University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Theatre Professor Richard Kalinoski’s The Boy Inside has been designated second place in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF) David Mark Cohen National Playwriting competition.
The Boy Inside, produced at UW Oshkosh in February 2015, was one of 34 new plays from the 2015 season submitted, and is the first time a UW Oshkosh theatre program original play has received national recognition.
“As a playwright, the recognition gives me an opportunity to open up conversations with other theatre programs who may want to produce the play at the college and professional levels,” Kalinoski said. “The national recognition says that UWO’s participation at the regional and national level has grown and intensified and as a theatre program it helps us show how we are innovating in theatre.”
The play is about a struggling football coach in his 23rd year at a small college competing for a national championship. Ramsey College head coach Tony Bartolo is confronted by his college president, Helene Kingston-Barrows, about the brutality of his beloved game as he prepares his team for a determined run through the playoffs. Kingston-Barrows reminds the coach of a recent “accident” during a rough game and she introduces an ancient Afghan game called Buzkashi to him through a series of stark images presented in her office.
The college president is in the midst of accepting an enormous gift for the college from an aging widow, Silvia Larkin, who is anxious to see a new health and wellness center built on campus. Serious complications arise between the elderly Mrs. Larkin, President Kingston-Barrows and Coach Bartolo and all three face surprising reckonings as Ramsey College prepares to play its first ever championship game.
The KCACTF awards are designed to promote the art of theatre and keep the focus on opportunities for theatre students.
“Each year, the UW Oshkosh Theatre Department participates in the regional aspects of the festival,” said Jane Purse-Wiedenhoeft, associate professor of theatre. “We bring student actors and designers to participate in competitions and workshops. We enter all of our productions to be considered for student and faculty awards and to receive peer feedback.”
Throughout the last 10 years, UWO has had multiple shows invited to present at the regional festival either by bringing a full production of an invited show or a scene cutting to be performed in the Festival Evening of Scenes. “All of our faculty members have received honors and awards which draws attention to the high-level of theatre education we offer our UW Oshkosh theatre students,” Purse-Wiedenhoeft said.
“Recognition that rises to a regional or national level shines a light on the distinction of faculty and student artists at UW Oshkosh,” said Franca Barricelli, associate dean in the College of Letters and Science and Kalinoski’s academic consultant. “When original work—whether new plays like Richard’s or creative productions staged by the department—stands out in relation to the region’s or nation’s collective creative output, it sets UW Oshkosh’s theatre program apart as the true local gem that it is.”
To write The Boy Inside, Kalinoski interviewed football coaches in six states.
“As someone not familiar with football, I did an extensive interview process prior to writing The Boy Inside,” Kalinoski said. “I went on a year-long journey into the arena of football to learn the culture that surrounds football, which in itself was rewarding because I kept finding out things that were different from the stereotype. It was startling and really gave me the incentive to work on the play.”
As part of his research, Kalinoski worked closely with the UW Oshkosh football team and head coach Pat Cerroni. “Because of my connection with UWO football program, this national recognition is also a bit of a feather in the Titan football’s cap,” Kalinoski said.
“I wrote the play to enhance conversations about the dangers of football,” Kalinoski said. “The play is not anti-football or pro-football. It is really about what sports mean in our culture.”
Kalinoski’s work on The Boy Inside was supported through a UW Oshkosh Faculty Development program grant.
“I have been fortunate enough to have had a chance to develop my work here in the last 10 years through Kerrigan endowments I won twice and the Faculty Development program, which gave me the opportunity to spend money on enhancing my work,” Kalinoski said. “If we didn’t have that program, I wouldn’t have had the financial support needed to work on the play.”
“Research and creative activity at universities like ours serves a vital role in discovering new knowledge, preserving knowledge from being lost over time and developing an understanding of what it means to be a human being living in a social world—the latter developed especially, but not exclusively, through the arts and humanities,” Barricelli said. “It’s precisely through research and the creative process that faculty stay intellectually engaged in their disciplines and help students to become creative explorers themselves, to learn and contribute to the world in which they live.”
Kalinoski plans to reexamine The Boy Inside and make revisions.
“Like every play of mine, it’s a play that I have grown fond of in special ways and I am anxious to work on it further,” Kalinoski said. “I don’t think of my work as ever really finished and this is one play that I certainly want to revise and rethink.”
Kalinoski, originally from Racine, has worked at UWO for 18 years and teaches courses in playwriting, play analysis, theatre history and creative drama. He earned his bachelor’s degree in English from UW-Whitewater and a master of fine arts in playwriting and theatre from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
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