Educating the Whole Person: The Arts at King’s College
By Michael Little, Ph.D.
In an addendum to Blessed Basil Moreau, C.S.C.’s Christian Education prepared by The Holy Cross Institute at the University of St. Edward’s, Brother Stephen Walsh, C.S.C., notes that philosophies of Holy Cross education may vary, but typically promote “the education of the whole person—spiritual, intellectual, artistic, physical, social” because “Father Moreau believed that physical, social, musical and artistic activity were educationally valuable in themselves and should not be relegated only to periods of relaxation from school.” At King’s College, the most repeated version of this philosophy is Father Connerton’s observation that King’s teaches its students “not only how to make a living, but how to live.” From its founding, King’s College has been attentive to the role of the arts in the formation of its students, taking care to remember Blessed Moreau’s caution that “the mind will not be cultivated at the expense of the heart.” From the classroom to the stage, from the gallery to the grounds, from performances in the chapel, the gym, and under the canopy of the stars, the arts have been a vital and varied part of the life of King’s College from the very beginning.
Theatre Arts
The dramatic arts stumbled out of the gate at King’s, but began to come together under the direction of speech instructor Donald Streibig. Streibig was instrumental in establishing King’s theatre both in production and in renown: his innovative staging eventually led to recognition in Theatre Arts magazine—in 1956, King’s was one of only three educational/community theatres in Pennsylvania to be highlighted: “By combining arena and proscenium styles, they have achieved greater scope and fluidity in their productions.”
Streibig’s most visible lasting contribution may be the staging of Julius Caesar in March 1951, the beginning of a string of Shakespeare productions that included Hamlet as the inaugural production in the “new” auditorium (March 1960) and continues through our most recent production, All’s Well That Ends Well, in November 2024. April of 1963 saw the first musical—Salad Days—to be staged at King’s, which is also of note because of its student choreographer, first-year Santo Loquasto, who would go on to an award-winning career as a designer for stage and film, including four Tony awards and three Oscar nominations.
In the fall of 1969, the Theatre Department, now under the leadership of Carl Wagner, introduced a bachelor’s degree in theatre to the King’s College catalog. At the same time, arts and music electives were expanding, but the theatre major became the first and still only fine arts degree at King’s. And over the years, the Theatre Department has made a notable mark on the College and the community by producing everything from grand spectacles, such as Tommy and Jesus Christ Superstar, to classics such as Antigone and the long run of Shakespeare plays, to smaller-scale social commentary in plays such as Doubt and The Laramie Project. One exemplary production was Ragtime in the fall of 2018, a show that combined spectacle with social commentary and also included members of the wider community in the large, ensemble cast.
Two prominent visitors to campus in relation to the theatre were Sister Helen Prejean and Martin Sheen. In 2008, Sister Prejean visited campus as part of the Visiting Writers Series to deliver two lectures in conjunction with the Theatre Department’s production of Dead Man Walking. And most recently, in April of 2024 actor Martin Sheen participated with students and faculty to present a staged reading of 8.
Literary Arts
After The Crown and The Regis, the literary magazine The Scop is the longest running publication at the College. The first issue appeared in January 1950, and the term “scop,” according to Robert McCabe, the faculty advisor at the time, “refers to the official bards of ancient tribes.” But there is no mention of pronunciation, and over time references have contradicted each other. In the 1967 Regis, the club page gently mocks a “fledgling faculty member” who referred to “the ‘Scope’,” but the 1979 Regis would have been more supportive, offering “skop” and “skōp” as options.
The scope of The Scop was originally to publish student writing with the notable exception of a short letter from well-known writer and humorist James Thurber explaining his theories on comedy in 1961. Over time, given difficulties soliciting enough quality material from the student body, the magazine expanded to include more academic writing, for a time, and then later expanded to include photography as the magazine rebranded from “literary” to “fine arts” in 1974; more recently, submissions have gone national through a blind submission process.
Regular calls in The Crown for students to submit were often followed by reviews celebrating the idea of the magazine and arguing its contribution to the King’s College experience, as in a 1971 article that proclaimed, “If indeed this college supposes its highest objective to be ‘the increase of knowledge,’ then the publication of this or of any year’s Scop is a moral imperative.”
Alongside The Scop, although formally unrelated, is the Campion Society, the literary/fine arts club at King’s. Formed to foster the “encouragement of deeper appreciation of literature and the discussion of major works not covered in the academic curricula,” the Campion Society has hosted open readings and discussions since 1962.
A short-lived “book-of-the-semester” program also began in 1962, identifying an important written work (not always literary) and encouraging the entire campus to read it and meet to discuss. More permanent has been the Visiting Writers Series, which began officially in 1989 with a visit by Howard Nemerov. Each year since, notable authors such as Jane Hirschfield, Michael Cunningham, Sister Helen Prejean, Amy Bloom, and Elena Castedo (whose first book was nominated for both the National Book Award in the United States and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize in her native Spain), have been invited to campus for a public reading open to the College and community. Visiting authors also participate in workshops with students.
More recently, the first Creative Writing Conference was held in 2017 and since then student and alumni writers have met annually for workshops and readings.
