Hesston College’s Centennial Homecoming, Sept. 25-27 will bring alumni and friends together to reminisce and reflect on ways the prairie landscape, music, art, and the search for truth and meaningful relationships have shaped their lives and that of the School on the Prairie.
A centennial book, sculpture and quilt each invite reflection on and appreciation for Hesston College’s rich heritage. Three performances of Quilters – A Musical Tribute to the Women of the Prairie will add to the prairie theme and storytelling of the weekend.
The musical, written by Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek, is based on the book The Quilters: Women and Domestic Art by Patricia Cooper and Norma Bradley Allen and other books and personal interviews. It was first performed in the 1980s in Denver.
“They took all these stories together and patchworked them into a quilt,” said Megan Tyner, director. “People came to the prairie when nothing was there and had to make a life for themselves. They dealt with life and death – and sometimes it wasn’t so pretty.”
The musical depicts the love and bravery of pioneer women, and shows how their triumphs and heritage are passed through the generations, said Tyner, of Newton, who is beginning her sixth year as director of Theatre at Hesston. Tyner, a Kansas native, says, “I could never live anywhere where I could not see the horizon.”
Tyner invited alumni and current and incoming students to audition for the musical last spring. Cast members came to campus with their lines memorized a week before classes started in August. Practice times have been organized to take into account the various schedules of the students and alumni, as well as that of Tyner, a wife and mother of two young children who is working on her master’s degree in communications at Wichita State University this year. She says that the musical is a great way to highlight the contributions that women of all ages make to the college.
“I love seeing the different generations of women on stage together,” she says.
The musical patches together scenes of pioneer life that are not directly related to each other but revolve around a central theme.
“Cast members wrestle with beautifully-acted tragic scenes and then immediately have to move on to a high-energy happy theme,” Tyner said. “That’s how life is.”
“That’s hard for us because we’re all crying (after the sad scenes),” said Ana Loucks, sophomore from Hesston. She said people should be prepared to experience both the happy and sad true stories of love, joy, suffering and pain.
Each actress plays multiple roles. Loucks said her roles include that of a five-year-old girl, a pregnant mother, Papa, a mother who commits suicide, and one of four young women competing for the hand of the same young man while working on a “freedom quilt” for him.
Goessel resident Dorlee “D.J.” (Franz) Freeman, a graduate of the Hesston College class of 1978, said that as the oldest member of the cast, “I get many of the sad parts and the mom parts.
“Some of the lines in the show just remind me of what I say to my own son.”
Franz said she enjoyed participating in theater as a student at Hesston College and “this has just been thrilling to be a part of (the musical). It’s really fun working with all the different ages.”
Hillsboro resident Holly Swartzendruber, guest artist and adjunct faculty member teaching vocal music at Hesston this year, plays the “mother,” Sarah McKendree Bonham. Her “daughters” in the ensemble include Freeman and Loucks as well as college freshmen Amy Brubaker (Goessel), Megan Leatherman (Hesston), and Laura Unruh, Newton; sophomores Emily Hornung (Topeka) and Kristen Horst (Orrville, Ohio); and Lisa Yoder, Hesston, class of 1997.
Bradley Kauffman is the music director and fellow faculty member, Ken Rodgers, is the rehearsal accompanist. Staff member, Doug Peters is the technical director. Shawnti Peachy, freshman, from Corvallis, Ore., is the dance captain and Matt Lehman, sophomore from Kidron, Ohio, is the stage manager.
Talashia Keim Yoder, class of 2002, from Goshen, Ind. is the choreographer. She also choreographed Goshen College’s production of Quilters last year, but has created new choreography for Hesston’s production, which will be staged in the sanctuary of Hesston Mennonite Church.
The show concludes with the display of a 17- ft. square quilt composed of quilt blocks representing the vignettes of pioneer life on the prairie portrayed in the musical. Hesston will use the quilt made by the Prairie Quilt Guild of Wichita for the Wichita Community Theater’s production of Quilters in 1985.
After Hesston’s Friday night performance, another special quilt will be unveiled.
The centennial quilt, created by Martha Buckwalter Hershberger (Hesston Academy class of 1946 and Hesston College class of ’48), of Hesston, and her daughter, Faith Hershberger Penner (class of ’74), of Harper, is a vibrant piece of art, featuring the brilliant colors of the sunrise and sunset, golden heads of wheat, and green and brown-patterned appliquéd representations of the fertile prairie soil, all set against a black background.
Hershberger and Penner, along with Gloria Hostetler (class of ’56), of Harper used bronze-colored thread to quilt swirls in the body of the quilt to represent the swirling Kansas wind. “Nancy Miller’s centennial graphic design, ‘Living the Vision’ was the starting point for our design,” Hershberger said.
“The college is a living, changing organism, not any more static than the prairie.”
The commissioned quilt, a triptych, is made of three panels, symbolizing the college’s past, present, and future and is about 150 inches wide. After it’s unveiling in the church, it will be displayed in Yost Center for the weekend and later will be mounted in Bontrager Student Center.
Quilters – A Musical Tribute to the Women of the Prairie will be presented Friday, Sept.25, at 8:30 p.m., Sat., Sept. 26, at 10 a.m. and Sun. Sept. 27 at 2 p.m. The two-hour show will have one intermission.
Purchase tickets ($10 for adults, $8 for students and seniors, and free for children aged five or younger) at the Hesston College Bookstore, by phone (620-327-8105 or toll-free at 866-437-7866, ext. 8105), or online. Tickets will also be sold at the door one half hour before show time, subject to availability.