On the highest hill on Park University’s campus, there is a building many Park students may not be familiar with.

While Dearing Hall does house a handful of residents and Counseling Center, the building is generally empty and quiet.

But a couple days out of every week, the building gets louder thanks to the energy brought to Dearing Hall by the new theater instructor Kris Stoker.

After a fire in October 2013 at Alumni Hall, Park’s former theater building, classes had to be redistributed to other buildings.

Before the 2013-2014 academic year was completed, it was also announced the theater minor was going to be removed temporarily from the curriculum for budgetary reasons.

But even though the theater program has been handed a difficult situation, the program is still hanging on.

Theater classes are still offered as electives classes and some theater-dedicated students knocked on Stoker’s door to work to reactivate Park’s theater club, which had been active in past years.

This semester, unfortunately, the club has not been able to put on a production so far.

But now that Stoker has joined Park, he has a large goal set in front of him to re-invigorate theater on campus.

His theater passion comes from his senior year in high school when he did his first play.

“I realized it was the thing I was meant to do my whole life,” said Stoker.

Stoker has an extensive background in theater having studied it and participated in various theater performance groups for a number of years.

He graduated with a master’s degree and taught theater classes for three years at the University of Arkansas. Stoker also spent some time at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company where he was an ensemble member.

“I did lots of Shakespeare for a very long time,” he said.

Along with Shakespeare, Stoker also has experience in improvisational theater and was part of the Upright Citizens Brigade, which is an improvisational group in New York City.

Stoker recently moved to Kansas City with his wife and children because of the large theater scene in the area.

“I see a lot of theater in Kansas City,” he said.

Stoker first started as a teacher assistant in graduate school even if being a teacher was not one of his life goals.

He surprisingly enjoyed being an instructor because he was teaching subjects he likes, he said. He has been teaching ever since.

Not only is Stoker a university teacher, but he also goes to high schools and drama camps to work with younger students to get them involved somehow in theater.

“Theater is such a different thing,” he said. “It’s so different from the other classes, where they sit in class and listen mostly to PowerPoint presentations. But then [students] get to come here, move tables and chairs out of the way, get up on their feet and act.”

Stoker teaches Basics Principles of Acting and Introduction to Theater at Park and will teach some independent study classes in the upcoming spring semester.

Brandi Watkins, a sophomore biology major and member of Theater Club, said she is excited to get more involved with theater at Park and working with Stoker.

“I’m really looking forward to take his class next semester,” she said.

Even though he was used to teaching up to 250 students at a time when he was at the University of Arkansas, he was very excited to start teaching at Park because of the “smaller classes,” he said.

The University of Arkansas also already had an established theater program where “things were happening,” according to Stoker.

But for Park, with the fire and the lack of the program, Stoker was ready for the challenge.

“My goal is to give Park a theatrical place again,” he said.

With that spark, Park has seen its Theater Club fire ignited again.

However, the club’s current members will have to wait for some time before they can bring a bigger production to the school.

“We can’t do full productions because we don’t have costumes or sets or anything like that,” Stoker said.

But he is very optimistic and is looking forward a bright future for the theater world, especially at Park.

“If you can bring the language to life, that’s enough” he said.

Stoker is very inspired by Shakespeare, during whose time, it was not the sets and lights that mattered the most, but more the characters.

This is why Stoker compared Shakespeare’s time to the actual theater life at Park.

“Shakespeare burned his theater down,” he said, jokingly comparing it with the Alumni Hall fire in 2013.

Right now, those who have attended recent Theater Club meetings have been doing improvisation exercises.

But those involved want to do more and are hoping to do something at the Student Research and Creative Arts Symposium in April.

“I think [the theater club] is going to go places,” said Watkins. “If people stay dedicated to the club there is no reason it won’t happen.”