Brigadoon: The Final Bow Of Professor David Burke

Professor David Burke began our tour two days before opening night for the production Brigadoon behind the set itself. I introduced myself and went to shake his hand.

“Oh I shouldn’t,” he said, holding up his hands so I could see how they were covered in shades of black, green and gray paint.

I had interrupted him while he was working on the set piece for the production of Brigadoon that would run from Thursday to the following Tuesday.

He lives for set building.

“I was a college drop-out for about five years,” he said. “For those five years I was not in college, I became a carpenter. I moved to Idaho as a hippie.”

This reminded me of my time in theatre, how when you show up to auditions there were times when you were cut from a show and had to take a break from the stage. While other times, you got the comedic role and the next you were the one to bring the audience to tears.

Burke has constant humility in his leadership and the willingness to even do the clean up required to prepare the stage for that night’s dress rehearsal. But beyond that, he has become a mentor and leader to many of the students in the department.

“He’s like a father figure to many of us,” Noah Leake, senior accounting major, told me after curtain call of the opening night of Brigadoon.

He has guided many of the students, even the students who are not theatre majors, but who have been drawn to the stage.

“If I ever skipped a chapel I was always in his office talking to him, just about life,” Leake said.

Burke is not a man of few words, but as we sat in the audience looking at the set that they created he finally told me, “We are not praising God for saving us, we are praising Him for creating us.”

God was the first creator, and to be more like Him, you need to learn to create, to allow yourself to be molded like clay into what God has designed you for.

Ultimately, that means listening to God when He calls you in a different direction. Burke told me that his plan was to retire when he was 70 and had been around the theatre for 35 years. The Lord had different plans because of his heart condition that caused him to need a double bypass open heart surgery.

“God, I will stay as long as you want me to stay, and I will only go when you clearly tell me it’s time to go.”

It was when Burke was in the hospital recovering from the surgery that he heard the Lord tell him that it was time to take his bow, move aside and allow someone else to lead.

Since February 1, 2019, the cast and crew along with a team of outside volunteers have worked to design and create the sets and costumes from the ground up, just as Burke had done with Union University’s theatre program when arriving here 34 years ago.

When he arrived at Union University in 1986, he told me there was a stage that was about 20×20, made up of platforms that were all different heights. “They had taken carpet and stapled it over the top of it so people wouldn’t trip.”

Since then, he has built platforms for the chairs in the audience, purchased the chairs and lighting and recentered the purpose of the department. A purpose not only to entertain but to enlighten, to teach and to glorify the Lord in all things.

Now it’s show time. The costumes have been finished and the ticket ripped at the door.

Brigadoon. Burke’s first musical in college as a performer, when he played the role of Jeff Douglas, is now his last show as director.  

Within moments the audience will be laughing and sitting at the edge of their seats. With all the accents, all the costumes and the 50 ft wide and 13.5 ft tall set, the audience is immediately thrown back to a land that will bring sacrifice, love and maybe a little magic.

By the end of Act One, the audience is ready to join the chorus.

“It makes me want to pull out my kilt,” Michael Horton, senior psychology major, said once the lights came up.

Brigadoon will throw the audience through all forms of emotions, whether it’s laughing with or at Jeff Douglas, played by Timothy Fletcher, or crying along with Fiona MacLaren, played by Grace Runkle, who gives a wonderful performance and pulls at the heartstrings of the audience. This is a show that draws on all of Union’s talent to bring such a professional performance.   

As Burke takes his final bow and prepares to say goodbye to his role as director on March 19, 2019, Brigadoon is something that shouldn’t be missed by anyone.

This article first appeared in the Cardinal and Cream Website.

Union Debate Continues To Be Excellence Driven

The Union University debate team competed at Louisiana Tech University this past weekend and came home with an assortment of titles and a greater sense of confidence.

The debate team won first in overall sweepstakes and in individual debate sweepstakes. Individual Union debaters won first place in novice (Amily Huddleston), junior varsity (Grant McLemore), varsity (Danielle Popson) and pro (Josh Swafford) divisions. Union also won first place speaker in the varsity division.

