RELEASED: July 18, 2001

DANVILLE, KY—Wes Hiler looks tired. Sitting in a chair in the Green Room in Centre’s Norton Center for the Arts, Hiler is coming down with a cold. It seems he’s worked himself too hard this summer.

But Hiler, a 1999 graduate of Centre, couldn’t be happier with how his summer has unfolded.

Hiler is the artistic director of the Daedalus Mythmakers, an acting troupe performing for the Governor’s Scholars Program at all three campuses. The group is made up of eight actors, four of whom are Centre graduates (Hiler, Tommy DuMontier, Nicole Royse and Jessica Wortham). Several others involved with the GSP have helped as well.

The Mythmakers have put on four plays: "The Bacchae," "A Midsummer Night’s Dream," "A Doll’s House," and "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead."

The performances have taken place each Thursday. After the group takes an off-day on Fridays, the Mythmakers come back to work on Saturday to begin preparing for the next play. This gives the group just five days to practice their lines and prepare the stage and set.

"It’s been a challenge, but I planned for this to be an artistic passage from the beginning," said Hiler, who graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in the dramatic arts. "I’ve come out of this with a strong sense of my strengths and weaknesses."

The final production, "Rosnencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead," also had nine Governors Scholars in the performance, the only play in which they participated.

"They’ve been wonderful," Hiler said. "We’ve been working 10 and 12 hours a day, but having the Scholars on the last play has brought a fresh energy."

The idea of doing a play a week was first brought to Hiler’s attention by Bob Hobbs, formerly the head of the professional actor training program at the University of Washington. While working together at The Warehouse Theatre in Greenville, S.C., last year, Hobbs suggested that Hiler look into directing five plays in five weeks, something that was common in theater in the 1940s and 1950s.

Hiler later ran into Centre Professor of English Milton Reigelman and suggested he would be willing to do five plays in five weeks for the Governors Scholars Program, of which Reigelman serves as director of special events for all three campuses of the GSP. That was later scaled down to four plays.

"I work 10 hours a day, but it’s 10 hours a day in a theater. It’s a wonderful feeling," Hiler said.

In the fall, Hiler will return to Greenville where he will be an interim teacher at the Fine Arts Center, a high school for performing arts students. As for long-term goals, Hiler said he would like to be an artistic director for a theater company.

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