- Will you consider this?

No matter where she goes, she seems to be humming a tune or two, or creating a show or two or three.

I'm Christine Zak Edmonds, stay with me to find out much more.

(upbeat music) When it comes to stage or musical performances, my guest knows how to put it together and get it done.

Carol Davis has done a lot of everything, even fundraising and grant writing, but we'll begin with the Spoon River Community chorus.

Welcome, Carol.

- Thank you.

It's a privilege.

- I feel like such a slacker when I read...

I have pages that I printed off of your CV and all of your fun facts and everything.

Tell me you came from St. Louis area?

- I did.

I did.

My son will tell you that I have synapse issues that what will happen is that I will see something and I'll go, "Oh, that looks like fun," or, "Oh, that's interesting," or whatever.

- Squirrel (laughs).

- A squirrel.

Exactly, exactly.

And so in my life, I growing up in St. Louis had lots of opportunities for participating in so many things.

And so I took advantage of those and the one connecting factor turned out to be theater.

- Crazy, but that's what you were interested in in high school then?

- Yes.

As a matter of fact, it actually started when I was a child and my parents gave me this little toy pink showboat that had little cardboard characters, and it had a script that went with it.

And I played with that for a little while.

But before long, I was doing shows in the backyard with my neighborhood friends.

They weren't necessarily always all that interested, but they tolerated it.

And so in high school, I was very much involved in high school.

So many of our students were involved with the Muny Opera in St. Louis during the summers.

- You too?

Did you do so?

- Well, I never got to because with 200 students going out for musicals, it was difficult if you weren't a triple threat.

And the one thing I can't do, Chris is dance.

I'm not good at dance (laughs).

- Okay.

- So the triple threats would get cast, but I did get leads in some of the straight plays and the dramas.

- Good for you.

Good for you.

So what brought you to Illinois then?

You're quite a Missourian.

- Yes, I actually moved to Canton in 1982 after graduating from... Well, actually I was finishing up my student teaching and I got a student teaching experience in Farmington High School.

And so I moved here at the time.

And the first thing that I did, because I've always found the best way to find a family and make a connection, was look in the newspaper and I saw that they were having additions at the Fulton Playhouse for the musical The Fantasticks.

And so I went in and I auditioned and lo and behold, I was cast in that lead role and those people are still my friends today and we are still doing shows together 30 plus years later.

But after my teaching student teaching experience at Farmington, then I was hired at Elmwood High School, but they didn't have a teaching position at that time.

So I took a position as secretary and the principal, Ken Mauer from Metamora, Ken was the principal then.

He came down and he said, "I hear you do theater.

We need to do theater here."

And that's what really got me started.

- So you started the theater program?

- Well, it had fizzled out.

- All right.

- And so when I started, there were 10 brave students from Elmwood who came forward.

We did a production of You're a Good Man Charlie Brown.

And then several years later, when I left, we had almost 100 students involved in that very small high school because we were able to connect with the sports teams.

- Okay.

- A funny story about that.

- Yes, I wanna hear it.

- (laughs) I had mostly athletes, a lot of them played the leads.

The football quarterback was the star of the musicals also.

He was very, very good.

And then one day the coach of the basketball team came to me and he said, "We need some help here."

He said, "We need some help with making it look like fouls are happening."

(laughs) - Oh, yeah.

- Yeah, so, not that they were cheating, but they just wanted to make sure that they knew that those fouls were happening.

- Taking a charge.

Yeah, exactly.

- So we worked on body movement a little bit.

- Good for you.

Good for you.

Well then again, you've been evolving and evolving and evolving and let's get to the Spoon River Community Chorus right now because you've put on a lot of performances there.

- We have.

I was hired as the director of workforce and business development in 2005.

And it also had the community aspect of Spoon River Community College.

And so I saw a void there that there wasn't a music program per se, and so we decided to create this community course.

We had no idea what the success would be.

I had been over in Peoria doing a lot of theater prior to that.

- Right, and what year was this?

Or approximately.

- 2005 was the year that we started the chorus, but it was in the 90s that I was here doing things at Players and public theater, but I had a son and I decided that it was time to stay home a little bit more.

- Stay put, right.

- And so we created this community chorus with the idea of providing quality entertainment that also had a purpose.

I always feel like things need to have two sides to them.

So we started with 40 people.

At holiday time, we did Handel's Messiah.

It went over so well that then we began expanding it and expanding it, and then eventually I was moved up to vice president, which included the foundation.

And that's where we discovered that our work could really pay off.

And we began singing for scholarships.

And the money then was... We created named endowed scholarships, we're still doing that obviously, a named endowed scholarship.

- So theater and music scholarships?

- They could be anything, but they were from funds that we created from the Spoon River Chorus.