Rebekah Whitaker, visiting assistant professor of communication arts and director of debate, said that the team has come together in such a beautiful way that makes her excited about the rest of this season. Since it is still early in the season, competition will continue to get more and more difficult, but Whitaker said that the team is hopeful about the rest of the season.

“Overall, I feel like we grew in confidence this weekend as a team,” said Whitaker. “All of the first year debaters made it to elimination rounds. Every single one of them did.”

Whitaker said that some of her favorite moments of the weekend were not the competition itself or the great success of the team. Even though all of those were great, some of her favorite moments took place before competition began, on the seven hour bus trip, and in simple conversations with debaters.

“We hold a service at tournaments that require us to be gone on Sundays, and we have tried to make that something that we open up to other teams as well,” said Whitaker. “Students have found great ways to open Gospel-centered conversations with other debaters, which is the real heart behind what we do.”

Whitaker said that part of what sets Union’s debate team apart is that they constantly strive to debate ethically and remind each other to speak with grace and mercy, a motto of sorts for Whitaker.

“I am extremely proud of the hard work that my teammates have put into this activity, for their accomplishments, and more importantly, for the way they have conducted themselves as ambassadors for Christ on the debate circuit,” said JD Logan, senior political science major and debate team captain.

The debate team takes a weekend off this weekend for fall break, but they jump right back into their season on Oct. 18 with a debate tournament in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Photo courtesy of Union University

This article first appeared in The Cardinal & Cream website

Creator Profile: Sullivan Hogan

The first time I ever met Sullivan Hogan was in a theater class.

I, a non-theater major, walked into the room to see her, a theater major, sitting in a faded red loveseat, one of the many chairs from previous productions that occupied the theater room. Having never met me, she immediately introduced herself, along with her fellow classmates, and I remember how personable it felt.

Hogan prides herself on being personable.

Sullivan Hogan, or Sully, as she is commonly known, is a junior theater and digital media communications double major from St. Louis. For as long as she remembers, she has loved entertaining people with her characters. From her 1st grade Thanksgiving play, in which she starred as Elizabeth the pilgrim, to her part-time job portraying costumes of Daffy Duck and Sylvester the Cat in high school, Hogan loves bringing to life her assigned personas.

Hogan hopes to bring that same passion to her starring role as Nora Helmer in “A Doll’s House” this November, as Union University’s theater department tackles Henrik Ibsen and Thomas Ostermeier’s feminist tour de force. Hogan refers to Nora as “one of [her] most impressive roles to date.”

One thing Hogan makes very clear about her role as Nora is how impactful it is.

“I’m on the stage for almost the entirety of the show, which means I am acting the entire time,” Hogan says. She seems half giddy and half nervous about her extended stage presence throughout the program, but continuously comes back to how her performance will resonate with the audience.

Hogan’s love of the stage thrives on her wanting the audience to connect with her characters. When asked about the true reasoning behind her passion for theater, she alludes to a more intimate connection than most people are used to today.

“A great performance is able to make the theater seem smaller,” Hogan says passionately. “My favorite performances are the ones where people come up to me after the show and tell them how much they needed to see the show and what my character meant to them.”

In the end, that’s really what Hogan sees as the big picture: God calling her to connect with people through her performances.

Professor David Burke, former director of Union’s theater program, would always say that “theater is the most difficult calling God can give.” Hogan takes that message to heart.

From the first time I met her, Hogan seemed intent on making me feel included. The first time I saw her in a performance, as Nurse Kelly in last year’s “Harvey,” I saw how well she connected with an audience. Sitting across from her in this crowded coffee shop, watching her greet a handful of students as she walked in, I see that those connections aren’t just between a fictional character and an audience member in a state of suspended disbelief, but a connection between someone willing to use the gift God gave her and those receptive to it.

Nora from “A Doll’s House” is famous for her door slam heard ‘round the world. It’s Hogan’s job to make it heard by you.

This article first appeared in The Cardinal & Cream Website