Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Exit, stage left
Fayetteville teacher Rosenaur gets rave reviews from students.
The best teachers are those whose lessons extend far past the walls of their classrooms, lodging firmly in the hearts of their students for decades — even after their school days are but a fuzzy memory. For thousands of students who passed through the Fayetteville High School theater program over the past 30 years, Warren Rosenaur was that kind of teacher.
“I think what I may not have ‘learned’ as much as simply absorbed from my time with Rose was that theater happens out of an incredible, overflowing amount of persistence, invention and relentless joy, which I can absolutely say characterized every day in play rehearsal, drama class or even just the chance encounter in the hallway,” says former student Martin Miller, who has served as executive director of TheatreSquared since 2009. “It was always a delight. I think there are places where former theater techs are running high school theater programs, and they somehow instill in kids that theater is all about long hours and lack of reward and low pay and difficulty, and kids say, ‘That was great as a school activity, but now I’m going to pursue a career in finance.’ Theater is a challenging career, but I think what Warren showed us was that you can find so much meaning in this. Look at how much I’ve found.”
Despite the fact that glowing words like Miller’s are easy to elicit from former students, the modest Rosenaur doesn’t seem to realize the impact he’s made on FHS graduates.
“I don’t know why,” he says, sounding genuinely puzzled, when asked why he thinks so many of his former students get emotional when they talk about their years studying under him. “I just went in and did my job as a teacher — ‘Let’s put on a play, let’s learn a little bit about theater.’”
This August, for the first time in 42 years, Rosenaur — known affectionately as “Rose” around the school — won’t be readying a classroom or planning which shows to mount in the FHS Performing Arts Center. Rosenaur quietly announced this summer that he was retiring from the department with whom his name has become synonymous. Though no one would dream of arguing that the hard-working Rosenaur hasn’t thoroughly earned his retirement, it’s still going to be a difficult adjustment for students and co-workers alike.
“I’ve only been at Fayetteville
High School for 2 years, but in that time, Warren has demonstrated he is a man of character and integrity,” says FHS Principal Jay Dostal. “He builds great relationships with students and this is indicative of the countless number of students who have come back to visit with him to share their success stories beyond high school. I have had the fortunate opportunity to see this up close and personal because I have a daughter in the theatre program who has learned a great deal from Mr. Rosenaur. His ability to make art come alive for kids is truly an amazing gift and he will be sorely missed at FHS.”
“He’s done so much, so many little things that we don’t even realize, that I’m afraid I won’t realize until they hit me,” says FHS theater department teacher Mike Thomas. Thomas first met
“[He] gives everyone a fighting chance in high school — and that’s such a formative time, when we all need someone to give us a fighting chance. Everyone can find a home in Warren Rosenaur.” — Coleman Ray Clark
Rosenaur decades ago and, in addition to teaching side-by-side with him, has acted on stage with him numerous times over the years. “He’s going to leave a huge hole. He says, ‘You won’t know I’m gone after a month’ — he’s acting like his presence and all that he did, his years of service, were no big deal. Like, ‘It’s just what you do.’ But he lit the fire of what theater can do for a lot of young people, and he doesn’t even know what he’s done.”
ACT I
Rosenaur’s own passion for theater was stoked the summer before his senior year in high school when he got involved with the summer musical, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” with the South Arkansas Art Center in El Dorado, where he grew up.
“I just thought, ‘These are my people,’” he remembers. “I think it was just the excitement of it all. I just kind of got hooked.”
By his sophomore year at the University of Arkansas, he became further enmeshed in theater culture, and he knew that he wanted theater to have a permanent place in his life. He balanced pragmatism with the yearning for a theater-filled life by majoring in theater education.
“I kind of figured out early that I was not the kind of guy that was going to go off and audition and starve for my art, going from job to job,” he says. “I wanted to do the arts, but I wanted a steady job, too. My mom was a teacher, her sisters had been teachers, my dad was an assistant director at a vo-tech school. So it was kind of the family business.”
