they also were meeting like-minded people they would know and come to depend on throughout their career. About this fact, Jacques Burdick (former Head of the Theatre Department at Adelphi University) recalls, “What made the Valley Studio go was not unity. It was that a great many interesting people, who were interested in working in theater, were there available to teach, and you had to get out of them what you needed. And they all knew why they were there. It was a place to work.” “It was a real crossroads of a lot of people in juggling and circus arts and what we called then New Vaudeville,” recalls Tom Leabhart. According to John Towsen, “You didn’t know it at the time, but while you were at the Valley Studio, you were meeting colleagues. Ronlin Foreman was up the hill with me in what we called "Shantytown" in our tents. That was one of the reasons Fred and I started collaborating with Ronlin on the first Clown Festival in New York in ’83, which led to all kinds of things. You see Ronlin and Fred and I wanted to produce our shows in New York so we got together and were going to run our shows together and then we kept adding shows. Pretty soon we had this huge festival! That came from the Valley Studio.” Karen Flaherty put it this way, “When I left Valley Studio, the two people who helped me were Reid Gilbert and William Burdick. They got me work all the time. I was constantly working throughout the summer. I was out in Colorado. I was in Ohio. I was in Syracuse. I was with William locally in New York City, and at NYU and Juilliard where we did the master classes together. Both of them kept me afloat. My finding an inexpensive place to live in New York helped me to create my one-woman show. I debuted that piece at the Syracuse Festival."
Why It EndedAlthough the Valley Studio was successfully fulfilling its mission by performing and teaching theater and other performing arts, it came to a close in 1979. Very succinctly, Reid Gilbert states, “Well, it all ended in 1979 when we had to sell the place because we had a $60,000 debt. It was kind of interesting. Each year we earned, and this was unheard of, we earned 90% of our budget. We had about 5% in grants, primarily from the Wisconsin Arts Board, and then the 5% was our debt. It was that 5% that added up. The board was very supportive emotionally, but not very supportive financially. Some of them could have done much more. Then the last year the Wisconsin Arts Board turned us down. I contacted the head of the board and asked why, and he said, ‘We heard you were having money problems.’ I said, ‘Why do you think we are applying? If I don’t need the money I’m not going to apply for it.’ Well we sold the place to Michael George who started a retreat center for the arts, primarily for musicians.”
The Legacy of the Valley Studio
The list of students who attended classes and workshops at the Valley Studio reads like a veritable “Who’s Who” of Movement Theater today: Valerie Dean, who passed away in November of 2011, and her husband Don Rieder, of the Coaching & Creative Support Team for Cirque du Soleil; John Towsen, author of the book Clowns; Ronlin Foreman, currently School Director and teacher at the Dell’Arte School in Blue Lake, CA; Marguerite Mathews, Co-Artistic Director of Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s Pontine Theatre; Mike Pedretti, who went on to create Movement Theater International and all the mime festivals in the 1980’s; corporeal mime Steve Wasson who will be opening his own school in a converted church in Spring Green this summer; Barbara Leigh, the Artistic/Producing Director at the Milwaukee Public Theatre; Terry Kerr; Karen Flaherty; Daniel Stein; and many more notable movement theater professionals today all were students at the Valley Studio at one time or another.
“I think the lesson of the place is you go on learning. There was a wonderful diversity of personalities, a diversity of approaches. It was an intense experience where we made friends that we still have to this day. When you go through any kind of intense experience, there’s a kind of a bonding that happens. We make a point of staying in touch because we had that kind of unifying experience together. So I think the Valley Studio was like that as well.”
—Tom Leabhart
“I believe that the Valley Studio was a major underpinning for the development of ‘the field’ in this country—there was a sense that what was happening there was not novelty but a manifestation, in that place and time, of a lineage of cultural and aesthetic and embodied theatrical practice… a Physical Theatre with all its mystical and metaphysical aspects.”
—Ronlin Foreman
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