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San Antonio Express-News March 1990 Obituary ELKINS Wayne K. Elkins, Jr., 37, died Sunday morning, March 11, 1990 at his home after an extended illness. Most recently Wayne had been the managing artistic director of of San Antonio Little Theatre and directed plays for Harlequin Dinner Theatre, Ft. Sam Playhouse and was a founder of Off-Stage, Inc. Wayne had been involved in theatre for most of his life and directed hundreds of plays. He also founded Texas Stage Company and designed settings and lighting for many productions. His influence on the theatre scene was innovative and unparalleled and will be felt for many year. Wayne is survived by his parents, Carol and Wayne Elkins, Sr., his partner Brad Van Langen, friends, and others touched by his life and work in the theatre. A memorial service will be held Tuesday, March 13, 1990 at 11:00 A.M. at Central Christian Church, 720 N. Main Ave. In lieu of flowers Wayne asked that friends make a contribution to the charity of their choice. So as not to perpetuate historical inaccuracies, I have taken the liberty of correcting several factual errors in Dan Goddard’s moving tribute to Wayne’s life below, which I am sure others in theatre winced at as I did at the time of publication. As Goddard noted, he did not come on the scene here until later in Wayne’s career, so would not have been familiar with some of the earlier productions. I was in Wayne’s memorable production of “Romeo & Juliet” for SALT’s Off-Stage, for which Judy Jay was the choreographer and whom Goddard mistakenly referred to as playing Juliet. (Juliet was played by Vana Tribbey.) He also referred to “Shenandoah,” directed by Wayne, as being the first play done at Harlequin Dinner Theatre. It was not. I know because I was in the play that opened Harlequin and it was “Goodbye, Charlie,” directed by Penny Cox Gray (also now deceased). Lastly, he misspelled Marianna Blase’s name as “Blaze” throughout. I have corrected all these errors in the story below. (I did, however, leave in his spelling of “theater.”) Carol Sowa
The Sunday Express-News, San Antonio, March 25, 1990 Wayne Elkins’ life, death touched so many By Dan R. Goddard Express-News Arts Writer At age 19 and the veteran director of 20 plays, including a now legendary production of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” the Express-News declared Wayne Elkins the “boy genius of San Antonio theater.” Years later, when the boy who grew up in the basement of the San Antonio Little Theater had become its managing artistic director, Elkins liked to wear a T-shirt with a line from “Peter Pan”: “I’ll never, never grow old.” The words proved sadly prophetic. Elkins died March 11 at age 37 after a three-year battle with fungal meningitis. His death has forced his friends, family and community to confront the unspeakable. At first, Elkins was reluctant to make public the fact that he suffered from AIDS. But in his final months, Elkins talked about his disease in a video that was shown at a benefit for the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the nation’s largest gay, lesbian and AIDS-patients political lobbying organization. Identifying himself as a patient with AIDS, Elkins said, “The past two years have been what I can only call an enlightening journey. I’ve learned a lot about myself, people and the value of living. I can’t help but wonder what it costs to keep me alive each day; I imagine the figure would boggle my mind. But I have been fortunate because my insurance company has continued to pay. He makes a plea of support for the HRCF, so that “we can finally get a grip on this terrible, terrible disease.” One source said that Elkins’ medical bills topped $2 million. A good man Elkins concludes with the words of a wise old man: “Tragedy in life is not what evil men do, but very often that good men do nothing.” There’s no question Wayne Elkins was a good man. A much admired and generous man, who made many significant contributions to the community he served. More than 600 people turned out for his memorial service March 13 at Central Christian Church, including many of the actors, technicians, singers, dancers, designers, costumers and others that Elkins worked with over the years. As a leading San Antonio director since his debut at age 16, Elkins touched the lives of almost everyone connected with theater in the city. “I think he was better than anybody at finding the right people and getting them to work together and that’s what you need in community theater,” Bill Swinny, a member of the SALT board said. “He had a strong, vibrant personality and a wonderful enthusiasm that just seemed to bring out the best in people. And he could work with all ages, especially children. His loss is a great tragedy for SALT. We’ll never find another one like him.” His mentor was Joe Salek, SALT’s longtime managing director. Elkins