Raising the curtains on New theatre faculty

After 43 years of teaching and inspiring students in the theater department, Bob Peterson has retired from his seat as department chair. In his place, Leslie Coates has eagerly taken up the responsibility and has bright plans for the future. The theater department extends its welcome to a new member to the temporary faculty team, Erin Urick.

Leslie Coates, the new theater department chair, was connected to the Meads Coffee Shop for eight of the ten years he served First Christian United Methodist Church before coming to Butler. He was a staff person there who practiced worship design and preaching. He ran the evening worship service every Sunday night and helped the communities in downtown Wichita who were struggling and in need of aid.

When the coffee shop closed down, Coates’ personal view of how the church could operate began to deviate. Coates began considering a way to off ramp from church work, a process that landed him at Butler initially as a temporary faculty member.

He began teaching theater appreciation. He also worked the box office and handled stage makeup. Coates directed a show his first year at Butler.

His first impressions of Butler came from his wife, Trisha Coates, the current art department chair. When Coates began work he immediately took note of the diversity of students and their individual needs. He truly believes that Butler is a great place for its students.

“I want theater to be the go-to place for serious minded theater students to get their education in a nurturing, developing environment where they can put together their strategies for success and enter into a four year school with the confidence and tools they need. Or just make their way in regional theaters across the country with tools they need,” said Coates.

His personal vision would be to see the technical theater program develop and become more advanced. “There are far more technical theater jobs out there than there are acting jobs so I think we could be in a good position to emphasize technical theater and get people ready to go into the workforce or go into a four year college,” he said.

His vision as chair would be to enhance technical theater while staying strong in performance and begin leaning towards advancement in musical theater.

This is Erin Urick’s first semester teaching face to face at a collegiate level. However, Urick taught online courses of theater management for a single semester at Newman University.

Urick, who uses the pronouns they/them, says the change has been challenging but in a different way then they originally thought it would be. Urick has enjoyed working with the students. Urick joined up with Butler because they are a person that, “likes teaching about theater, how to interact with theater, how to make their lives easier by making other people’slives easier at the same time just in the sense of communication and collaboration and being prepared.”

Urick wants to see more students and departments getting involved with theater. They would like to integrate theater into more of a campus presence and be more engaged so that it’s not so isolated from the rest of the departments.