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Changing the World From the Stage
When she first came to William Jewell College, Maggie Rader was afraid to stray far from campus, much less cross an ocean.
The path Maggie has traveled would have seemed a dream only four short years ago. She has charted the Everglades as a Pryor Leadership Fellow and studied Shakespeare in Oxford, England. And along the way, Maggie has discovered her life’s passion.
“There’s something about opening a script and – it’s just words on a page. You get the responsibility of turning those words into a person,” she said.
Maggie knows that creating characters and breathing life into them can touch people, even change them.
Growing up in the small city of Mangum, Oklahoma, faraway places were but a fantasy for Maggie. She discovered after being cast in a play at the age of 12 that “acting was an escape – from Mangum, from everything.”
But Maggie never imagined she would end up living among the historic spires of Oxford or watching legendary actors perform onstage.
“Studying overseas was so far beyond my reach,” she remembered thinking when she first came to Jewell.
That is until Maggie landed a part in “A Conception of Love,” a romantic play set in Oxford, England. Playwright Francis Warner – who has worked with hundreds of Jewell students over the past three decades as Director of the Oxford Overseas Study Course and Dean of Degrees at Oxford University’s St. Peters College – flew to Liberty for the performance.
Encouraged by Warner’s words of praise after her performance, Maggie, who had portrayed a student walking the streets of Oxford, found herself doing just that as a college junior.
She spent a term in England, studying the works of William Shakespeare, and watching famed actor Ian McKellen – a former pupil of Warner’s – breath life into Shakespeare’s “King Lear” with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
“The theatre was so magnetic… I just threw myself into it. I knew that this is what I want to do,” she said.
After spending hours discussing theatre and “the Bard” with Warner, Maggie knew that she was meant to perform Shakespeare. Her youthful timidity was replaced by confidence and determination. “I thought, If Ian McKellen was sitting in this same chair in Francis’s office, what’s to say I can’t do what he does?” remembered Maggie.
Since returning from Oxford, Maggie has continued to pursue her dream. She participated in the intensive Shakespeare & Company Summer Institute in Lenox, Massachusetts, working directly with some of the world’s foremost Shakespearean actors.
It was there that Maggie learned about Shakespeare in the Courts and other programs that use these centuries-old masterpieces to connect with youth in the juvenile justice system.
“I want to give those kids a sense of self,” Maggie said. “The thing about Shakespeare is, there’s something universal that just speaks to everyone. This is my way to change the world.”
Last fall, Maggie inhabited the role of Lady MacBeth for Jewell’s performance of the tragic play. She plans to continue studying Shakespeare as a graduate student and use theatre to work with underserved youth.
It was Shakespeare who wrote, “All the world’s a stage.” For Maggie, the stage is a way to change the world.
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