We were self-funded except for some generous grants from the Community Foundation of Central Illinois and Two Rivers Arts Council.

But the rest is just from ticket sales and we would pay our expenses, of course.

And then the leftover funds would go toward these named endowed scholarships, which were named for members of our chorus, who had passed on, who had participated and helped us raise some funds.

But then we started, you have to raise $10,000 and then it became a named endowed scholarship that's given every year in perpetuity in the name of those people who participated with us.

- Wow.

That's great.

Excuse me, a minute.

(coughs) One of those tickles.

- Yep.

(laughs) - All right.

Well, so how many members do you have in the chorus now?

And they have to audition?

- They don't.

- Oh, they don't.

- That's the best part, they don't have to audition.

There are approximately 100 people that are involved with the chorus in one way or another, whether they're technicians, musicians, or singers, or just actors, but they ebb and flow according to what we're doing at the time.

So we have some people that will sing only in a concert because they wanna be able to have the music and they want that feeling of a concert choir.

We have some that will only do musicals or some that will only do plays.

What happens is we put it out there and then we know who's interested in doing the shows and we cast that way.

- Well, then you know what they're capable of?

- Exactly.

Exactly.

So you need to get involved like at the chorus level, and then eventually if you're interested in doing those other kinds of things.

Students are more than welcome, and we always have students participating in one way or another, but for the most part, it's people from the ages of 17 to 85.

- Now, that was my next question.

The range in age.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- What fun, and to have that many generations together.

- And they are like a family.

It's so wonderful to watch them.

We always have breaks and the breaks are when they get to know one another and share stories with one another.

And that's what I think theater programs and music programs are Chris.

I think that we are stories.

- Everyone is.

Everyone's got a story, correct.

- That's what we are, yes.

And so the sharing of stories, whether that's their individual stories they're sharing with one another, or the stories that we're sharing with an audience, and theater is a really safe place to do that because you can bring up societal issues or emotional problems or whatever that people can learn about or think about without it being too much personal involvement.

- Personal, right.

Correct.

- So that's another aspect of it that is just, I think, wonderful and always great to do.

- What are some of the best shows you've done already?

And then I wanna go from there to what is in the near future?

- Sure.

Well, in terms of a lot of fun, two years ago, I think 2019 before live performance closed down for awhile, I had a young man who had worked with me from the age of 12, from the Canton community who is doing quite well as an actor.

He lives in Atlanta, Georgia now.

He's now in his 40s (laughs).

- Okay.

- And so he's been in movies and television.

He was recently in One Night in Miami.

He just recently also did the new reboot of The Wonder Years.

But we decided to do Guys and Dolls.

We thought that people just needed...

Things were just so... - That silliness in it.

- Yes, and they needed something to make them happy.

And so one summer, Dustin Lewis is the actor's name.

His mother lives in Pekin.

And so one summer 2018, I asked him if he would be willing to even think about coming back to play the role of Sky Masterson.

And so everybody got very excited about it because Dustin said yes, but we only got him for one week.

So the entire chorus rehearsed the show for two months, the poor girl playing Sarah, Lindsay Larson-- - Up against nobody.

- Nothing (laughs).

And then he came in and it was just fabulous.

We had so much fun and they were able to work with a professional actor as well.

That was probably one of our favorites.

- A couple of feathers in their cap.

Yeah.

So what do you have... You generally have a holiday performance in December and then what do you move on to in the spring?

- Yeah, right before we get to our summer musical, which is usually an annual thing, we also have a series of little mini concerts where we bring in people from the outside of our area to do a 50 minute show for people.

And so we have been very fortunate, we had the late Ken Bradbury come in and do one.

Currently, we have Barry Clyde.

As a matter of fact, about two hours ago, I was talking with Barry by email, who hasn't...

He likes to try out his new shows with us in that little black box theater.

And so going to do... - So if it plays at Spoon River, it'll play anywhere.

- (laughs) In playompuria, right?

- Yes, exactly.

- Yeah, but Barry and I both have a love of science fiction and he has a new show out that he's doing with music to talk about how music has worked with films made on HG Wells are Jules Verne stuff for the Twilight Zone.

So we have those in the winter, just for the winter doldrums basically.

And then we always have, well, almost always, we've been shut down twice, a large musical, and we were going to do Mamma Mia, however-- - Players is doing it?

- Not only that, they're very fortunate because it's going on national tour.

So anybody that asks for the rights after Players, (laughs) because they had asked for it the year before because of the pandemic, got a no.

So I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet because Stephen Sondheim is my favorite composer, and I actually have a couple of great stories about my relationship with Stephen Sondheim, but we're gonna do Into The Woods, and everybody is super excited.

But we perform in a black box theater, which is two classrooms with 12 foot ceilings.

