| 2009: Ilene Evans as Harriet Tubman | |
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Ilene Evans creates educational theater programs that span a vast range of arts disciplines including music, dance, drama, and storytelling. Ms. Evans is an inventive storyteller. She uses movement, music and sound to weave a fabric of delight and understanding. Ms. Evans has taught, lectured, and performed throughout the United States and Europe. Ms. Evans received her B.A. in Philosophy and Psychology from Trinity College in Deerfield, Illinois and is currently working on her Master's degree in storytelling at East Tennessee State University. She makes her home in the Potomac Highlands of West Virginia where she shapes stories and histories to inspire and delight young and old alike. |
| 2009: Dr. Michael Hughes as John Ross | |
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Michael Hughes teaches U.S. history, American Indian studies, and Chickasaw culture at East Central University in Ada. He has published numerous articles in Civil War and American Indian history and was the founding editor of the former _Journal of the Indian Wars_. His ancestry is similar to that of Chief John Ross: Scot and Eastern Cherokee (as well as Muskogee and Powhatan). He has performed as ten different Chautauqua characters to date and has presented in fifteen states. His former Chautauqua performances in Oklahoma have been as Alexander Graham Bell, Michelangelo Buonarotti, William Lloyd Garrison, Ernie Pyle, Marshal Bill Tilghman, and Bob Wills. His wife, Eril, is a professor of English at East Central University and an area leader in Habitat for Humanity. |
| 2009: Dr. Doug Mishler as Jefferson Davis | |
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In the last fifteen years Doug has brought "history to life" in well over one thousand Chautauqua presentations, and one-man shows. He has performed as P. T. Barnum, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Ford and the other voices in his head before more than ten thousand people. His "boys" include: activist William Lloyd Garrison, war correspondent Ernie Pyle, explorer Capt. William Clark, industrialist Andrew Carnegie, the Reverend Billy Sunday, artist Thomas Hart Benton, and journalist Edward R. Murrow. He recently added the South's only President Jefferson Davis, social novelist Upton Sinclair, and this summer Governor George C. Wallace joined the voices. Over the years he has gained the reputation as one of the finest first-person performers. After three years working for the government Doug realized that his future was in the classroom and Chautauqua stage not an office. With a Ph.D. in American cultural history, Doug teaches now at University of Nevada when not on the road with his boys. To improve his characters he started in the theatre six years ago and now is addicted having acted in ten plays and just finished directing his seventeenth. Like his idol Theodore Roosevelt he believes there is still plenty of time to grow up and get a "real job" - later! |
| 2009: Charles Pace as Frederick Douglass | |
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Besides being a Program Advisor at The Texas Union, University of Texas at Austin, Charles Everett Pace has taught at The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Purdue University, and Centre College of Kentucky. Pace graduated from Texarkana Community College, The University of Texas at Austin (B.A. biology) and Purdue University (M.A. American studies-history/anthropology). A 17 year veteran of The Great Plains Chautauqua, Pace was one of two chautauquans giving the keynote address at the final Presidential debate between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. Pace has also conducted U. S. Government Public Diplomacy Mission in 25 cities and nine countries across East, West and Southern Africa. He does chautauqua presentations on Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, Langston Hughes and Malcolm X. This provides the background for his latest work in "Creative Leadership Training for Today's Students". Pace is a full time chautauquan living in Texarkana, Texas. Further information: www.charles@charleseverettpace.com |
| 2009: Dr. Carroll Peterson as Walt Whitman | |
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Carrol D. Peterson, now Doane College Professor Emeritus, was named a Phi Beta Kappa scholar at the University of Arkansas, where he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in English. Dr. Peterson taught at Doane College in Crete, Nebraska, from 1964 to 2001, with intervals studying at Yale, and serving as Visiting Professor of English at Kwassui University in Nagasaki, Japan. He has published essays on Homer, Shakespeare, and several contemporary poets. Dr. Peterson became involved in Chautauqua in 1989, when he joined the Great Plains Chautauqua tours, interpreting the character of Thomas Paine. With the same touring organization, he later began portraying Walt Whitman and Jack London. He has also interpreted James Thurber, and has toured with numerous Chautauqua groups, including ones in Oklahoma, North Dakota, Maryland, and both Carolinas. He has presented his characters in hundreds of performances in nineteen states and the District of Columbia. Since his retirement from teaching, Dr. Peterson has lived on Maryland's Eastern Shore. |
