In Memoriam: Professor Marijean Levering, Ph.D. (1974 - 2017)
On June 27, 2017, beloved Utica College theatre professor Marijean Levering passed away after a long battle with cancer—a fight she faced with strength, grace, and her signature dark humor.
Levering joined UC’s faculty in August 2000 as an Assistant Professor of Theatre and was promoted to Associate Professor of Theatre in 2006. For her devotion to students, she received the Robert Woods Student Life Award in 2004, and in May 2017, the Dr. Virgil Crisafulli Distinguished Teaching Award. Under her direction, UC’s theatre program flourished and became a close-knit family, with Levering serving as “mother” to hundreds of students, both onstage and off.
On September 9, many of those students. along with colleagues and friends, gathered to celebrate Levering’s life through stories, lessons, and laughs. At the memorial, two of her closest friends and former students, Alex Caldas ’13 and William Lanfear ’10, shared the following remarks about their “mother,” Marijean.
We are Her Legacy
By Alex Caldas ‘13
I’m not sure if she ever knew it, but the first time I met Marijean Levering, I was absolutely terrified.
This woman was my exact height, but her stride was probably twice mine. The woman walked with an intense purpose. It was the first night of auditions for the spring production during my freshman year. I know you’ll be shocked to hear it was a dark comedy. As my fear piqued, I noticed Marijean was wearing a Muppets T-shirt. The Muppets and theatre are a few of my favorite things. It was a hard enough sell to stay. And I’m so thankful that I did.
Marijean became my boss and mentor. One semester on the stage crew turned into three years of stage management. I became her right-hand woman and through a lot of trial and error, she taught me to be ready for damn near anything … even, and especially when, I really didn’t think I could be. Her strength in the face of any problem, big or small, made me want to be better. And before I knew it, she was the mother I always wanted.
When I was growing up, no older than kindergarten-aged, I was watching Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. I laughed wildly as bird creatures removed, juggled and exchanged heads. My mother jokingly asked whose child I was; puppet decapitation has never been her idea of a good time.
Queue my sophomore year of college. It was the end of a play, and Marijean handed me some props to put away. “Put this over there,” she said, handing me some nondescript items and Marijean-power walking away. She didn’t say what it was or where it was she actually wanted me to put them, but I somehow knew exactly what she meant. I smiled to myself, noting she had been wearing another Muppets T-shirt. I was starting to get an idea of whose kid I was.
Marijean and I worked together on more and more shows and she shifted from professor and mentor to friend. During summers when I wanted to get away from home, she would offer her couch to crash on. We’d watch The Muppet Christmas Carol in July, eat Peking Tokyo, and talk about silly things for hours. Really bad movies. Funny things that happened with strangers. The power of Dionysus. Lots of laughs were had.
Then she got sick for the first time. After she went in for a surgery, I left a series of notes leading her to roses that Will, Sarah and I went in for spread across her house; at this point I had been entrusted with a set of “just in case something happens” keys. I left a rose and a card with the “Labyrinth” story, about her being my “real” mother, in the fridge.
I’m so thankful she knew that I thought of her as a mother, but I didn’t have to tell her that for her to know. She definitely already knew.
There are a number of people in this room who were her kids. She loved teaching and she loved faux-adopting us. She’d regularly say, “Unlike most parents, I get to pick my children.” Many of you actually called her “mom.” Some of you had another name for it. Maybe you just called her Marijean, but the sentiment was still there. If you did plays or worked on projects with her, it was hard not to feel that way. She cared for her students so much and her passion for teaching ran deep.
She cared for a took care of me when I couldn’t ask for help; asking for help would end up being a huge skill she taught me. One spring break, my family was displaced due to a fire. Instead of being stressed out and needing to ask for a place to go, Marijean planned a trip to Chicago. Will, Lamont and I had the trip of a lifetime, though I had largely been tasked with making sure the boys behaved. I was so happy for someone who felt like they had lost everything.
Marijean was always cognizant of what problems others were dealing with, even when hers were worse. When she was told her time was limited, it was understandably difficult to talk about. Even then, others came first. She sent me an email, apologizing for dying. She said, “I am so, so sorry. I know you are plenty strong to get through this. I really do, but I feel like I’m abandoning you.” There was no planning of an extravagant, expensive farewell tour. She was too busy worrying about us, the people she was leaving behind.
She deteriorated fairly quickly after this, but she spent the last of her time in true Marijean fashion: Directing the last act. Where will the props go? Where will the final scene be set? During this time, she was able to get a few precious goodbyes in. One afternoon, I sat with her and Fran Lucia. Marijean held Fran. We all took turns crying. Obviously. But what stood out most to me about that afternoon is that Marijean said her students are her legacy. I know I keep talking about myself up here, but it’s so important to me that all her former students know this: We are her legacy.
When I graduated, she gave me a card that said, “You are very much my friend, but as much as it is possible for anyone to be, you are also my child. I am ridiculously proud of you, and I am so lucky that you decided to wander into my life. … You will take over the world. When and how might not be known, but that you will is not in doubt.”
On the legacy-building front, I’ve got a pretty tall glass to fill. But whether or not world domination is your end game, all the small things you do toward accomplishing your goals, all the small Marijean-ish actions you take, are feeding that legacy.