So it will be a super challenge to be able to do that show.

- To have some, yeah, some scenery.

- Yep.

I have the talent.

I'm not worried about that.

The challenge will be, and challenges are fun, the challenge will be making it work inside of that.

- And you perform at at many different places, and those are really unknown to you, correct?

- They are.

They are.

And that's one of the reasons that we have good funds left over for the scholarships is because we perform at the Spoon River College's theater, which is on the second floor on Taylor Hall, which is where the SRC drama performs.

And we have a very good close relationship with that group, that's the student group.

And then we do our concerts in local churches who open their doors to us, and then our musicals are back at the college.

So yeah, we travel it around.

We've performed it at the Lincoln Center in Springfield.

So we've traveled around as well.

- What challenges do you have, if any, or what challenges don't you have?

I suppose I should ask.

- Well, actually, every single one is a challenge in terms of casting it or casting shows or deciding what it is that we're going to do, but that's a challenge that I absolutely love.

And the challenge is also to pick something that I think will elevate thought a little bit, not just always entertain, it's to move thought along and to do that in a way that you know people will still come to the performance, but that they're also willing to learn in addition to being entertained.

And of course, money's always an issue.

We still keep our tickets at 10 and $12.

- And who does that anymore?

It's very affordable.

And you have people, well, you said ages, but you have people from all walks of life who are participating too?

- We do, we do.

We have teachers, we have administrators, we have a lot of church choir directors that'll come in for the concerts and so on.

We have graphic designers.

I mean, none of them is that this is their vocation, it's an avocation.

As it has been for me, I guess I'd never make a living at what I've done.

Although I've taught theater a lot.

I see that my avocation is inserted into my vocation at every moment, and I think that's what's kept it so interesting for me.

- Well, yeah.

It's a dimension.

Well, you're also an adjunct professor at Spoon River College.

- Yes, I teach the introduction to drama and I actually do that down at our Havana center.

I'll be teaching theater appreciation in another year.

And then the most interesting thing, my last degree that I got in May was a master's degree from Bethany Theological Seminary in Richmond, Indiana.

- You know I saw that.

Yeah.

What's that got to do with it?

- Very interesting.

Bethany has been on the forefront of something called theo poetics, which is basically exploring the divine through the arts.

So music, poetry, literature, dance, visual arts.

- Give me an example of what?

Of all those things.

- Sure.

It can be taking divine literature from whatever, for whatever denomination or religion or whatever you might be.

And then exploring that by maybe staging it, or by doing slam poetry readings, but it's also creating your own original thing.

So re-interpretation of some things to make it relevant.

- To today's world?

- Exactly, exactly.

- Interesting.

And how did you find that?

- I actually, at my church, I'm a choir director too, (laughs) although my degree is in music and the companies will tell you that thingamabob is not what we call certain rests or whatever (laughs).

- But it's okay.

You know what comes there.

It's right there.

- He went to a workshop by a gentleman known as Dr. Scott Holland, who has been on the forefront internationally on this whole theo poetics thing.

And afterwards he goes, "This isn't for me, but I know someone that this is perfect," because they were just starting to offer this degree.

First degree in the country to offer it.

And I got connected and I was sold because the very first course was taught by the Dean of that institution, and it was science fiction and theology.

And it was looking at theology through all the different science fiction films and television programs.

And I was so hooked with that (laughs).

- And you could actually see it then?

You could make that connection?

- You could.

You could.

The one thing that they found out is that the area that they hadn't been having in the program was theater.

And so when I graduated in May, they started talking to me about would I come in and teach a course for them, create it and teach it.

And so this spring I'm gonna be teaching for the first time a course called theater theology and the power of public performance.

- Whoa.

- And we'll see where that goes.

- Will you travel to Indiana then, Richmond, Indiana or will use Zoom?

- I will be able to Zoom that.

There will be students that are on campus in a classroom, but then they have students in Nigeria and everywhere else, all over the world and so the rest of us will be Zooming.

That's a challenge because you have somebody, if the class is at like an eight o'clock, you got somebody in Seattle taking it at what 4:00 AM or something.

- Exactly.

- But they do (laughs).

- Right.

Well, if the want is there, the need is there and you can get it done.

You've written several things.

I know that you wrote An Evening with Patsy Cline and you wrote that with Mary Simon?

- Yes.

Actually I wrote the show, a young woman who now also is in her 40s started with me at Elmwood when she was 13, and she is Patsy Cline.

I mean, it's incredible to watch her.

- She is.

This is Julie?

- Yeah, yeah.

Julie Seeley, yes.

And Julie and I have been together.

She's going to be in Into The Woods by the way, but we've been together forever.

And we did the show, Always Patsy Cline one summer together.

And then I decided it would be great to just really research Patsy's life further.

