- Will you "Consider This?"

Many of you may recall a '70s TV show, "Wonder Woman."

Well, kids nowadays probably only know of the superhero costume with a double W emblazoned on the front.

But let me tell you that Wonder Woman has nothing on my next guest.

Stay right here.

(light music) She's lived on land, been at sea, and has always been humming a tune as she goes.

Her fingers dance across the keyboards as well.

And she shares her talents with young and old alike in order to keep the spirit of music and theater alive and thriving.

Please welcome our very own 21st Century Wonder Woman, Edie Barnard.

- Good morning.

- Hello.

And so, you were born and raised in Illinois for much of your life.

- Right, till I was four.

Then we moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts where my dad taught theology at Boston University.

- [Christine] Okay, but then you came back because- - Yes.

- You went to high school here in central Illinois.

- Yes!

My mom really wanted to come home and I understand.

So, in third grade through sixth I went to Delavan grade school which I love Delavan grade school.

Then, well, my dad was a Methodist minister and they moved every four years.

- [Christine] Okay.

(Edie sighs) - Then we moved to Moline, and then Kewanee where I went to high school.

- Okay.

So, just that first 18 years of your life was pretty exciting 'cause you were all over the place.

And then, but you took up singing at a young age.

Your father would take you places and you got to perform.

- I did.

Being a minister's daughter, you play the piano and you sing.

- [Christine] Mm hm.

- That's part of the job description, which is great.

When I was four, he and our dog, Tiny, and I would go to nursing homes and I would play the piano and I would sing, "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?"

- [Christine] Oh, and they loved it.

- Well, probably 'cause we had a cute dog.

(Edie laughing) - Well, I think you probably were a pretty cute girl holding that cute little dog.

- Oh such happy memories of that.

- Yeah, exactly.

Well, music is so important in life.

So, okay.

You graduated from Kewanee High School and then you went to the U of I.

- Indeed, I did.

Majored in music education.

Organ and voice were my major instruments.

And then the day I got married... We used to do it back then, the day I graduated from college, I got married.

- [Christine] Oh, okay.

- We did it then.

I mean, really.

And moved to Maine, which I adored.

I just loved it.

- Well, and it was in Maine that you perfected many of your skills and then went on from there.

Tell me about that.

You had a theater group there.

- I did.

I taught, when I was in my 20s, I taught music and drama at Bath High School.

And then, at the age of 30, I thought, "Oh, I wanna start my own theater."

And synchronistically at that time I received a grant to write a musical.

- [Christine] Oh.

- Which I produced, and I've produced it in Peoria, at the Apollo, produced at various parts of the world.

So then I started the fun thing of being commissioned to write my own musicals.

The Maine Bar Association, as in lawyer, not booze, asked me to write a show (Christine chuckling) about Colonial Maine's response to the new Constitution.

So I did that and we toured New England.

And Angus King, who is a senator now, and "60 Minutes" did a blurb on him last year, he played John Adams in that.

- [Christine] Oh, boy.

- So, and then, Bath Ironworks, which is a large ship building company on the East coast in Maine, commissioned me to write a show about what they were doing in the late 1800s.

And they let me do anything I wanted.

So I wrote about the ice trade from Maine to Barbados.

- [Christine] So, tell me about that.

That's fascinating.

- It is.

It is.

The ice trade was just so busy and profitable.

And Barbados, where I used to live- - [Christine] Also.

- Also (laughing).

Has an ice house that used to have blocks of ice from Maine come.

And then the ships that brought the ice also brought apples in the hold in sawdust.

- [Christine] To keep them cool?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- And then the ship would go from Barbados back to Maine with rum.

- Aha.

(Edie laughing) So, yeah, so in that case, who got the better deal?

It depends on who you were.

Right?

- Right.

- Well, so you were also kind of a historian as well.

You had to really research a lot of these things.

- Yeah, I love it.

And my Masters is in theater and ethnomusicology, which is- - [Christine] And who knew there was such a thing.

- I mean, it's not a disease.

Watch out.

- It doesn't sound good.

Right.

- But it's about music throughout the world.

- [Christine] Hm.

- So I learned to do a lot of research, and I've always been fascinated by history.

It's just wonderful.

And even now I'm commissioned to write a musical with an historic bend and I can't talk about it yet.

- About Central Illinois though?

- [Edie] Mm hm.

- So this is something we need to stay tuned to?

- Oh, yes.

- [Christine] Okay, all right.

And you'll let me know, you have my number.

- I do, I do.

- Okay, great.

Well, now, all right.

So you spent time in Maine and then you went to Barbados, and you lived there for how many years?

- 11.

- 11 years.

- And two of the years in Maine, out of the 26, I was in Greece as a cultural ambassador.