Oh, and about pronunciation: according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it’s either “shop” or “skop” (rhyming with “shop”).
Choral/Music
Various versions of bands formed over the years, supporting football games and offering public performances. But interest and membership was never as strong as with the choral arts, which have been strong from the beginning. The official Glee Club was formed in the fall of 1947 and reorganized in the spring of 1948 with backhanded support from The Crown, which noted that “this Glee Club, unlike most glee clubs we know, isn’t made up of men who can’t get dates and haven’t anything else to do. These men CAN and DO sing.” Very quickly, their talents took them from their first public concert (May 18, 1948) under the direction of Bronis Voveris and broadcast on WBRE radio, to a Philadelphia appearance one year later as part of the first state-wide “Culturale” music and art exhibit sponsored by the Pennsylvania Region of the United State National Students Association.
In April 1950, the Glee Club performed for the second time at the Irem Temple, and for the first time with a guest artist: Graciela Rivera, an internationally known opera singer who just one year later would become the first Puerto Rican to sing a lead role at New York’s Metropolitan Opera.
In addition to attracting guest artists over the years, the Glee Club achieved international recognition; as just two examples, in 1973 they won a bronze medal at the International Choral Festival in Rome and in 1974 were invited to perform in Poland. At this time, they were known as The Men In Red and, starting with the arrival of female students to the campus in 1970, performed often with their female counterparts, Les Chanteuses. Membership fluctuated, and as numbers dwindled the two groups would perform together as The Monarch Chorus. Voveris, who had been director since 1948, retired in 1977, followed by Joan Turel and Liz Brogna. Interest slowly waned, and in 1990 the Monarch Chorus was reorganized as a single chorus open to men and women, students, faculty, and staff alike under the name The King’s Singers.
The Christian Voices, the official liturgical choir at the College, maintained after the decline of the King’s Singers, but also waned after the formation of Cantores Christi Regis (CCR) in 2001. While Christian Voices is still active, singing at every Sunday evening Mass, CCR often fulfills their other liturgical obligations in addition to being the College’s performing ensemble, called upon to contribute to a range of campus events. In addition to their own concerts, CCR is prominent at campus events, including participation in the President’s Welcome to new students, Convocation and Baccalaureate Masses, the lighting of the campus Christmas tree, and the Silver Century Club Christmas Party. And at their own Commencement, CCR pares itself down to just the seniors for one farewell moment.
Visual and Performing Arts
The current campus gallery space, the Widmann Gallery, opened in 2002 after the Campus Center was renovated. Prior to that renovation, the Kilburn Room (later Kilburn Gallery) in the Campus Center was the campus gallery; before that, it’s not clear that the campus had a gallery space. The Kilburn and now the Widmann have served to present exhibits of student artwork, the work of local artists, traveling exhibits, and even presentations and small-scale performances.
Student performances over the years included the ever-changing band, clubs organized around folk singing, and more recently, competitions sponsored by Campus Activities. “King’s Idol,” based on the show American Idol, debuted in 2006. Students competed for four weeks; in week five, the winner was announced and received a limo trip to New York with three friends, tickets to a Broadway show, and an overnight hotel stay. The competition ran through 2015, with prizes scaled back, and then from 2016 through 2019 the competition itself was scaled back to a single night of performances. Meanwhile, “King’s Got Talent,” modeled after the show America’s Got Talent, started in 2009 and ran for a few years without a regular spot on the activities calendar. In 2013, “Dancing with the Staff” debuted, pitting six dance teams (a student paired with a faculty or staff member) against each other in a one-night dance competition. The final show was held in 2016.
In 1991, the Four Nations Ensemble formalized a partnership with the College through a grant awarded by Chamber Music America—the grant allowed for four concerts a year and provided funding for the ensemble to visit classes and provide small group demonstrations. Four Nations chose King’s because of past experiences with the College, in particular the Literature and the Arts/Experiencing the Arts program. Experiencing the Arts enabled artistic programming on campus with special encouragement for classes to integrate learning with the events.
Rev. Leo Flood, C.S.C., the third president of King’s College, commissioned two of the most prominent works on campus, both of which were dedicated in October of 1956. One is the two-ton coal altar now located in the center of the Chapel of Christ the King. This altar was designed and sculpted by Charles Edgar Patience, a local artist whose work has been exhibited in the Smithsonian. The other is the Statue of Christ the King on top of what was then called the Main Building (now the Administration Building), which was designed and constructed by Lawrence Russo. In front of the old chapel stands the campus’s “other” statue of Christ the King, which was donated by the St. Boniface Church in Wilkes-Barre in 1948. In a 1988 article in The Crown, Business Manager Joe Balz said no one remembers the impetus for the gift: “For whatever reason, they bought a new statue and gave it to the College.”
Two other sculptures of note include “Following the Spirit,” an unlabeled 17-ton sculpture in front of the Scandlon Gym, which was donated to the College by the University of Notre Dame in 1971, and “Final Question,” a piece by the Rev. Austin I. Collins, C.S.C., an artist and professor at the University of Notre Dame. “Final Question” was donated to King’s in 1996 and stands at the entrance to the Charles E. and Mary Parente Life Sciences Center.
Image at Top: The Radio Club producing a show in 1949.