All Day Chemist

Bonner resident bitten by theater bug at ESU

“I don’t know, I wasn’t always sure about theater. I did it a lot in high school and I did it in junior high, and I wasn’t sure about pursuing it in college …” said Standridge, who moved to Bonner Springs with her parents when she was a junior in high school. “I came in, actually, as an English major but … I found theater instead.”

Standridge is now a junior at ESU and involved in her second intensive summer training program as part of ESU’s Summer Theatre, a summer stock theater series produced by ESU annually for the past 57 years. The Summer Theatre company is comprised of ESU students, students from surrounding schools and community members who help to produce four plays over eight weeks. Jim Bartruff, director of theater, said those interested in taking part in Summer Theatre go through an audition process in March and the entire company is cast in April.

As one of 24 students currently involved in the Summer Theatre company, Standridge will earn college credit and get paid. More importantly, though, she says she will get a taste of what it’s like to work in a professional theater company — that includes helping with costume design, some onstage performing and grueling eight- to 12-hour days getting a play to performance-ready every two weeks.

Standridge was involved in Summer Theatre in 2010, and she says, though it’s a lot of work, the experience is always wildly rewarding.

“It’s a really good experience; you feel part of a community, you know, and … you feel accomplished at the end of it,” Standridge said. “You get to know a lot about everybody else (involved in Summer Theatre) because you’re with them eight to 12 hours a day.”

Closeness among theater enthusiasts is what drew Standridge to change her major to theater her sophomore year. She even refers to those in the theater department at ESU as “kind of like a family.”

Standridge says the ESU’s theater department offers study in many aspects of theater. Through different classes, she has developed a strong interest in costume design. But she says her main focus is on acting, so much so that she plans to move to Los Angeles after graduation next year to try to become an actress.

You can be anyone you want to be as an actress, Standridge says, and that’s what she loves about it.

“I think it’s very exciting. Like, for a long time I couldn’t figure out just what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be, but I realized that with acting I can be whatever I want to be,” Standridge said. “It’s kind of exciting. Like one day you could be, like, a chemist and the next day you could be a wife, like a housewife.

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