theatre Archives - StoryHook

Becky Boesen

By Asha Timperley

Becky Boesen was teased as a kid.

It wasn’t because she had braces or glasses – she was teased because of her vocabulary.

At the age of 7, Becky described jelly sandals as “superficial” and used all sorts of big words that her peers either didn’t understand or had never heard.

When Becky thinks back to this fact, it makes her laugh, even though at the time all she wanted to do was fit in. But that’s the beauty of her story, she said, and in many ways she’s still that goofy 7-year-old with a big vocabulary and even bigger dreams.

Becky grew up in a western Nebraska home where they watched the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet on family movie night and argued about politics for the fun of it. Her parents were big on letting Becky draw her own conclusions and defend her opinions. This kind of environment made Becky’s creatively-geared mind explode with possibilities, but it also set her apart from the other kids.

When she wasn’t in school, she was either writing or working at the restaurant that her mom managed. As a 9-year-old, Becky said she learned a lot about human nature while she dipped onion rings and cleared tables.

She’d listen to couples fight, friends catch up and families wrangle their kids.

“That part of the country isn’t necessarily diverse, but the stories are,” she said. “It was like I was watching a movie or a play, and soon I started to think about the people I encountered as characters.”

In junior high and high school, Becky’s family moved from Nebraska to the Ozarks and then back to Nebraska. As her parents dug into their respective jobs, Becky was left with a lot of alone time. She found that writing became the way she tried to understand her new home, school and life.

She would write anything from poems and lyrics to fictional stories to help express herself. It was a way she could get out her teenage angst without having to edit or explain herself to others.

It was during high school that Becky realized her love of language, writing and stories were pointing her toward theatre. She had a teacher who noticed her talents and encouraged her to pursue acting in college, but the thought of making a hobby into a career seemed silly and a little scary.

Becky always figured she’d be a lawyer or politician, so the thought of something so different was overwhelming. Plus, she wasn’t sure how her parents would take the news. While they had never discouraged her creativity, majoring in theatre didn’t fit their idea of a viable career path.

As graduation got closer, the conversations about college grew more intense and involved a lot of door slamming and tears on Becky’s part. The conversation finally ended with her parents giving their blessing for her to pursue theatre and she decided to attend UNL.

During her first semester, Becky quickly found her “tribe.” She loved the fact that there were other word nerds and theatre geeks out there, and she suddenly didn’t feel so alone. The next four years of her life were full of learning and exploration. She got hooked on play writing and always seemed to be working on a new project or trying to figure out how to get her latest work produced.

But no sooner had she jumped in to her degree that her time at UNL came to an end. Becky quickly realized that post-college life didn’t feel as safe as she expected, and she began questioning her work. The pressure of making the ‘right’ decisions led her back to a small town in Nebraska where she stopped writing and eventually settled down and started a family.

She had a good life and was thankful for her family, but things felt off. Becky struggled with depression and after a few years she realized she needed to move back to Lincoln and pursue her passions.

Since returning to Lincoln, Becky’s story has been a roller coaster of jobs, emotions, relationships and goals. She’s experienced loss up close, she’s come to understand the value of family and to appreciate her community.

At the age of 35, Becky said she finally understood how to connect her purpose and passion in a way that was meaningful. She began to write and produce plays with themes related to poverty, family and loss. She began to see her writing as more than just her way to breathe, but as a way to say something, give back and create dialogue in the community.

These days, Becky vacillates between writing, producing and working out the logistics for her business, being the executive director for the Flatwater Shakespeare Company and cultivating relationships with other creatives. She works a lot of long hours and usually doesn’t sleep more than 5 hours a night – mostly because her brain is buzzing with new ideas.

And yet, this chaotic schedule doesn’t seem to bother Becky. It’s what makes her feel alive, what gives life to the rest of her world and what really saved her life. Theatre was her cure for loneliness, and it’s become a way that she can reach back into her community and understand her own story.

The theatre is her safe place. Not because it’s where she feels comfortable, but because it’s where she feels most vulnerable. It’s where she can express her truest self, the part of her self she had a hard time tapping into, but the person she knows she is made to be and the story she is meant to live out.

July 11, 2017

Love7

David Claus

By Asha Timperley

David Claus has woken up a lot of people while painting. Not because he’s a loud painter, but because he’s a singing painter.

His voice is deep and booming as he belts out, ‘Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day…’

Whether it’s interior or exterior spaces, it doesn’t matter, David sings when he’s on the job, and he’s been doing it this way for nearly 30 years.

He doesn’t advertise his services or carry around a business card, because being a singing painter definitely gets him noticed. He’s a character with connections and he does all of his work by word-of-mouth, but David became the singing painter in a pretty roundabout way.

In college, all David really wanted to do was sing. He went to school at Nebraska Wesleyan and started out in the music department, but ended up with a business degree after his music professors wanted him to learn to play the piano.

“I didn’t like that,” he said, describing his confusion with cords and scrunching his face in a look of played-up disgust.

After college, David tried his hand at real estate and the railroad before joining the Peace Corps in Malaysia.

As a Peace Corps intern David’s official job was to be a business advisor at the local farmers cooperative, but he said he spent most of his time entertaining the locals. He sang, danced and animated his way into the hearts of the people he worked with for two and a half years.

But when he got back to the states he was a Malay-speaking kid with 39 cents in his pocket and no idea what to do next.

So, David went back to school for a little while. He worked as a bartender, partied a little more than he should have, and then got involved in the theatre scene in Lincoln.

David rattled off the names of various actor friends who he was in plays with as well as a few famous people he met along the way, like Gordon McRae, best known for his role in Oklahoma! and Carousel.

At the mention of Gordon, David started in again… ‘There’s a bright golden haze on that meadow…’

He explained how during one of his performances he met Gordon and his wife and they offered him a job as Gordon’s traveling companion. David traveled with Gordon to Chicago, Pittsburg, California and Miami and met all sorts of famous actors.

Shortly after Gordon died, David ended up in California where his brother was flipping houses. He started painting with his brother and trying to get acting gigs, and eventually realized he was doing more painting than acting so he moved back to Lincoln.

He continued painting and returned to the acting community, and for a while things settled down for David. He met his wife – who he met when she needed her apartment painted – got married and they had a baby girl who they named Melody – yes, the name was intentional.

At this point David was the singing painter without the official title. He sang while he worked as a way to rehearse for whatever production he had coming up, and people loved his unique spin on the job.

Before long, David said people started referring to him as the singing painter and he started to book official gigs at weddings, funerals and nearly every Husker sporting event.

David never imagined actually making a living as a singing painter, but after nearly 30 years that’s what he’s done.

But it’s more than the singing and the painting that seem to draw in customers, it’s his goofy smile and comical laugh. David is kind of like a cartoon character who you can’t help but like, and that’s the point.

“I’m a one-man show,” he said with a smirk. “If I can’t make you my friend by the time I’m done working with you, well that’s your loss. Some people just want the paint job…silly them.”

That’s the thing about David, he’s himself 100 percent of the time – his goofy, loud, silly, entertainer self who just wants to be a part of everyone’s story. He doesn’t care if his boisterous singing catches people off guard, it’s who he is and it’s what he does.

David’s story is about finding a way to mesh his hobby with his work, being true to himself and injecting joy into everything he does, because that’s what the Singing Painter does best.

Photo courtesy of The TADA Theatre.

March 30, 2016

Love3