And so I did a lot of research and so on.

And then we created this show called An Evening with Patsy Cline, where she is on stage doing a show, but telling you about her life and incorporating her songs into it.

And it's the night before she leaves before the plane crash.

I mean, people ask for her autograph.

I mean, (laughs) the show played at Conklin.

Mary was very interested in it.

And the show played at Conklin for six weeks straight to sold out audiences, and she's done it since then.

And Mary now asked Julie back for some of her country shows to play the role with (indistinct).

- You're right.

She is.

- It's incredible.

- It's almost a reincarnation.

- It's really scary.

(laughs) - Well, with all that, you've done think what haven't you done that maybe you would like to do with your own life, for starters, not necessarily for performances?

- Well, if I were gonna go for my next degree, which I think I'm not, (laughs) I'm done with... Maybe, I don't know.

I would study plate tectonics.

I am so fascinated by the whole idea of plate tectonics.

My son is a storm chaser.

And so we're very much into that whole seismic, revolving all kinds of things.

But honestly, I'd like to do that.

- Run a camera?

- Yes.

- Well, we'll get you... As soon as this is over, we'll let you go around there and just point the camera.

- I have always wanted to be behind a camera.

I just thought it would be so wonderful to see what that's like and look at it from the perspective behind a lens, and I have this quick story also, but in high school, one of the people that I was most influenced by was someone I never actually got to meet because my high school had 5,000 students in it, but I was influenced by this actress named Kathy Nail.

And I saw her in a performance of The Miracle Worker and she blew me away and I just wanted to be her.

- Was she Helen Keller or was she was Annie Sullivan?

- She was Annie Sullivan, and she just blew me away.

And then she went to Mizzou and I went to Mizzou.

I wasn't stalking her, it just turned out that way.

When she graduated from Mizzou, I didn't see her for a long time.

And the next time I saw her, she was actually kissing Harrison Ford in Raiders of the... - Indiana Jones.

- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

And then eventually she became Mrs. Steven Spielberg, (laughs) and still is to this day for many, many years, still haven't met her.

But I'm so fascinated by what he does, by the concept that he has and how he gets behind a camera and how he can create things like Jurassic Park and Schindler's List at the same time.

- (laughs) Well, now that's something that you can look forward to.

And you even said that, I think you sent me in an email where you didn't have a whole lot of pictures that you were in because you were busy taking the pictures so you know some of it to begin with.

- I do, I do.

And I feel like I'm always looking at a picture because since the Italian days of theater history, a lot of us have been performing in that proscenium box, which is basically a picture frame and we're filling the frame and we're presenting that live.

So, yeah, I think I could make that transition, but it would just be just a joy and an experiment that I would like to try someday.

- And your son is also in the chorus and he can do it all as well?

Can he dance?

- No.

As a matter of fact, he is in the chorus and he has an amazing voice.

He is a John Prine Bruce Springsteen freak (laughs).

- All right.

- And when he was little, we had public theater here in Peoria at the Madison Theater and at Roosevelt Magnet School where I taught for awhile.

And I took him to rehearsals when he was a baby in a bucket.

- Sure.

- Right.

And then he was three and he's painting sets.

He won't get near (laughs) a stage today.

He will not perform in a musical or anything because he storm chases instead, I guess, and he was a baseball player.

But he does sing and I can get him to do that.

And it's a lovely voice.

- Well, that's good.

And then are you also... You're singing in some of your performances too, you're not just standing in front directing or anything like that?

- Yeah.

Every now and then I put myself back on stage so that I know the horrors that I'm putting other people through (laughs).

- Well, that's nice.

Yeah, walk a mile in your shoes.

- Yeah, Doug Dokey who is the director of the Spoon River College drama, and I just recently put on the two person play The Guys, which is a wonderful play about the aftermath of 911.

And so we did it as the 20th anniversary.

So that was a straight show.

But in the Disney show that we just did at the very end, I came on as Mary Poppins and sang-- - Did you fly in or?

- Yes.

Super cord no, but I did have the parrot.

- Okay.

All right, that's good.

- And I do sing in the winter chorus sometimes.

Well, I always sing in the winter chorus just to keep my voice in shape.

Yeah.

- Good, good, good.

Well, thank you so much for enlightening us, and if people wanna be in touch with what performances you have and when, where can they go?

- It's really easy.

We have a webpage on the college site and it's just www.src.edu/chorus.

And it'll take them right to the page that shows them everything.

- Perfect.

- Thank you so much.

- Well, thank you.

And I'm glad that The Beales gave me this idea because they're big fans.

- Oh, well, I love them.

Thank you so much.

- All right.

Thanks for letting us know all about this, and I hope you enjoyed it.

Stay safe and healthy.

(upbeat music)