Loel Shuler has been teacher and costumer for Children's Experimental Theatre, and costumer and actor for The Staff Players Repertory Company since their earliest years.

She grew up in Benton Harbor Michigan. Her father had a sawmill and then became a builder of houses. He died last January at the age of 106. Her mother was a speech teacher, giving private lessons for monologues. She is now almost 103 years old. So Loel says "You're all going to have to put up with me for quite a while." Her parents also had a marionette show which toured within their county. Her mother made the marionettes and her father built the stage and made the wooden handles and strung the marionettes. Loel became the "stage manager," pulling the curtains and barking for the clown's dog. By the time she was in the 6th grade, she also operated a marionette and provided the voice. As she describes the shows, "It was the Depression and a time when people needed entertainment. What I learned from the marionettes was the magic of audience imagination -- a valuable thing to learn. That's what theatre is all about."

In her youngest years her first on-stage experiences were in speech and monologues. She remembers being 5 years old and doing a monologue at an opera house. She was active in theatre in church and school. In the 6th grade she wrote and produced a pageant. She explains, "It involved all the grades. Needless to say I was the star. It amazes me now that the whole school and my mother let me do such an outrageous thing. I think I must have costumed it too."

Loel continued doing theatre through her school years. She attended Olivete College in Michigan and received a B.A. in English Literature. She went to work for the University of Chicago Press, eventually becoming sales manager. Her future husband was completing medical school at the University of Chicago. They married and moved to Seattle, Washington where he would do his internship and residency, so she began working for the University of Washington Press as editor and sales manager. Next they moved to Sitka, Alaska and her career in publishing stalled. They started a family and Loel wrote a book about her trip on the supply ship North Star which distributed government supplies and provided medical aid for the native villages along the coast. She got started in theatre in Sitka when someone asked her to advise (essentially coaching) on OUR TOWN. She wrote, produced, and directed a pageant (Loel states, "It must have been the pageant in me popping out again.") for Alaska Day, an event celebrating the transfer of Alaska from Russia. She wrote it the year Alaska became a state, and it was essentially the whole history of Alaska called "In This Place." She also did various radio shows including "From My House To Your House, which was largely an interview show. And she eventually began a community theatre program in Sitka which still exists.

Loel Shuler and friends....Can we help?

In 1961 Loel moved with her two children to Pacific Grove, because "it seemed very much like south-eastern Alaska." She says she wanted a small town with theatre, good schools, and a Unitarian fellowship. She started acting at the Circle Theatre and got "winkled" into working on some of the costumes for the theatre's shows. She explains, "I never really intended that anyone in the theatre find out that I knew how to hold a needle." She also would coach and hold book for some productions. It was at the Unitarian fellowship that she met Marcia Hovick. Marcia had just started a children's theatre, part of the Community Theatre, at the Circle Theatre in Carmel. So Loel put her daughter Barbara (in the 5th grade) in the children's class. When Marcia started the Traveling Troupe, she talked Loel into helping teach the children's classes. And with the start of Traveling Troupe, things mushroomed. Bill Lewis joined them doing lights and sets. The classes got too big, so they were forced to move to the basement of Sunset Center. The children's theatre became a non-profit corporation with the name Children's Experimental Theatre, and moved into the Indoor Forest Theatre, which at that time was in a considerable state of disrepair.

The staff of Children's Experimental Theatre was too busy to act at other theatres, so they decided to start an adult acting company and call it The Staff Players Repertory Company. For the children's and adult productions Marcia's specialty became writing plays, Loel's became costuming, and Bill Lewis became Artistic Director. Loel talks about becoming a costumer, "It goes back to the Depression; that's when I learned to sew -- for myself. I learned to do it well and casually. I never wanted to be a costumer. Costuming doesn't seem to me like a big deal; it's just what you do because you want the end result. It finally came to me that not everyone can do it. So I guess it's what you call a gift."

What has Loel learned after being a teacher of children's theatre for all these years? She explains, " When I was young I thought I'd write a couple great books or be a great actress or painter or poet or something. But what I learned by living is that the most creative thing you can do with your own life is to give something of value to the next wave of life, in other words to teach."