RETIRED THEATRE DEPARTMENT FACULTY
Neil Blackadder
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Ivan “Mr. D” Davidson
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Margo Shively
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Robert “Doc. Bob” Whitlatch
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Neil Blackadder
Professor Emeritus of Theatre
nb@neilblackadder.com
Ph.D., Princeton University, 1995
M.A., University of California Los Angeles, 1989
B.A., University of London, 1986
Neil Blackadder taught at Knox from 1998 until his retirement in 2019. As well as teaching dramatic literature and theatre history, dramaturgy, and playwriting, Neil directed over fifteen shows in Harbach Theatre, ranging from Molière, Schiller, and Chekhov to the college world premiere of Jamil Khoury’s Mosque Alert. Neil is the author of Performing Opposition: Modern Theater and the Scandalized Audience, and plays including Dad’s Guns, published in the collection 24 Gun Control Plays. In recent years, Neil has established himself as a prominent translator of contemporary drama from German and French, receiving major grants, including from PEN and the Howard Foundation. His translations of plays by Lukas Bärfuss, Ewald Palmetshofer, and Rebekka Kricheldorf have been produced in London, New York, Chicago, and elsewhere. Neil also directed several of his translations at Knox, including Ewald Palmetshofer’s Before Sunrise and Rebekka Kricheldorf’s Rosa and Blanca. Neil grew up and went to university in England, and first came to the US for graduate study in Comparative Literature. Before coming to Knox, he taught at Duke University.
Ivan joined the faculty at Knox College in the fall of 1969, serving for many years as theatre department chairman, as well as serving on numerous standing and appointed committees. He was the recipient of the Phillip Green Wright Lombard Prize for Teaching Excellence and the Caterpillar Faculty Achievement Award, as well as three National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship Awards.
A noted acting and voice teacher, Ivan presented workshops around the United States, as well as London, Stratford-on-Avon, Rome, Frankfurt, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. He taught in London with the Associated Colleges of the Midwest program there, and at the famous Moscow Art Theatre. He both acted and directed at the professional, university, and community theatre levels. He was the mentor to numerous students who went on to highly successful professional careers in the theatre, movies, and television. Deliberately trained as a generalist, during his career he taught courses in all aspects of production design, acting, and directing, and the full range of dramatic literature and theatre history. In addition to his work in the theatre department, he was instrumental in Knox’s Creative Writing Program, where he taught playwriting. He also created and taught courses in the campus wide Freshman Seminar, Freshman Preceptorial, and Senior Perspective programs.
Upon his retirement in 2004, grateful alumni collected funds to refurbish the classroom where he taught most of his classes and had it dedicated as the Ivan H. Davidson Classroom. Following his retirement, he moved to Mobile, Alabama, where he served as Adjunct Professor of Theatre at The University of South Alabama, directing and teaching classes in acting and in voice for the stage. He was also active in various community theaters in the area conducting acting workshops and directing at Joe Jefferson Players, where he also served as managing director from 2006 -2010. He also served on the board of Mobile’s Singing Children.
Professor Emeritus of Theatre
Ph.D., Dramatic Theory and Criticism, University of Iowa
M.A., Theatre Production, Indiana University
Ivan’s Obituary
Ivan
“Mr. D” Davidson
Margo Shively
Instructor of Theatre and Director of the Costume Studio, retired
mshively@knox.edu
B.A. Art Institute of Chicago, 1968
Margo attended the Art Institute of Chicago where she studied fashion design. She was selected by the renown American designer for fashion and film, Oleg Cassini, as an intern and then spent nearly a decade designing clothing for the fashion industry before coming to Knox College. Initially hired as a seamstress on a production for which Ivan Davidson was designing costumes, she rapidly proved so talented a designer and so skilled a technician that he happily retreated upstairs and she took over the show in that basement hive of continual creative activity. As the lead designer and costume shop supervisor for over 30 years, Margo designed costumes for many main stage theatre productions in every period and style imaginable, including nearly all Rep Terms until her retirement. Due to her efforts, the curated costume collection numbers over 17,000 pieces, including a vintage collection often used for teaching design and technical artistry.
Margo’s joy and her much heralded talent was in the classroom. She is most humbled by and proud of the many students she mentored and that went on to receive Masters of Fine Arts degrees in costume design at such institutions as UCLA, UT Austin, UCONN-Stores, NYU, UW-Seattle, and Carnegie Mellon University among others.
In addition to her work in academia, Margo also designed for the Chicago City Ballet, Black Hills Playhouse (SD), Bonesteel Films, Prairie Players, and Moonofhope Theatre Productions. She was involved as designer, consultant, and intern mentor with Vitalist Theatre (Chicago) since its inception in 1997 and consulted with designers from the Guthrie Theatre, Utah
Shakespeare Festival, American Players Theatre, and Santa Fe Opera.
Bob earned his BA from Dennison University in 1960 and his PhD from Indiana University in 1965. He joined the faculty of the Department of Theatre and Speech in 1966, where he was a teacher, director, and department chair. He also designed and built sets and designed lighting for many Knox productions prior to the expansion of the department faculty to include design faculty. Bob served on innumerable faculty committees for 42 years, earning him the honor of the inaugural appointment to the newly endowed faculty chair, the Robert M. and Katherine A. Seeley Distinguished Service Professorship. He also served for many years as the college’s Grand Marshal, the faculty member who leads the procession at Commencement and other formal College events.
“Doc Bob,” as he was affectionately known on the Knox campus and by all alumni, was awarded Knox’s highest honor for teaching, the Phillip Green Wright/Lombard College Prize for Distinguished Teaching, in 1987 and again in 1996 and received the Caterpillar Faculty Achievement Award. Though he enjoyed directing, Bob loved acting and performed with students in several productions, including A Long Day’s Journey into Night, Equus, The Grapes of Wrath, and Two Shakespearean Actors, in which he co-starred with colleague Ivan Davidson. His favorite turn on the stage was as Petruchio in Kiss Me Kate. In 2008, Bob co-directed with student Edward DeBoo a mainstage production of the student’s translation-adaptation of the Roman comedy The Menaechmi. As a theatre historian and theatre theorist, Bob shepherded countless Knox students through the sweep of theatre history and led them to consider the roles of theatre and drama as forces for personal and social discovery and transformation.
Professor Emeritus of Theatre
Ph.D. & M.A., University of Illinois
B.A., Denison University
Bob’s Obituary
Robert “Doc Bob” Whitlatch
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