- And I had no idea there even was such a thing.

- I didn't either.

- [Christine] And how did it come about?

- I was a touring folk singer folklorist for the Smithsonian part of the time while I was running my theater.

And I met a fellow named Joe Glazer known as Labor's Troubadour.

And he knew that Greece desperately needed a cultural ambassador.

- [Christine] Hm.

- He just heard of it.

And so he connected me with the powers at be.

And I had a great two years there.

- So you lived there or you just went there quite often?

- Yeah No, I lived there.

- Ah.

- I was based in Athens and then commuted a lot to Thessaloniki in the north.

And brought in American troops of singing and dancing and help the local people become proud and aware of the beauty and uniqueness of their music.

- Hm.

Well, so, your life has kind of been in many ways, I mean, we all have the hard knocks, but serendipity because these things just kind of have come into your life and you go with it.

(both laughing) - I love how you said that.

Yes, serendipity is such a great word.

This new show I've been commissioned to write, serendipitous... How is that said?

- Serendipitously?

I don't know, I just made that up.

- [Edie] You did very well.

- And if I had to spell it, I might be shocked.

- Serendipitously came into my life about a month ago.

So I think in life, and we've talked about this, the beauty of being open to new activities, new people, new opportunities, is so important.

- It really is.

So, now, you're settled in Peoria.

And the interesting thing, again, serendipity when you came back it was because your sister's husband was ill. - He died.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

He died while I was still in Barbados.

- [Christine] Oh, all right.

- And my heart broke for her.

So I came back to be with her and I re-met a high school music friend.

- That he had...

So you were at a music summer camp, you were helping at this camp, and he was an accompanist and you were?

- [Edie] A song leader.

- Okay, the song leader.

- [Edie] At Lake Bloomington.

Church Camp at Lake Bloomington.

- Oh, funny, funny.

- [Edie] Yeah.

- And you re-met and... - Here we are.

- Another serendipity.

- Exactly.

Exactly.

(Christine laughing) - Well, so his name is Wes.

- Yeah.

- And you still perform together a lot.

- We do, we do.

He put together a trio for "Inherit the Wind", the show.

- [Christine] Right, yes, I wanna talk about that too.

- [Edie] Okay.

- You just put that on recently in the fall at the Riverfront Museum.

At the Giant Theater.

- [Edie] Yes.

- And that had never been done before.

- [Edie] Right.

- So there's never been a challenge you haven't been able to face has there been?

- (laughing) I like how you put that.

Thank you.

Yeah, so, Wes put together a trio of songs of the '20s, because as you know the trial for "Inherit the Wind" was 1925.

- [Christine] Right.

- And he- - So, give everybody a little background on what the premise of "Inherit the Wind" is for those who may not recall that they read it when they were in high school.

(both laughing) - [Edie] Or saw in the movie.

- Right, exactly.

- It's the monkey trial.

It's the idea of evolution.

- [Christine] Right.

- That in this small Tennessee town was not accepted.

And then there was a famous trial with Clarence Darrow.

- [Christine] Right.

- The lawyer for the pro-evolution side.

And William Jennings Bryan for the non-evolutionary side.

And it was such a famous trial.

- Right.

And Federal Judge Jim Shadid came to you several years ago and thought it would be a great way to bring that story to life.

And then, COVID hit.

So you had to put it on the back burner, but you still rehearsed all the time.

And you had several judges, lawyers, and all different kinds of people.

- Phil Luciano.

- Okay, yeah.

Our own Phil Luciano.

Yeah, exactly.

- Yeah.

- So, in order to corral them... (Edie laughing) - [Edie] Lasso.

- Yeah.

And so, the judges are used to having control and being the boss of their courtrooms.

So you had to get that lasso going and say, "Okay, I'm the boss here."

Did you have to do that?

- I talked about on a ship there's one captain.

- [Christine] Mm hm.

- And they got it.

It took a while for some of them.

I won't mention names.

- Okay, no, but that's okay.

That's fine.

- [Edie] I have a hairy eyeball that I like using.

- Okay.

- When I'm teaching or in a situation like being a director, and I know how to use it.

- [Christine] Uh huh.

- I bet you have one.

- Well, I would say that to my kids and I'd say, "Hey, listen, don't tempt me with my hairy eyeball."

Right.

(Edie laughing) So, you performed "Inherit the Wind" and would you like to do another performance like that?

How did it come about that it was at the museum?

Because you had done things for the Apollo before as well.

- Right.

For 10 consecutive Decembers, my husband, Wes Sedrel and I, did a holiday sing along at the Apollo, followed by that marvelous movie, "It's a Wonderful Life."

And we thought we'd keep doing it forever.

And yet- - [Christine] It happened.

- It happened.

