Reid Gilbert |
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How It All Started
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..........Valley Studio began many years before it started – officially that is. Of course, I won’t go back to the beginning of all things.
The more immediate roots of the Valley Studio were embedded in the late 1960s right after my return from a Fulbright assignment in India when Robert and Derry Graves invited me to participate in the Uplands Arts Council’s summer arts programs. Most of the participants were children and teenagers who taught me a great deal about the Socratic method of arts instruction: |
| On the occasion when I sent junior high kids out to look at and listen to and touch the environment, I also asked them to bring back some discovered item. One of them asked me immediately, “What should we look for?” My reply was “This is not a treasure hunt, I have no idea what you may find.” Various items were retrieved. When I asked one girl who had brought back a rock, why she brought back that particular rock, her reply was, “I don’t know.” I asked, “Was that the only rock out there?” “No there were lots of other rocks.” “Why didn’t you bring back one of those other rocks?” She said, “Just look at the color….” She then lectured me on color, texture, form, touch and even sound. According to Socrates this was a wisdom which she already possessed. All I needed to do was to ask the pertinent questions. |
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..........O course there were specific techniques taught at valley studio, ranging from corporeal mime to ballet, circus techniques, Indian dance, etc. but everyone was expected also to participate in the actual activities of everyday life of kitchen chores, cleaning, gardening. It was somewhat similar to Frank Lloyd Wright’s mantra, “Learn by doing.”
It was glorious to see the wonder of some of the participants as they experienced the marvel of gardening. One young student with a palm full of tomato seeds asked, “How many of these does it take to make a tomato bush?” When I replied, “It takes only one.”
she was amazed. |
..........In 1969, I brought several of my Lambuth College theatre students to participate
in the Uplands 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. The next year we incorporated and added an office and apartment extension to the house. Still later we built the upper dorm and a year later the lower dorm. Herb advised us on all the additions and even where to place the one-room school house which we bought and moved about a mile from up the road. |
| ..........Subsequently Dr. Connors donated the facilities and twenty acres to the non-profit school. In the meantime the students had renamed Dr. Connors as Dr. Wonderful, honoring his continued interest and contribution to all our activities and programs. |
| ..........To mention the Kritz school brings to mind our dear friend, Edna Meudt, who grew up across the creek, was a nationally recognized poet and served on our board of directors. She visited often and shared with us her marvelous poetry and the lore of the valley including tales of Wild Rose O’Neill and the day, as an eight-year old, when she arrived late for a birthday party at Taliesin, the day it was burned on August 14, 1914. One of my prized possessions is a picture of the Kritz School the first day it opened in 1911. Standing in front of the schoolhouse with the other students was Edna on the first day of her formal education. |
..........Several chapters I’m writing in my memoirs contain various allusions to Valley Studio, and I will later make them available to anyone who may be interested in downloading any of them.
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