MCCT dedicates the 2025 season to Janice Clevenger, one of our founding MCCT members. Throughout the year you will find memories of working with her, how she impacted the local theater scene, and more.
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My second show ever was Sleeping Beauty, directed by Janis Clevenger, one of our Founding Members. This was such a fun show to do. I learned so much about theatre and acting from this show. Janice had an infectious enthusiasm for all things theatre. I remember her admonishing all of us to learn our lines, but at every rehearsal, and at each performance, she would grin widely, look around and tell us all to break legs, and to not lose track of the most important thing: Relax and have fun. Janice was such a force in local theatre in Bloomington, and a gentle, kind, enthusiastic mentor. MCCT literally would not exist if it were not for her boundless experience and energy. I have been involved in theater ever since (2005!!) and I owe a bit of every performance to her kind guidance. – Bill Goveia, Current MCCT Board Member
I worked with Janice in Sleeping Beauty in 2005. I went to the audition where it was obvious that I have an accent (because I was on scholarship at IU). But in my country I worked as an actor, and Janice saw this fact right away, without telling. She chose me, and she said: “how good, now we can also show that the king married from another country, he brought home a foreign princess!” So we included some jokes in this regard as well, like that I did not understand words or my partners had to repeat a phrase, and these were nice jokes, which enriched the show. Janice was patient and relaxed as a director on the rehearsals, but she could also be tough. Right before the first night, as she was goal-oriented, she listened to every idea, and we were able to try everything we wanted. I think sometimes she knew right away that our idea would not be good, and yet she let us try it, because that’s how we could learn that it would not work. So she let us do it, and we also learned how to make theater. It was so a wonderful, and pleasant and valuable to work with her guidance! Now in my homeland I work with different directors, and still remember Janice, who was not only a very good theater maker, but also a charming, warm-hearted lady with full of energy and curiosity, and wanted to show us (and to the audience) her nice and rich world view. She stays with us, because we learned lots of things from her. – Ezster Kiss (Eszter Kiss – IMDb, Eszter Kiss (actress) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) in Budapest, Hungary