- [Christine] Mm hm.

- So, initially Jim and I wanted to do our show at the Apollo, but it closed.

And we started thinking of other places.

And the museum, I love the museum.

And we thought, "What fun to do it at the Giant Screen Theater."

So as you know, because you were there, the pictures on the screen were in sync with what was happening.

- Correct, right.

- On the stage.

- Mm hm.

- And the audience was participatory in it too.

- And this was your vision, once you got that big screen that was your vision to bring the audience into the courtroom, be at the public square and that kind of thing?

- Right.

I spent the winter of 2020 adapting the movie script to a reader's theater format because that wonderful GST, giant screen theater is perfect for reader's theater.

And that was quite a real challenge because I taught reader's theater at Bowdoin College in Maine.

And so, to bring it to the Midwest, not many people knew about reader's theater.

And yet a lot do.

So, I enjoyed that.

And then, we finally... Well, we set several dates for the show.

- [Christine] And then COVID.

- And then, we'd have to postpone.

- [Christine] Another date.

- John Morris was wonderful- - [Christine] To work with?

- So supportive.

- That's great.

Well, so, this new thing that's a top secret that we don't know about, will it maybe have a chance to be performed at the Riverfront Museum?

- Well, I don't know.

It just happened yesterday.

- [Christine] Okay.

All right.

- The big if.

- Okay.

All right, so you are also, you do a lot of voice work and you have vocal lessons.

You're known as the Peoria Music Lady.

- [Edie] Right.

- And so, you work with people on several different things.

Give me a description of all that that includes.

- Well, lawyers seem to be a theme.

I work with lawyers on their stage presence in trials.

- [Christine] In the courtroom?

Okay.

- Because acting as being in a trial, being in a trial is acting.

So I really enjoy that.

And I work with several Bradley professors on their delivery and to make their material no matter how dry, delivered in a real interesting manner.

- Especially those who teach the early morning classes where the kids are half asleep, right?

(Edie laughing) You really need to work on that, I think.

I remember those days.

Well, that's quite interesting.

And then you also teach piano lessons and organ as well?

- I actually don't.

- [Christine] Okay.

- Although I was so- - [Christine] Did you?

- I have since I was 14.

- [Christine] Okay, all right.

- But I right now am focusing mainly on the voice.

- [Christine] All right.

- And in Barbados, I was Pavarotti's rehearsal accompanist.

- [Christine] Whoa.

I bet you've got some stories there that you don't need to share with everyone.

- [Edie] No, but you and I can talk.

- Private conversation, yes.

Well, I mean, who else did you work with that we would know from around the world?

Because I know from Barbados, you were going to London and coming back and doing all sorts of different things.

- Right.

Richard Branson hired me to what he said, "Wacky-ize his employees."

Because Virgin, I know you've flown Virgin- - [Christine] Right, mm hm.

- Is known in some circles for being a fun airline to fly.

So, interestingly, Caribbean people are very serious.

Which is a shock, isn't it?

- It really, it truly is.

They're all business.

Yep.

- Mm hm.

- So Richard asked me to wacky-ize them.

- [Christine] And how did you go about that?

- Help them have fun.

Be spontaneous, enjoy the moment.

Look at the passengers and think, "Hm, what does that passenger need?"

And then figure out how to give it to them.

- To get 'em wacky-ized.

- [Edie] Yeah.

- Okay, I like that phrase.

- [Edie] I do, too.

- You also, you work with the Peoria Pops?

- I do, July 4th.

I'm so lucky I get to narrate them on the lawn in front of Pettengill-Morron House under that glorious oak tree.

- It really is beautiful.

- [Edie] It is.

- Mm hm.

And how did that come about?

- Oh... - Did you seek it out?

Or did they seek you out or do you remember?

- I've been doing it for so long.

I think Sid Ruckriegel, that magic guy somehow asked me to do it.

- [Christine] Okay.

- I can't really remember.

I've been doing it forever.

- You've been doing so many things.

I mean, how do you keep track of yourself?

(both laughing) - Oh, that's a great question.

I'll have to ponder that.

- Okay.

- I have a super calendar.

- I bet you do.

And recently you got a job on Sundays, I believe with your husband at the Universalist Unitarian Church?

- Actually, he plays at a different church.

- [Christine] Oh, okay.

- In a Mennonite church in East Peoria.

But I start Christmas Eve playing the pipe organ at the Unitarian Church.

- [Christine] All right.

- I'm so excited.

- So you're familiar with pipe organs?

You've played piano.

- [Edie] Mm hm.

- You've played organ and pipe organs as well.

- I've been the organist at the Presbyterian Church in Pekin for three years, every other Sunday, sharing it with another lovely woman.

And as a minister's daughter, we live next to these beautiful churches 'cause we lived in the Victorian parsonages.