His first job came quickly, right out of college: He took a position teaching at a high school in Mena. It was a catch-all assignment where he was responsible for English, civics and speech — but he also got to direct several productions, including the school’s first senior play in years. He had a rocky start when, during his first show, he nailed his set to the ancient — but still varnished to a high shine — hardwood floors of the tiny stage in the corner of the school’s gymnasium, garnering a sharp reprimand from the principal. And, during the senior class production of Kaufman and Hart’s “You Can’t Take it With You,” he made the rookie mistake of leaving it up to a couple of high school senior boys to come up with a plan for how to handle a scene where a lit firework effect was required on stage.
“They brought the fireworks out,” remembers Rosenaur with a laugh. “It was not just a little smoking thing. This firework flew all over the place, hitting the curtain. ‘Pew, pew,’ it was going everywhere. So I learned real quick that you’ve got to have the right people in place — you’ve got to be able to trust them, because they’re going to pull pranks, especially a senior play in a small town.”
After a few years of teaching in high school, Rosenaur returned to the UA to earn a Master of Arts in communications. His facility in teaching was so great, he was invited to hang around a bit and teach classes. Meanwhile, he got involved in every piece of theater he possibly could, something he never stopped doing over the course of his career. It’s hard to know whether he’s more wellknown in Northwest Arkansas for his theatrical and movie projects or for his decades of teaching.
“Not many science teachers are working on science experiments, and not many English teachers are writing the great American novel outside of school, but he was going to theater everywhere he could and being involved in it any way he possibly could,” says Thomas. “This is the person you want teaching a student, someone so involved in it that they’re doing it outside of their job all the time.”
Rosenaur is, perhaps, best known in the theater community for his side-splitting performances of Pearl Covington, the arch, sassy character from playwright Mark Landon Smith’s series of plays about the citizens of Dupont, Mississippi. It’s a hilarious performance that’s underpinned by Rosenaur’s honesty; it’s that honesty, says friend and collaborator Julie Gabel, that shows his onstage talents are far from limited to broad humor.
“He has the ability to be so completely silly and also to be so completely honest on stage,” says Gabel, who has known Rosenaur since she was 12 years old, when they met at a UA music camp. The pair were in a UA Boars Head Players production of “The Boys Next Door,” a heartwarming play about four men with developmental disabilities living in a group home. Rosenaur played a character who, at one point in the play, addresses the state senate in a moving monologue and, in a bit of magical realism, is able to express his feelings — as the script describes — as “a confident and articulate man.”
“I’m going to cry just talking about it,” Gabel continues. “It was so incredibly sweet. I had to go into the dressing room so I couldn’t hear his monologue because I couldn’t hear him on stage without crying. I had to come on stage and be peppy and happy in the very next scene. It was so sweet, so honest, just his change in mannerisms, how he carried himself — it was beautiful. That’s one of the sweetest moments that I remember watching on stage. It transported me every single time, and that’s hard to do when you’re in a show, and you’ve seen it over and over again.”
ACT II
After a year or two teaching at the collegiate level, Rosenaur returned to the high school classroom, and, in 1986, he was hired to take the theater reins at Fayetteville High School. His class load was strictly theater and speech by this point, making curriculum planning easier, but, as the only theater teacher, he was solely responsible for mounting the three productions he had promised for each year. He built the sets, directed the actors, coordinated the costumes, collected the props and, sometimes, did the sound designs, as well — though friends like Gabel, who designed lights for most of Rosenaur’s shows, sometimes stepped in to assist. Even after the department had grown to a staff of four, Rosenaur was known to work hard on every theater department project on the schedule.
“Everyone knows that Rose is here after school, on weekends, during spring break, always working his tail off, making sure everything is the best it can be,” says Trevor Cooperescue, a fellow theater teacher at FHS. “He loves giving his all, and it makes others feel like they need to give it their all. He’s working so hard, you have to keep up. The joy and the pride is so much more — you would look back and say, ‘That was so much work, but the payoff was so great.’”
Rosenaur had a smart plan for building enthusiasm and participation in the department, which was relatively small when he came on board. FHS, at that time, housed only 10th-12th graders, and he designated one production as a sophomore-only play — to invite new students into the department without the fear of having to compete with seniors for their first play — one play for the junior/senior students, and one play for students of any grade. Before too many years had passed, interest in the program had exploded, and all three plays were opened up to students from any grade. Soon, the department had grown to such an extent, additional positions were added.
