OKLAHOMA chautauqua

2010
The Wounds of War: A Tale of Two Americas

2010: Joseph Bundy as Major Martin Delany
	Joseph Bundy has been active in the arts in West Virginia and the mid-Appalachian region for years. He is an actor, writer and humanities scholar. He is the founder and artistic director of the Afro-Appalachian Performance Company. Mr. Bundy is best known for his Chautauqua enactments of James Weldon Johnson, Booker T. Washington, Martin R. Delany and A. Philip Randolph and others. He has presented performances and residencies for community groups, schools, colleges, universities, civic organizations and National Parks in West Virginia, Virginia Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Maryland, Ohio, Missouri, Kansas Colorado, Pennsylvania and New York. 2009 he was the guest Chautauqua Scholar for the Enid, Oklahoma Winter Chautauqua portraying Booker T. Washington.

2010: Dr. Ted Kachel as Robert Edward Lee
	After forty years teaching humanities and theatre at colleges and universities across Midwestern America, Professor Kachel, retired as Head of the Theatre Program at Tulsa Community College. Although retired he still teaches a religion class at TCC using his PhD. studies in Religion and Society from Columbia University (1975). Much of his work today is touring in first-person performances as William Jennings Bryan, General William Tecumseh Sherman, Sir Winston Churchill, William Shakespeare, Joseph Mallord William Turner, or H.G. Wells. His practiced acting skills can make "history come alive from inside-out" for audiences, especially when they ask spontaneous questions while he remains "in character."

2010: Dr. Doug Mishler as Stonewall Jackson
	In the last fifteen years Doug has brought "history to life" in well over one thousand presentations. In addition to Stonewall, Doug has presented P. T. Barnum, Theodore Roosevelt, Ernie Pyle and 11 other historical figures. The voices in his head keep him busy but when he is not on the road with the boys he finds time to direct and act in theatrical plays, as well as teaching American history at the University of Nevada. He has garnered a national reputation as one of the finest first-person performers. Like his idol Theodore, Doug believes there is still plenty of time to grow up and get a "real job" - but later!

2010: Karen Vuranch as Clarissa Harlowe Barton
	Scholar Karen Vuranch is well known for her portrayals of women in American history. She has toured internationally with Coal Camp Memories, dramatizing life in the Appalachian coal fields. In addition to Clara Barton, she recreates Nobel prize winning author Pearl Buck; labor organizer Mother Jones; Indian captive Mary Draper Ingles, Civil War soldier and spy Emma Edmonds, Irish pirate Grace O'Malley, Wild West Outlaw Belle Starr and her newest character, the indomitable Julia Child. Karen also performs a WWII play, Homefront and is a traditional storyteller. Her work has been honored by several organizations over the years. She recently received a fellowship from Tamarack, the West Virginia arts center for her life-time achievement in the arts. Karen was also named the 2000 Performing Artist of the Year for Tamarack, the West Virginia state arts center, and received the Spirit of West Virginia Award from the state tourism office, to name a few of her honors.

2010: Dr. William Worley as William Seward
	A native of eastern New Mexico and resident historian of Kansas City, Missouri, Dr. Worley has written numerous books about Kansas City, the Southwest and the development of the Midwest. He is Instructor of History at Metropolitan Community Colleges of Kansas City-Blue River, and serves as Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. In the world of Chautauqua, Worley has portrayed a wide variety of characters from Harry Truman to railroad restaurateur Fred Harvey, political boss Tom Pendergast, 1920s "goat-gland doctor" John Brinkley and animation and entertainment entrepreneur Walt Disney. He has twice before participated in Oklahoma Chautauqua, first as Tulsaâ€™s own Cyrus Avery on Route 66, and then as oilman and philanthropist Waite Phillips in the 2007 Oklahoma Centennial Chautauqua. Worley has presented historic characters in Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, New Hampshire and Northern Mariana Islands.

2009
Lincoln's Legacy of Equality: Voices on the Fringe

2009: Ilene Evans as Harriet Tubman
	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
	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
	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
	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
	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.