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December 15 th Is The Deadline!
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HARRISBURG YORK J
If you haven’t nominated the greatest
professor you’ve ever had at Penn State,
better do it now. December 15 is the last day
nominations will be accepted for this newest
and grandest teaching award, sponsored by
the Alumni Association, USG, GSA and
Commonwealth Campus Student Government
All current full-time faculty members with a
minimum of three years of teaching at any one
of Penn State’s 22 campuses are eligible to
win. And nominations will be accepted from
students, faculty, administrators, staff,
parents, alumni, and friends of the University.
Nomination brochures containing complete
information about the award are
available from your Dean’s office or at
the Alumni Office, 105 Old Main,
where nominating statements must be
received by 5:00 p.m., Monday,
December 15. Do it now!
UNIVERSITY OF MEDICINE AND DENTISTRY OF NEW JERSEY
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES
Graduate fellowships of 58.040 per year are available for
individuals interested in Graduate Program leading to a
Ph.D. In Biomedical Sciences in Anatomy. Research studies
in neurosciences, cell and developmental biology,
cardiopulmonary-vascular system. teratology and
environmental toxicology, and endocrinology are available.
Interested students are invited to write for more information.
Anthony v. Boccabella, P/i.D.
Chairman-Department of Anatomy
UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School
185 South Orange Avenue
Newark, NJ 07103-2757
arts
spotlight
Dickens is Lentz's lifelong interest
By MARIA SAWKA
Collegian Arts Writer
Growing up in the small North Carolina town of
Stony Point, Tony Lentz had dreams of
anchoring the nightly news. But lately, he has
been following in the footsteps of Charles Dick
ens rather than those of Walter Cronkite.
Lentz will be putting his skills to work and his
tuxedo on for his traditional one-man reading of
Dickens’ A Christmas Carol at 7:30 tonight and
tomorrow night at the Nittany Lion Inn Fireside
Lounge, sponsored by the Department of Speech
Communication. Admission is free and there will
be a cash bar.
An assistant professor of speech communica
tion, Lentz began his academic career at the
University of North Carolina, tackling a double
major in speech and journalism in the hopes of
becoming a television anchorman. “I enjoyed the
sense of age on the campus that there was a
long tradition of education behind it,” he said.
It was in his freshman year at UNC that Lentz
was first exposed to what would become become
his trademark an oral reading of Dickens’ A
Christmas Carol. “I was a green country kid in
the big city,” Lentz said. “I just dropped in to see
it. I have vivid memories of it. A brass band in
the corner, this old guy walked up and started
reading. And bingo! What do you know, I saw it.”
Dickens’ Christmas story had come to life in
Lentz’s imagination.
That old man who read and affected Lentz so
profoundly was Earl Wynn, a professor at the
university. Lentz came back every year to listen
to Wynn’s reading; and Wynn ultimately went to
see Lentz read Mark Twain. Later the two
performed together in Fiddler On The Roof. “We
had a mutual admiration thing going,” Lentz
said.
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“I knew the power of (Wynn’s) performance,”
he said. “I knew I wanted to do that to make
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people aware of the power of good literature and
oral reading.”
That interest carried over to graduate school,
after a year-long stint as a newspaper reporter.
“After being a full-time journalist, going to
school was easy,” he said. Lentz completed his
master’s degree and went on to the University of
Michigan to complete his doctorate.
In 1978, while teaching at Wingate College,
Lentz bought a copy of Dickens’ classic
Christmas story and started to mark it up and
type it out in preparation for his first reading.
The big night came and only 10 people showed
up, including an old man and his wife who
thought they were going to see a play. They
walked in, sat down, took a look at Lentz alone on
the stage and promptly got up and left. This
didn’t do a lot for Lentz’ self-confidence.
When Lentz came to the University seven
years ago, he took over as advisor to the Univer
sity Readers, a group that does three or four oral
readings a semester. While looking into the
history of the Readers, Lentz found out that the
speech communication department had spon
sored readings of A Christmas Carol in the 1940 s
and ’sos. With support from the department,
Lentz reserved 121 Kern Building, “a place with
nice acoustics,” and did his first Dickens reading
for the University.
The setting for this event has moved from Kern
to the Nittany Lion Inn; and the audience has
gotten bigger and bigger every year, he said. The
audience has also become accustomed to the fact
that when they come to hear him read, they also
have to bring their imaginations along.
This isn’t always the easiest thing to do. In an
age dominated by film and video, where all the
images and emotions are supplied for them,
people have a hard time using their imagina
tions, Lentz said. “When a person who’s trained
like that goes to look at a black mark on a page,
that’s all they see. They’re lost.
“We’re becoming a more oral culture with film
and.video. We’re left with concrete imagery and
short range views of the world. The worst thing
about it is that people become less participatory.
They just sit and receive what is presented,” he
said.
Lentz’ interests in the field of speech commu
nication extend beyond the effects of modern day
video culture on literacy. He’s fascinated by the
history of oral tradition, how communication
changed when writing was introduced and
speech performance. “I’m interested in the nuts
and bolts of how to make someone a performer,”
he said.
He cited a valiant but misdirected attempt in
the 1800 s to document and standardize the va
rious gestures and postures used to convey
meaning while speaking. He pulled an old, musty
book from his shelf that showed sketches of
people in 19th-century dress, posed in the most
dramatic fashion. They even went so far as to
choreograph speeches. “A lot of dance people
still use the movements today,” he said.
“One of my career goals is to find some way to
talk about performance,” he said. “How do we
move to keep an audience’s attention? Aren’t
there some basic principles we can get across to
students?”
These performance skills are what Lentz and
the University Readers use to get audiences
involved in the literature they read. “It gets the
audience to sympathize with someone else, to
think about someone else’s problems,” he ex
plained. “I remain concerned about that. If we
lose the ability to abstract ourselves, to compro
mise .. . that sense of compromise is what
makes democracy work.”
Lentz will also perform at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 12 and
13 at the Gamble Mill in Bellefonte, sponsored by
the Bellefonte Historical and Cultural Associa
tion.
North Atherton Street, on the Penn State Campus • State College, PA