“I requested [student teaching placement] at Fayetteville, because [Rosenaur] is an icon, he’s a legend,” says Cooperescue, who has now been with the department for eight years. After a tough interview with Rosenaur, Cooperescue landed the student teaching gig at FHS eight years ago and, when an oral communications position opened up in the department, Rosenaur encouraged him to apply for it — even though what Cooperescue really wanted to do was teach theater. When Cooperescue was hired, he says, Rosenaur “gave up theater that first year and took on oral communications” so that he could teach theater. He describes Rosenaur as “family” and “an uncle” to his twin sons.
“This program is considered one of the best programs in the state,” he says. “Warren has created such great work and has such a good reputation — he’s gained so much respect in the school, from the administration, from the community.”
In 2012, the FHS Performing Arts Center was added — a state-of-the-art, 850-seat auditorium that rivals many collegiate and professional venues. It provides an opportunity for FHS student thespians, directors and stage techs to practice their art on a stage and equipment that is very likely nicer than a lot of the venues they might work on as professionals. Rosenaur also encouraged professionalism by choosing production material that challenges them, rather than pandering with “made for high school students” scripts.
“We’re a block from the flagship institution of the university system, a mileand-a-half from a professional theater and a touring roadhouse,” points out Rosenaur. “Audiences that come to our shows expect a certain level of sophistication, a certain level of professionalism that we’ve got to put out there.”
ACT III
Miller says that insistence on professionalism has a direct correlation with how many of Rosenaur’s former students ended up working in the industry after graduation. In addition to Miller, there’s Coleman Ray Clark, deputy director of the New York City-based 24 Hour Plays and producer of The 24 Hour Plays: Viral Monologues; Jason Moore, director of the Tony Award-winning “Avenue Q”; Esther Stilwell, who performed in “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” on Broadway; Rebecca Harris, a stage, television and movie actor — and hundreds more who are making a living in the arts because of Rosenaur’s mentorship.
“A lot of kids came into the department and thought, ‘This might be fun,’ but not necessarily ‘I’m going to put together the best piece of art that’s ever been created,’” says Miller. “Warren could be both accessible and fun but still be dedicated to the effort and never say, ‘That’s good enough.’ That’s one reason why so many people from my class are still working in theater. I can keep listing people from my relatively small theater class who are actually making a living doing theater 15 or 20 years later. It’s great that he combined that seriousness for the craft with a sort of joy in the process.”
Former students say another secret to Rosenaur’s success as an instructor was his willingness to support them as they stretched beyond the boundaries of a conventional high school theater education.
“It was constantly a ‘Yes, and’ game in high school with Warren, like in improv,” says Clark, who founded New Threshold Theatre while still in high school, where he produced plays for three years with budgets up to $20,000 — all with the help and encouragement of Rosenaur. “When [my friends and I] approached Warren about our theater company, his answer was, ‘Yes, and what do you need?’ We would say, ‘Can we do this?’ And he would say, ‘Let’s try it. ’ It was never about the high school’s fame or glory or pride, it was about the individual person’s education. That’s different from a lot of high schools and theaters throughout the country, and it takes that competitive edge and need to create for other people off. Instead, it’s about what we can create together. I was so free to make terrible mistakes or try things way out of bounds of what anyone else would do because he was there to give that permission.”
Also included in Rosenaur’s theater education philosophy was his determination that education go beyond acting and directing to include stagecraft, stage tech and designing skills.
“He wanted to show kids that it’s possible to be a professional artist, whether it’s technical theater, educational theater, acting, designing,” says Gabel.
“The tech part of it — he taught so many of these kids to learn creating the magic of theater,” says Thomas. “Not acting or directing, but doing the lights, the sound, the set design. They would say, ‘I can be behind the scenes and make people believe in this magic.’ I love that about him. He inspired so many talented young people that took that magic out into the world.”
All that’s been mentioned so far is enough to qualify Rosenaur as an exceptional educator, but it’s his ability to forge bonds with students — to create a welcoming environment where kids of all backgrounds found refuge — that seems to have made the most impact.