Whenever you organize something, look at it and say, “Wow. This is excessively organized,” you are feeding the legacy. Whenever you mentor an intern, a student or a younger colleague, the legacy grows. Whenever an intern, a student or a younger colleague is afraid to give a presentation and you tell them not to fear and that you are prepared to threateningly display a pair of pliers, you are definitely fueling the legacy.
There are folks here in FX makeup, costuming, acting, comics, teaching, government, forensics. We’re everywhere and we’re all using things we learned from Marijean. And that’s legacy building, too. Current students, you keep that legacy alive, well and weird here every day and on behalf of alumni, I want to thank you for that.
So, everyone. Allow yourself some time to grieve. Let yourself be sad sometimes. But know when you’re done with your gross tissue, the show must go on. She pretty much said we have to. Legacies don’t build themselves.
A Director, Through and Through
By William Lanfear ‘10
I would like to start with a line from “As You Like It,” Act II, Scene 7.
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his lifetime plays many parts.
I can’t begin to tell you just how much I loathe William Shakespeare. Sorry to all of you who teach, and to those who have to learn about him, but I do. But his words ring true.
We are here today not to mourn the loss of Marijean, but to celebrate the life of someone who had such an influence on so many people. Her work not only revolved around directing people to their exits and entrances, but how to look at the world as one big, theatrical experience.
She loved teaching students. Actually, I can’t even say just students because she loved teaching everyone. Every moment was a teachable moment for her. She was always teaching, always learning, and always had a story to accompany every topic. “If we look back to ancient Greece and their annual festival of Dionysus, the origins of theatre can be summed up in four words: goat sacrifices, wine, and orgies.” We could never figure out why more people didn’t want to learn about theatre!
She taught people how to find their place both on the stage and in the world. She taught people how to find their light, even if she was never one for the spotlight herself. She didn’t even like having her photo taken. There’s one photo that epitomizes this: It was during the show Rumors. She saw the camera and started booking it offstage. In the resulting photo, a portion of her leg is missing because she started moving so quickly to get away. Most everyone who ever tried to sneak a photo of her got that blurry result.
We’d joke with her about having an aging portrait in her attic like Dorian Gray, or following the bathing and beauty rituals of Countess Elizabeth Bathory to stay young. She was really only 43, which seems unbelievable since she had the in-depth knowledge, insight, life experience and stories—so many stories—of someone at least six times her age. (That’s 258 years, for anybody keeping track.)
It didn’t really hit me until last week that I’m the age now that she was when our paths collided back in 2005. When we met I instantly knew there was something about her that fascinated me. I came from a high school that lacked theatrical opportunities, and she had the knowledge and desire to start mentoring me in the world of theatre, especially makeup. We’d meet up in the evenings once a week for impromptu makeup jam sessions. To onlookers, they likely resembled the song “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better.” I’d show off a makeup job and if she could show me how to do it better, she would. If she couldn’t, I’d show her how I did it. In between our meetings, I’d go to the library and absorb everything I could on techniques and products. After the first couple months, I pretty much went from student to teacher. We’d get together and I’d teach her everything I had learned that week. It was the ultimate hands-on learning experience, and she discovered in me not only a talent, but also how I best learn a subject. I wasn’t learning to teach, I was teaching to learn.
Some of my fondest memories of Marijean and I are in the old dressing room, sitting on the counter side-by-side, doing makeup on the actors in her shows, using the backs of each other’s hands as makeup palettes.
I owe everything I am to her. She found the spark in me that I had been missing, a talent that she nurtured into what I now call my career. Having her working beside me for the National Center for Security and Preparedness was truly a dream come true. Having her acting expertise, her makeup skills, her flair for organization, and that window-shattering voice of hers by my side—I felt invincible.
We shared a love of food, art, and medical oddities. On work excursions, we’d stay up late talking about future travel plans, new recipes she wanted to try (usually involving bacon), and the plays she was reading while brainstorming the best ways to stage the scenes of gore and mayhem in front of an audience.
She was a director through and through and always needed to be in charge of whatever she could, especially when it came to herself. With her initial cancer diagnosis, after her treatments, it didn’t take long before she started losing her hair. It was January 18, 2011, when she bribed me with dinner to come over and shave her head. I knew how much she loved her hair and how much it was part of her identity, and she could probably tell from my voice that I was apprehensive—until she mentioned that she made mac and cheese. I left my apartment so fast I almost forgot my clippers.
I shaved a mohawk into her head and gelled it (all her idea). It lasted until our laughter subsided, and I shaved it off. We spent the rest of the night laughing and eating. When it came to her cooking, I discovered there wasn’t much I wasn’t willing to do for food.
I have been forever changed because of the influence this amazing woman had on me, the paths in life she helped me choose, and the guidance she provided over the years. I know she’s watching me, helping me, and continuing to guide me.
I want to end with a quote that Marijean and I would say to each other as needed, during shows and at the training center when we were given an impossible task to complete in an even more impossible timeframe:
“Everything will be fine, because it has to be.”
More Stories
Utica University Receives $1.2 Million NYS Grant for Accelerated Educator Preparation Program; Teacher Candidate Applications Now Open
Utica University announces new leadership roles
I would like to see logins and resources for:
For a general list of frequently used logins, you can also visit our logins page.