Backstage and onstage

by Jeff Grabmeier

Kris Conant cringes a little if you suggest that she has an artistic side.

"I don't consider myself 'artsy' at all," she says.

But truth be told, Conant, the administrative assistant in the Department of Dance and Drama, ended up in that particular office for a reason. Her job not only involves helping faculty and students; it has also allowed her to develop her own artistic side-a side she's had since youth.

Conant has been a production manager for plays both at Kenyon and elsewhere, and has acted and danced onstage. All this while raising two daughters, Lindsey (eight) and Erika (six), with her husband Todd, and pursuing her passions for skiing and motorcycles.

"Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine working at Kenyon when I was growing up," Conant says with a smile. "I was born and raised in Mount Vernon, and the Kenyon students seemed a bit strange to us locals."

Conant juggles multiple tasks in the dance and drama department. But many of her duties revolve around the department's performance schedule, with the result that she functions as something like a production or general manager for a theater company. She manages the budgets, orders the scripts, and pays the royalties for three faculty-directed theater productions and two faculty-directed dance concerts each year. She also handles the programs and much of the publicity, while making sure the stage managers meet their deadlines and know what to do next.

And she performs all of the same responsibilities, and then some, in helping four to eight seniors per year stage their thesis productions.

In addition, she is the department's box office manager, making sure the theaters are reserved for performances, and the tickets are printed and sold.

Not to mention all the normal administrative duties for an academic department, like keeping track of the budget and organizing faculty searches.

Jonathan Tazewell, chair of the department, says Conant has a love of "efficiency and order" that helps keep everything running smoothly. "We say jokingly that Kris runs the place, but when you get right down to it, she really does run the place," Tazewell says.

And then there's her artistic side. "I don't think it is any surprise that she feels at home in this department," Tazewell says. "From an early age, she has had an artistic streak, but I don't think she was able to pursue that. It is kind of odd that now, in her thirties, she has had the opportunity to make those artistic dreams happen."

Conant has developed her artistic interests both inside and outside the College. In 2002, she produced the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for the Mount Vernon Players. She went on to act in two plays for the same group, most recently as Maggie in Lend Me A Tenor .

"It's fun to try something new, but I don't know that acting is necessarily my thing," she says. "I feel much more comfortable dancing onstage than I do acting. I was one of those little girls who danced from the age of five, just like my daughters do now. Eventually I gave it up, but I have always loved dancing."

Conant got an opportunity to dance onstage again in 2004, when she appeared in the performance The Changing Room , created by Assistant Professor of Dance Julie Brodie and Assistant Professor of Art Marcella Hackbardt. The Changing Room was performed at the Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus as well as at Kenyon.

"That was an amazing experience," she says. "I have gone to dance concerts pretty religiously since I have been at Kenyon, but to actually perform in one, to see how it was all put together, was thrilling."

Outside of the arts, Conant likes to relax by going really fast. She loves motorcycles, and got her first motorbike when she was only nine years old. She doesn't have a motorcycle now but vows that "someday I will have my own Harley."

She also likes to go fast down the sides of mountains. She first began snow skiing when she was in middle school, and by the time she was a sophomore in high school she was an instructor at Clear Fork ski area in Butler, Ohio. She started her own daughters skiing by the age of three, she says.

Conant plans on taking her daughters to plenty of concerts and performances at Kenyon as they grow up. "I didn't grow up exposed to theater and the culturally diverse events that Kenyon offers. But I appreciate having access to them now, and I want to expose my children to that as well."