Award-winning professor hooked on theater

When he was a child, Ken Gardner wanted to be an electrical engineer like his dad.

But then a high school classmate got mononucleosis just before the school play’s opening night, and Gardner stepped in to take his role. He quickly realized he liked theater a lot more than science and math.

“I got hooked,” Gardner said. “I loved it.”

Today, Gardner is a theater arts professor at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks and recently won the National Playwriting Program Excellence in Education Award. The award, given by the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, recognizes work produced in university theater programs.

Gardner’s plays include “Ohio,” a musical based on the Kent State killings; “Hamlet, Disco Dane of Denmark”; and a rock musical based on “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

When writing his plays, Gardner often collaborates with students, working with them especially on dialogue.

“I love that collaborative process,” he said. “When you’re writing, you get caught up in your own head. It opens up arenas you never thought of.”

Last year, sophomore Kelly Derouin worked on “Ohio” with Gardner. It was a long process, with the cast reading the script and rewriting dialogue and scenes as they went along. Each week, they got a revised script, she said.

“There were parts that were frustrating because it was slow moving,” said Derouin, who is majoring in theater arts. “But at the end, I felt like I had a hand in this creation.”

In the classroom, Gardner is easygoing and “tells lots of bad jokes,” Derouin said.

“He’s very endearing,” she said. “You get the sense he really knows what he’s talking about, that he knows what works and what doesn’t.”

These days, the theater department has a lot more room to put on plays. Last fall, the department moved out of the Little Theater and into CLU’s old gymnasium, which has been transformed into a black box theater, acting classroom, costume and scenery shops and offices. The move also means the department is now in one building, rather than scattered around campus, Gardner said.

Gardner came to CLU in 1986 to run the Children’s Theater Program. A year later, he started teaching, and his focus has remained on students since, particularly in helping them with their writing, said colleague Michael Arndt.

But the guy who once wanted to be an engineer does have another side, Arndt said.

“He’s sort of the department practical joker,” Arndt said. “He’s a quiet guy, but he has a wicked sense of humor.”

--- Published in the Ventura County Star on March 10, 2009