could have been SALT’s artistic director for as long as he wished. He was also the protégé of Carol Lee Klose who introduced him to theater when he was a seventh-grade student at Krueger Junior High School. Klose also taught him for four years at Roosevelt High School, when Elkins became involved in children’s theater at SALT and began directing in the late 1960s. “When I first saw him, he was a funny kid with braces on his teeth who had been sent down from the art department to help me paint some sets,” Klose recalled. “I think Wayne had a God-given talent to work with the written word. He had an innate sense for how words on paper could take form in theatrical expression. “He did a tremendous amount of reading and research about theater. Many of the plays he did in the ’60s and ’70s, which so many people thought were wildly experimental, were really just a part of many things going on in theater across the country at the time.” His “Romeo and Juliet” with a circus setting, which he directed at 19 on the SALT main stage, remains one of his most fondly remembered shows. Judy Jay, who now directs Off-Stage Inc. that Elkins helped found, choreographed the show and remembers Juliet as a member of a trapeze family swinging out over the orchestra pit. “We went to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which was in town at the time, and asked them to help us with the trapezes. We also spent a lot of time at the Hertzberg Museum,” Jay said. “He loved circuses. He even once considered seriously going to clown school. But he was an artist in every sense of the word. “He had a wealth of talent and he shared it; he was very generous with it. He had the ability to take a lot of medium-talented people and make them look like a million bucks. But we were both known as the ‘kids in the basement,’ and I think it was hard for him to shake that image. I don’t think he always got the consideration out-of-town directors would get. He was kind of taken for granted, but I think he had more talent than just about anyone who has directed in San Antonio.” Elkins did not have any formal training beyond his high school years. He attended San Antonio College for a few months, but he never earned a college degree, something that probably kept him from leaving San Antonio for more lucrative markets. On the other hand, he began working professionally for the Fort Sam Houston Playhouse in his early 20s. As Jay put it, “He learned by doing.” The Playhouse eventually became the Harlequin Dinner Theater*, and this is where Elkins did shows such as “Cyrano de Bergerac” with Burdette Parks, “Charley’s Aunt” with Ian McCord, and Steve Ware as Will Rogers. For the Harlequin, Elkins directed a memorable “Shenandoah” starring Frank Christian. “When I read the script for ‘Shenandoah,’ I thought, oh no, they’re going to kill us. The critics will hate it,” said Bruce Shirky, who is the interim director of Harlequin. “But Wayne Elkins took that script and made it a glorious evening. He was the most talented and gentle person that I have ever known. He did some of the best theater seen in San Antonio. His other passion was art. He could draw anything and he was a great collector of art. Elkins designed and built sets, finally leaving Fort Sam with Bill Larsen as technical director for the now-defunct Church Theater in the King William Historic District. Elkins eventually directed several shows for the Church Theater, including “Carnival” with a Chagall motif, “A Streetcar Named Desire” starring Magda Porter and a much-respected “The Subject Was Roses” with Dan Laurence, Marianna Blase and Ware. Took risks “Sometimes I think Wayne’s shows sound better in retrospect than they actually were,” Blase said. “But I’ve gone back and looked at the reviews and they were good reviews. He had his share of disasters, but he wasn’t afraid to take risks. And he could pull off amazing things.” Elkins was also involved in forming a couple of theater companies in the ’70s. In 1972, he and Laurence, who is well-known as the editor of George Bernard Shaw’s letters, formed Off-Stage Inc. as an offshoot of SALT that would take plays to where the people were: schools, jails, barges on the River Walk. In the mid-’70s he launched his Texas Stage Co. with his other most talked about, if not seen, Shakespearean production, “The Taming of the Shrew” performed on scaffolding in front of the Alamo. After working as a free-lance director for many years, Elkins was finally hired as SALT’s managing director in June 1984. He took over SALT at a low point in the history of the community theater, which has gone through many highs and lows of public support over the years. But Elkins was instrumental in helping to stabilize SALT, reviving the Saltines, renovating the SALT Cellar Theater and, especially, attracting new people and money to the theater. Elkins finally had the stage he most coveted. He opened SALT’s 