Page 36 - The Hunt - Winter 2019/2020

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“We had a tremendous amount of autonomy. Dr. Chipman was still the director, but he valued what we thought.”
Bruce Chipman had a simple question when he arrived at the Tatnall School in 1973: “Where’s the theater?”
Turns out, he was standing in it.
The lobby.
“There were no lights, no stage, and backstage was a
classroom that served as a changing area for the actors,” says Chipman, who was hired to teach English, coach football and baseball, and direct plays.
For the latter task, Chipman would have to get creative. Despite the structural shortcomings he faced, he wasn’t about to deliver a subpar production. He built a stage, hung some lights and recruited
a cast and crew committed to big things. His first Tatnall Showcase, Guys and Dolls, was a hit. “That first play was so instructive to me and the kids,” he says. “They loved it.”
Chipman isn’t too keen on directing musicals, but Guys and Dolls had been chosen before he arrived on campus. Since then, he hasn’t done another one in his
47 years of helming Showcase. Don’t expect that to change. This coming February, Chipman will direct the farce Play On! It brings to an end a remarkable run of service to the dramatic arts that has touched nearly 1,000 student participants. Though Chipman, 73, will still teach, he’s stepping away from something that has helped define him at the Greenville, Del., private school.
What Tatnall’s Victor Clarke birthed and nurtured in the 1960s has grown from a lobby curiosity into a full-on sensation in the $14 million, 450-seat Laird Performing Arts Center. The Laramie Project, The Diary of Anne Frank, A Doll’s House, The Miracle Worker—Chipman certainly hasn’t shied away from mounting serious plays. But he’s also directed comedies like The Odd Couple (three times) and Flaming Idiots.
But Showcase isn’t just about the show—it’s a bona fide class in which students learn how to stage a production. For Tatnall, it’s a phenomenon that goes well beyond the three-show schedule each year. “Bruce thinks about Showcase year round,” says Rick Neidig, the Laird Center’s technical director, who’s been at Tatnall in some capacity for 35 years. “He’s always on the lookout for resources and for students who can be part of the cast.”
Chipman has had to step away from something else he loved at Tatnall, when a back injury prohibited him from coaching. At this point, he remains unwilling to contemplate what it will be like to disengage fully from the Tatnall community. He gives his assurance that if he ever has two days in a row when he doesn’t want to go to school, he’ll retire. That hasn’t happened yet. “When I hit the classroom and shut the door, that’s my world,” he says. “The students are mine, and I’m theirs.”
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THE HUNT MAGAZINE
winter 2019-20