“It’s a place where everybody has something to do,” says Rosenaur simply. “Mr. Jacoby, our former principal, he said to me once, ‘Theater is a place for everybody. Even those kids who wear black clothes and sit in the back of the class.’ I said, ‘Yep, those are the most important people in the show, the kids that wear black and sit in the back.’ The kids are from all walks of life, all different types of kids — it doesn’t matter, you all have a job, you all have something to do. And everybody is just as important as everybody else. And you see so many kids just blossom.”
“There is just something about him that feels safe,” says Thomas. “He knows how to build that ensemble and camaraderie. Kids trust him and love him. They came to eat lunch in his room and talk to him. They didn’t come to mine. I was funny. I was trying to be as open and honest as he was, but those kids would choose to leave the cafeteria and come to Mr. Rose’s room to eat with him. It kind of hurt my feelings at first, like, ‘Why don’t they want to come eat lunch in my room?’ But he was the pied piper of theater teachers.”
“There was no such thing as ‘theater kids,’” says Miller. “Everybody from all sorts of cliques, niches, what have you were happily involved in FHS drama — the star pitcher from the baseball team, the handsome singer from Encore playing Prince Charming, the folks from art class, painting the huge backdrops. It felt like what table you sat at during lunch didn’t matter. Creating a safe space like that to create something together is something that Warren always did somewhat effortlessly. At the time, I don’t think I realized it was as impressive as it actually is.”
“People who are not wanted elsewhere, they find a home in theater, and Warren champions that,” says Gabel.
“I think he’s one of the few people on this planet who can look at anyone and see his or her potential,” says Clark. “No matter where you come from, how much experience you have — if you want to get something done, he’ll look at you and treat you with respect and expect and be thrilled to get your project done. He’s a one-in-a-million personality. He treats everyone really uniquely to their own situation and who they are and gives everyone a fighting chance in high school. That’s such a formative time, when we all need someone to give us a fighting chance.
“Everyone can find a home in Warren Rosenaur,” concludes Clark.
CURTAIN CALL
With his new free time, Rosenaur says he’s just waiting on the global pandemic to subside so that he can do what he’s been dreaming of: see theater in countries all over the world.
“I want to see a play in France in French; I want to see a play in Greece in Greek, even though I don’t understand the language,” he says with a laugh. “The great thing is that the team got to hand pick the person to take my place, and he will be wonderful. He’s a young man. He’s got so much more knowledge in the areas of technology than I did. He’s fantastic, and the theater is in great shape. When I took over from Pat Collier, she was ready to retire, and I was barely 30 and ready to go in there and work. It was my time. Now it’s my time to move on and give another person a chance. They’re going to carry on just fine. I jokingly said, ‘They’re going to look around about October and say, ‘Why did we keep him on so long?’”
Highly unlikely, say his teammates. But the wonderful thing about being an exceptional teacher is that your legacy lives on far past retirement. Within the walls of FHS, Rosenaur’s legacy is displayed in the performing arts center that he worked so hard to perfect, in the history of professionalism his colleagues will maintain and in the hugely populated theater department, packed with enthusiastic students ready to carry on Rosenaur’s tradition of entertaining their audiences with vigor and talent.
“If I can do a fourth of what he’s done, have just a smidgen of his career, then I’ve succeeded,” says Cooperescue. “I just hope I can help keep the legacy going.”
But here’s the most extraordinary thing about Rosenaur’s legacy: His passion for theater lives on far beyond the confines of Fayetteville High School. Every student that discovered their love for it under his tutelage and took that love out into the greater world carries a piece of Rosenaur on every stage, backstage area or tech box they enter. And, if his students have anything to say about it, that influence won’t stop with his retirement.
“If I could come up with a list right now for you of the things I learned from Warren that I use every day, we would be on the phone all day and into tomorrow,” says Clark. “The things that I learned from him in and after high school continue to penetrate who I am as an artist.
“There is, frankly, no one else that has had a greater impact on my career than Warren. I feel like I have so much more to continue to learn from him, so I’m going to keep chasing that until he tells me to stop calling.”