Disco Diary

Since her onstage appearance in The Mikado eight years ago, Delina Hensley '97 has been a pillar of Tusculum's theatre outreach, mostly backstage as co-director, stage manager, and all-around motivator and teacher. This year, she is stepping out in her solo directorial debut on the Tusculum stage as she takes on "The Diary of Adam and Eve," an adaptation of the Mark Twain story of that name.

Imagine for a moment the beginning of time, the creation of the heavens and of life on earth. All is quiet: the day is divided into darkness and light and humanity is formed from out of the dirt. What is that music you begin to hear in the background? Is it Strauss? Is it Wagner? No - it's Kool and the Gang, of course, and then you look up and notice the mirrored disco ball spinning in the air above your head.

An incongruous image? It's just another day in the unusual work of Delina Hensley '97, Tusculum's 23-year-old arts outreach coordinator, a woman with a knack for reconciling rationality with edgy artistic vision.

Hensley's ideas for bringing "The Diary of Adam and Eve" to the stage for three performances at the end of last month were, for example, perfectly reasonable.

"Considering it's my first play [as a solo director], I wanted something that was relatively short," she says. "I had read 'The Diary of Adam and Eve' as written by Mark Twain, and I knew it was very funny. I knew it would be something that the students would have a lot of fun doing. But I also wanted to make sure it was going to be fun for the audience as well as for those who were participating in it."

Half-listening to disco music one morning while working on another project, disparate images began to combine in her mind.
"I noticed some of the songs fit into the body of the play," she says excitedly. "I thought of the scene where Eve is making friends with all the animals. And then I could see her dancing around to that Kool and the Gang song, 'Celebrate Good Times, '" she says, breaking out of her perfect enunciation for a moment to sing a bit of the song.

So then Hensley, always grounded, talked with Marilyn duBrisk, Tusculum's artist-in-residence, just to make sure the disco theme was a feasible idea for the play. Having worked with duBrisk as an actress, stage manager, and co-director for over seven years, Hensley trusted her to form a reasonable but innovative opinion.

"Marilyn thought it was great!" Hensley says, and so the stage was set. Long days of rehearsal, design, and coordination with her student actors were among the tasks the young director faced in bringing her vision to the Tusculum Behan Arena. And not all of the play's action was fun-and-games. "There's a transition from disco to another end of the spectrum" as Adam and Eve are exiled from Eden, she says. "The characters go through a very big change."

Hensley (center), with "The Diary of Adam and Eve" cast members Nicole Cox, Brett Andrews and Heather Brace (l-r). Photo by John May, Classic Photography of Greeneville, TN.

In that sense "The Diary of Adam and Eve" represents Hensley's own attitude. "I'm always looking at the greener pastures. They are over there,” she says with certainty. “But at the same time I'm seeing those greener pastures, I also know there's a fence there!"

Hensley characterizes herself as a "realistically-idealistic" person. "I don't make myself idealistic to the point where I'm a dreamer.... I know where reality will set in."

Part of that reality involves a sense of thankfulness that she's been able to follow her creative aims thanks to her "always supportive" family. She's "lucky," she says, and fairly beams with gratitude in discussing grants from America Reads/Higher Education - Learn and Serve America and the Dorothy Greene Legacy, which help fund her position at Tusculum.

"It's nice to see other people think there's a need for what we do," she says of the grants. "It really is important; there's a very large need for the arts in this community and for arts programs in the schools."

Her goal is to secure a master's degree in directing (in addition to the B.A. she holds in English) which will allow her to share still more of her talents with her community.

"I hope that whatever I learn I can bring back to Greeneville, and teach others what I've learned.... My heart will always be here. It's just something about the area and the people.

"I just want to be able to give something back," she says. And again, as idealism merges with reality, she knows that she already has.

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