58th season with “Guys and Dolls,” which introduced Mim Green to San Antonio audiences and had SALT’s current president Byrd Bonner as her grandfather with Andrea Sandifer playing a gum-smacking gun moll. “No one had ever seen me. I had been in the chorus of one show, but Wayne was willing to take a chance,” Green said. “I think Wayne taught me how to feel childlike on stage and yet never feel stupid. He taught me how to hold my hands while I was singing, and it’s something that I still use.” Sandifer recalled, “‘Guys and Dolls’ was the first show I ever did with Wayne. I remember about the third week of rehearsal seeing him sitting with some of the people in the chorus discussing their characters, giving them names and personal histories. He took time to take care of the little people. He always did a lot of background research before a production and had a clear vision of what he wanted on stage.” And I believe that my stint as drama critic for the Express-News began with a generally favorable review of “Guys and Dolls.” Elkins’ shows always had a unique spark; he usually managed to come up with memorable images. He understood the importance of stage magic, from using a revolving stage in “Fiddler on the Roof” to using live plants as part of a summery set for my favorite production of his, Paul Osborn’s “Morning’s at Seven.” Elkins handpicked the cast for this 1939 comic drama about four sisters dealing with small town gossip in the 1920s. The cast featured Helen Hogan, Mary Denman, Alice Finney, Rolla Nuckles, Blase, Swinny and Sandifer. You would have to understand something about the egos involved to fully appreciate the miracle of this show, but the women in the cast still get together and have lunch about once a month. Elkins simply had a way of getting the most unlikely people to work together. “‘Morning’s at Seven’ was a milestone for me,” Denman said. “Wayne took a lot of strong performers and built a real ensemble. He really knew how to match the person with the part. And he inspired great loyalty. His casting was innovative and he knew how to take raw talent and mold it. I don’t think he was ever really satisfied with his shows. They were never as good as what he could imagine. But he was a creative, insightful director.” Christmas shows, the bane of most critics’ existence, became something special with Elkins at the helm. Not many directors would think of casting two men, Robert Kislin and John Pollard, as the ugly stepsisters in “Cinderella,” or bringing in Peter Foy, who made Mary Martin fly on Broadway, to make Vivienne Elborne as “Peter Pan” soar at SALT. Perhaps it’s appropriate that the last show Elkins staged was “Annie.” Holly Imper, the star of the 1987 Christmas show, sang a heartbreaking rendition of “Tomorrow” at Elkins’ memorial service. Elkins finally took an indefinite leave of absence in May 1988. He tried to make a comeback the next fall by directing J.B. Priestley’s “Dangerous Corner,” but was unable to finish. He spent the next 2½ years in and out of hospitals. At the end, he asked to be taken off life-support systems about two weeks before he died One friend who talked to him during the last week said, “He was a courageous man. He fought this thing for three years. But he never let it beat him. When I last talked to him, I think he was trying to ask for permission to die, like so many terminal patients will. He said he was ready spiritually to die and I think he was able to make peace with many of the people around him before he died.” But not everyone has been able to accept the fact that Elkins died of AIDS. In the video that he made, Elkins said that he had been asked to speak against discrimination toward people with AIDS. Elkins, however, said that he did not feel like he had been discriminated against, even though when he was first hospitalized no one would enter the room without wearing a mask and gloves. Another friend noted: “Many AIDS patients die with no one around them. Wayne did not die alone. I think his story is an important lesson for San Antonio because AIDS is robbing us of many of the nation’s artists. Wayne’s death is a terrible thing, but to keep the cause of his death a secret would be an even greater tragedy because the silence only perpetuates the discrimination associated with the disease.” Goddard’s story mentioned the “heartbreaking” vocal solo by Holly Imper of “Tomorrow” from “Annie” at Wayne’s memorial service on March 13. (“The sun will come out tomorrow…”) Could not help feeling Wayne had “directed” the following then: Express-News, San Antonio, Texas, Thursday, March 15, 1990 Storm ends rainy spell for San Antonio, region By Loydean Thomas Express-News Staff Writer A long rainy spell ended for the San Antonio area Wednesday when a cold front swept the moisture off to the east and cleared the skies for a rare bit of sunshine. …
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