A tribute by colleagues Connie de Veer and Janet Wilson
A retirement celebration will be held for Professor Lori Adams on Friday, May 9 from 4 to 6:30 p.m. at Rob Dob’s Restaurant & Bar, with remarks beginning at 5 p.m. Appetizers and a cash bar will be available. The Illinois State University campus and community are invited to attend and celebrate the distinguished career of Adams.
Adams began teaching as a non-tenure track faculty member in the Department of Theatre in 1998 and accepted a tenure-track faculty position in the fall of 2001. When choosing among academic institutions, Adams said she “knew I belonged at ISU.” As a “Midwesterner at heart” and as a “first-gen theatre person,” Adams was attracted to the kind of students that chose Illinois State. She described them as “scrappy” and “fierce” and “just wanting to be actors.”
Adams took over as the head of the acting program in 2005 and has retained that position ever since. In this role, Adams auditions all prospective acting students for possible admission into the acting sequence and keeps in touch with them while they are choosing which college to attend. When acting students are asked why they chose to enroll at Illinois State, many students praise Adams for her excellent coaching during their audition.
Enrolling in the acting program is just the first step in the mentorship of Adams. Once enrolled, Adams teaches every student and ensures that they study with every acting teacher by placing them in their acting classes to offer them a wide variety of acting techniques and methods. She advocates for the acting students in the casting process for the school’s mainstage productions. She hopes that the roles they are cast in will provide them with an appropriately challenging opportunity for their growth. However, when students are not cast, her advice to them is “go make it happen.”
To support the students who are not cast in a mainstage production, Adams serves as the faculty advisor for FreeStage—a registered student organization (RSO) that produces student-driven plays and musicals every semester. Adams refers to FreeStage as “an institution at ISU” and cites many of our famous acting alumni, such as Jane Lynch, Sean Hayes, and Brendan Hunt who credit FreeStage for furthering their development as actors. In addition to FreeStage, Adams delights in casting the acting students in university projects such as recruitment films, alumni and anniversary events, emergency scenario training, and events produced by other academic units that need actors.
Adams has also co-directed and/or coached every acting student for their senior capstone experience. From 2002-19, the Actor Showcase performed live in venues such as Steppenwolf Theatre or Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago for talent agents, casting directors, and alumni. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, these performances are now filmed and distributed to agents and casting directors nationally through Breakdown Services.
Although Adams supports acting students in numerous ways, her crowning achievement is coaching the Irene Ryan Acting competition, part of the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF). The country is divided into eight regions, with Illinois State participating as part of Region III. Eight regional scholarships and one national scholarship are awarded annually. The selection process begins with outside respondents who attend every Illinois State mainstage production. These respondents nominate two actors per production to participate in the competition. Adams works with student nominees to choose their material in the fall and, since the festival takes place in January, she is on campus at the start of every new year to coach them and their scene partners to prepare them for the competition. Adams accompanies them to the regional and/or national competition and continues coaching them throughout the process.
Since 1998, Adams has coached 233 student nominees and their partners for the prestigious Irene Ryan Acting competition. Each year, 300 students compete in the preliminary round, with only 42 students advancing to the semi-final round, and, finally, only 16 students advancing to the final round. The winner of the final round goes on to compete in the national competition at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., against the winners from the other seven regions. Adams has a coaching record that is exceptional: she has coached 68 actors to the final round in Region III; she has coached 14 Region III winners who advanced to the Kennedy Center; and, she has coached three National Kennedy Center winners.
Of the numerous productions Adams has directed for the School of Theatre, Dance, and Film, each one holds a special place in her heart. She recalls that those productions that served the former general education requirement called Foundations of Inquiry hold particular significance for her, including the American classics The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Diary of Anne Frank. Other noteworthy productions include Sweat, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Dancing at Lughnasa, Tommy, Evita, and at Illinois Wesleyan University, the world premiere of Robert Caisley’s play Front, presented at the Region III KCACTF and winner of the Fourth Freedom Forum National Peace Play Award.
Professionally, she directed the Off-Broadway production of Falling in New York City (nominated for three Drama Desk Awards). Closer to home, she directed the world premiere of The Human Terrain at Mustard Seed Theatre in St. Louis. In 2023, Adams directed The Book of Will for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. In November of 2024, she helmed the politically significant play, POTUS for Nebraska Repertory Theatre. She has directed, to date, 14 summer Theatre-for-Young-Audiences (TYA) productions in collaboration with playwright Nancy Steele Brokaw. She has likewise directed many productions for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival Touring Company. Her work reaches current and future audiences from preschool to senior citizens and everyone in between.
Adams is active as an actor, modeling the kind of honest, courageous work she teaches her students. Her roles at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival are many and varied, including (but not limited to) Miss Carey/Mrs. Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility, Messala in Caesar, Queen Isabel in Henry V, and Gertrude in Hamlet. Collaborating with her faculty colleagues, Adams starred in a one-woman play about actress, author, and abolitionist Fanny Kemble. She toured this production nationally for over a decade, including a three-week run in Chicago, which garnered critical acclaim from Chicago Sun-Times critic Hedy Weiss. Locally, for Heartland Theatre Company, her roles included Fay in Iron, Susan in Woman in Mind, and Maureen in The Beauty Queen of Leenane. During her stellar career, she has performed major roles for Nebraska Repertory Theatre, Actors Theatre of Phoenix, Breadline Theatre Group, Illinois State University, Illinois Wesleyan University, and Arizona State University.
Adams and her husband, John Stark, former artistic director of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival and head of the production, design, and technology area at Illinois State, are active members of our community, having raised their two children, Anna and Nathan, here. Adams has entertained our community with her direction of the annual Holiday Spectacular in December, Celebrate America for the Fourth of July, and From Broadway to Bloomington in February. These endeavors have reflected well on Illinois State and have served as recruitment tools for many local high school students who became Redbirds. In 2002, she served as spokesperson/leader of the grassroots, parent-organized group, “2 Young 2 Choose,” that challenged and successfully persuaded the Unit 5 School Board to amend the curriculum they had previously adopted to include both fine and practical arts in the middle school curriculum.
As she reflects on her career, she hopes that she has inspired her students and colleagues to “keep working toward demanding fierceness and courage to continue to tell the stories.” She describes herself as “the luckiest person in the world to get to do what I love for my job.”
Rest assured, Professor Adams, your inspiration has and will continue to resonate with your students, colleagues, and friends, for years to come.