- [Christine] Okay.

- And then every church around here has a beautiful pipe organ.

So, at 10, I started playing.

I was so mystified by the pedal and the stops and the different levels of keys.

- Well, so, how much do you have to rehearse for the times that you play?

I mean, you don't have a pipe organ at home, so how are you practicing?

(Edie laughing) How are you preparing for your performances?

- It's a great idea.

Maybe I should.

- [Christine] Do you have room?

- No.

Right now I'm really excited about practicing for Christmas Eve.

So I go one afternoon a week and practice at the Unitarian Church.

- All right.

And then, do you and Wes played together at home?

What do you do in your time together there?

- We love- - As musicians.

- As (laughing), clever lady.

- [Christine] Okay.

- We play with our dog.

- Okay.

- But as musicians, we play... One of our favorite songs to play is: "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring."

- [Christine] Mm.

- I play piano.

He plays guitar.

- [Christine] Mm hm.

- He's in the Bradley Guitar Ensemble.

- [Christine] All right.

- And he teaches guitar at Peoria Academy.

So, and then we do jazz and I sing and he does jazz guitar or we just have such fun.

- Is there any sort of music that you don't care for?

- [Edie] Hip hop.

(both chuckling) - [Christine] I call it something different, but- - Oh, oh!

- We'll talk about that later.

No, I- - We have to chat.

- Yeah, yeah.

It's that the drumming and thumbing that I have a problem with, but that's just me.

I grew up with polkas and waltzes, and so- - [Edie] Oh, oh!

- Yeah, we'll talk about that too.

- Oh, good.

- Well, so looking over your life, and really quickly let's get back to Harriet Beecher Stowe.

You lived on the same street where she wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

- Federal Street in Brunswick.

Four houses down from where she lived when she wrote that.

It's now a restaurant.

And I would often go there in the afternoon and have tea, and write and absorb Harriet.

- And you performed her everywhere out east.

- Mm hm, and here.

- And here, too.

- I've done her at a lot of libraries and historical societies and schools.

- Well, most people know of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" but they don't know the story of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

- Did you know that she started the tourist industry in Florida?

- No idea.

No idea.

- I didn't either.

She loved Florida, so she started writing about it in various journals, and that was really exciting.

She was with Audubon and that group that loved Florida.

- Well, because she had made a good deal of money writing the book.

And then she bought a home down there.

- [Edie] Yes.

- And so, she would between Maine and Florida, I mean, that's what you do.

You stay in Maine in the summer and go to Florida in the winter.

- [Edie] And get smart (laughing).

- [Christine] People still do that.

- Yeah, actually she lived in Hartford.

- [Christine] Oh, in Hartford, Connecticut.

- She was in Brunswick two years.

- [Christine] Okay.

- She was Mark Twain's next door neighbor.

- Oh, I remember reading that too, as well.

- Isn't that interesting?

- Really.

So, to wrap this whole thing up for now because we're gonna have to have you get back.

- Thank you.

- What haven't you done that you still wanna do, your bucket list?

- Oh, I'd love to learn to play the harp.

- Ooh.

And have you ever attempted?

- No, but I have had a wonderful student who's a harpist.

- [Christine] Mm hm.

- The big harp.

When she comes to my studio, it's quite the ordeal getting it in- - In the door, right.

- In the door.

And I have helped her with her stage presence in playing that.

And she's such a great harpist.

So while she and I have been working on that I've just realized, I would love to play the harp.

- How difficult do you think it would be?

I mean, you know strings already, and if you turn a piano on its side you kind of have the same shape going on.

- [Edie] Yeah.

- But you need to figure out rather than where your fingers are here and you can kind of see 'em, you have to go in front of you.

I don't know, I...

I don't know.

- Stay tuned.

I dunno either.

- [Christine] Right.

- But I'm intrigued.

And the music and the, oh.

- So the stage presence, that is so that she will exude her personal relationship with the harp?

- [Edie] Yes, yes.

- Okay.

- And I have a flutist with whom I work also on her stage presence.

I love helping people with their stage presence.

It's really fun.

- Well, it shows their emotion and their attachment.

- Yeah.

- That's awesome.

Well, you show your emotion, too.

- You do, too.

- Oh, thanks.

- I think you're a great example of how to be.

- [Christine] Oh, thank you.

- Oh, yes.

- [Christine] What a beautiful compliment.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

- All right, well, we'll have you back again.

- Ooh, I would love that.

- Thank you, Edie Barnard.

And we'll share some more stories.

Also, if any of you out there in WTVP Land have any ideas, any people, places or things that you know that are going on in your area, please call the station and let me know about it too.

In the meantime, stay safe and healthy and hold happiness.

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