This weeks Campus Celebrity is Professor Caroline Good. She is a professor who teaches Acting 1 and many other courses. She also has a talent for sewing. If you haven’t had her or have, her is the chance to get to know her personally!
HC: Hi, Caroline! Thank you so much for letting me interview you. When did you start working at DePauw University and why?
CC: Your welcome; it’s a pleasure! I was hired to teach acting classes as a part-time instructor in 2002.
HC: You’ve been here for quite a while. That’s incredible. Do you enjoy being an acting professor?
CC: I absolutely love teaching acting. Giving students confidence, helping them tap into their imaginations and living inside another persona, and teaching them how to develop their speaking and movement skills is very rewarding. At DePauw, we also teach acting with a heavy analysis component, which allows students to bring their intellect as well as their physical intelligence into the acting experience. We read a lot of plays, they get to play a wide range of roles and explore an eclectic approach to acting; this helps them find what works best for them. I highly encourage their creative input and expect students to contribute creatively to their scene work, thinking outside of the box, or what is simply written on the page.
HC: You are a very dedicated professor, which I bet all your students appreciate. Since you teach acting, have you acted in a play at DePauw before?
CC: I’ve played Marmee in Little Women back in 2004 and Clytemnestra in Achilles back in 2014.
HC: I bet you performed great! I hear you make most of the costumes for every play. When did you start sewing and why did you become interested?
CC: I’ve been sewing since I was about nine years old. I was involved in theatre and always interested in costuming, so I started costuming in college, taking costume courses along with my acting, directing and other theatre courses.
HC: You have quite the experience! It’s nice to know you have followed what has inspires you. How does it feel seeing girls coming and going in the costume shop every year?
CC: It’s a little bitter sweet seeing my student workers as freshmen, knowing little to nothing about sewing and watching them not only grow as stitchers, cutters, coordinators, designers, but also as students and artists, and then watching them graduate and move on with their lives. We get pretty close in the costume shop and I’ve stayed in touch with most of my student workers over the years – kind of like an extended family. I feel a little like Marmee with all of my little women working together in the costume shop. Many of the women find life-long friends down here as well. We have had a few men working in the shop, but it’s mostly a women’s world down here. We all work hard, gossip, and listen to the tunes we’re in the mood for that day – it helps lessen the stress of making it to dress rehearsal.
HC: With the small space you have for the costume shop, it must really be a close-knit family. Is being a professor and working at the costume shop really time consuming?
CC: Yes! It’s like wearing two hats and working two part-time jobs, really seems like a full-time position most of the time. There is a lot of crossover though and I have passion for both, which keeps it all interesting. As a costumer, I mentor costume designers and teach them about designing, but also how to consider the actor’s perspective. As an acting teacher, and one who teaches other theatre courses, I encourage students to do research on their characters and how they would be costumed and how to use their imagination that will affect their physicality. So, yes, it is very time consuming, but when you are consuming yourself with your passion, it’s more like being nourished.
HC: You definitely have a busy schedule, but I bet everyone appreciates the time you put in for them. I hope the rest of your future at DePauw is as enjoyable!