Josie Helming
On Sunday, August 30th, when the Memphis theater community comes
together to celebrate the best of the 2008-’09 season at the annual
Ostrander Awards, a toast will also be raised honoring the life and
accomplishments of actor, director, and educator Joanna “Josie”
Helming. Helming, a retired co-chair of the University of Memphis
Theatre and Dance Department is being honored with the Eugart Yerian
Award for Lifetime Achievement.
“What you have to understand is that Josie is the backbone for major
training in this city,” says Cookie Ewing, artistic director for the
McCoy Theatre at Rhodes College and the 2007 Eugart Yerian
recipient.
Kell Christie, Theatre Memphis’ artistic director who took her MFA
at the U of M and studied Chekhov with Helming, elaborates: “You can
walk into any theater in this city and hear some actor doing a vocal
warmup they learned from Josie.”
“When you look at all the things that are happening today, so much
of it goes back to Josie,” Ewing says, singling out Jerre Dye, the
actor, designer, writer, and artistic director for Voices of the South
as an example.
Dye concurs. “She is so completely woven into the fabric of this
community,” he says following a performance of his original script
Cicada.
Helming isn’t originally from Memphis. She’s not originally from
anywhere, really. She was born in Minnesota, but her family soon moved
to New York, then to Florida, then Massachusetts.
“Mostly we moved looking for work,” she says. And there would be
time spent in California, Texas, Missouri, and Louisiana before
settling into her position at the University of Memphis.
“I was a student in the ’60s,” Helming says. “And in the ’60s there
was this idea that you should move around a lot, see a lot of places
and things. And I did.”
Helming’s philosophy as a professor and mentor was informed by the
difficulties she faced as an undergraduate with little direction and
less means. She wasn’t always the best student and failed her math and
science courses repeatedly. She also had to leave school periodically
to work and put aside enough money to re-enroll. She had no idea what
she wanted to do when she enrolled as a freshman at the University of
Florida. Maybe she’d be a history major. Perhaps she’d study political
science and become a lawyer. None of that worked out.
“American history turned out to be the most boring class in the
world,” she says.
“I never wanted to be in the theater,” she says. “Those people were
weird.
“But the theater always takes in wounded birds, doesn’t it?” Helming
asks, remembering how she backed into her theater major after being
cast as in a leading role in a play by Shaw that she absolutely did not
want to perform.
While building sets for the University of Florida’s theater
department, Helming met graduate students Keith Kennedy and Steve
Malin, who, after finishing their studies, would become instrumental in
developing the University of Memphis’ graduate program. She also met
scenic designer Henry Swanson, another future U of M professor who
co-founded the Lyceum, a professional theater in a tiny converted
church in Arrow Rock, Missouri, where she sometimes worked. “Many
things were forged in that crucible,” says Helming, remembering her
summers at Arrow Rock performing Shaw and Moliere in that tiny space
where the side exits were literally the church’s windows.
After only four years teaching at the University of Memphis, Helming
left for a period of time to start an influential childrens’ theater
troupe called the Red Balloon Players, an organization she co-founded
with Joanne Malin, the actor and director who would eventually launch
Theatre Memphis’ educational troupe ShoWagon. “What we wanted to do
with Red Balloon was to show that blacks and whites could work together
with no strings attached,” Helming says of the scrappy company that
performed in Memphis area parks using the wagons from old Cotton
Carnival floats as a stage. Actors Helming worked with and trained for
Red Balloon included Michael Jeter, who eventually won a Tony for his
performance in Grand Hotel, and Larry Riley, who appeared on television
in Knots Landing and as C.J. Memphis in the film A Soldiers’ Story.
Helming retired from the University of Memphis in 2002.
Over the years Helming has directed several Ostrander Award-winning
productions, including The Crane Wife, The Dining Room, and
Translations. More recently she has directed productions of Well and
The Memory of Water.
