By OLIVIA BERGMEIER
Salina Post
Surrounded by stage lights, microphones, props and, most importantly, her students, Shilind Wheaton, Salina South's new theatre teacher, found her way back to her home after almost 40 years on the West Coast.
According to Wheaton, she felt the kind embrace of the community she left long ago when she moved from Solomon to pursue her acting career.
"I have received nothing but love and warmth in this incredible welcome," Wheaton said. "I've really enjoyed learning their traditions, and they've been so open to some new things."
From fledgling actress to big-time coach
Wheaton began her career in theatre on the Solomon High School stage, until in 1984, at 17 years old, she moved to Michigan to continue pursuing higher education in performing arts.
A Kansas Wesleyan University professor encouraged Wheaton's parents to send her to a school focused on performing arts due to the talent she showed on stage.
"When you get out of high school, especially coming from a small town, I was at the top of the game here, a big fish. But you're not a big fish when you go to a new school," Wheaton said. "So I was no longer a big fish, and I had to work really, really hard to earn the roles that I was easily getting back home."
After a year in Michigan, Wheaton moved to the West Coast to attend the California Institute of the Art, where she studied to become a full-fledged Hollywood Actress.
"That training program really teaches you what it means to work hard," Wheaton said.
Wheaton finished her degree and began working at Universal Studios in the costume department, alongside getting various acting roles around Hollywood.
A potential role Wheaton auditioned for was the voice of Lisa Simpson from "The Simpsons." She landed in the top three for the character's voice actor, but the role eventually went to American actress Yeardley Smith, who still voices Lisa.
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While on the set of "Happy Days," an American sitcom popular in the 1970s, she met actress Lynda Goodfriend, who portrayed Lori Beth on the show.
Wheaton said Goodfriend also acted as a talent manager for other actors, which sparked Goodfriend to ask Wheaton to help coach the young actors on her roster.
"I started coaching actors — they would get copy (script material) for auditions, and I started coaching them with subtext and helping them develop these characters," Wheaton said. "And I'm like, 'Oh, my gosh, I love this.'"
She began coaching various actors within Hollywood, eventually driving her to pursue education full-time. She returned to school for a teaching license and eventual master's degree in theatre production and design.
The winding path to education
Before Wheaton began teaching, a particular theater at Murrieta Valley High School in Murrieta, California, caught her attention.
She visited the school years before teaching there and saw infinite creativity within the theater's walls, driving her to apply for the open position five years later.
"Then I spent 23 years in that district," Wheaton said.
A contributing factor to Wheaton's move is her desire to remain closer to her parents and family to spend more time with them, which stayed in the Salina area.
Wheaton said she taught schoolchildren in Murrieta Valley all the acting essentials, with how to receive criticism as a core value to her teaching.
Criticism and rejection are integral parts of the entertainment industry, where many fledgling actors find themselves denied for more roles than given.
"We need to encourage our kids to take rejection, and take criticism and stand up and go, that's okay. I'm going to learn from that push forward," Wheaton said. "We have lost our way a little bit of really being advocates for these kids and teaching them what it means when we do fail."
Today, she aims to bring these core teaching values to Salina South High School students, setting her goal to double Salina South's theatre program in the next two years.
"My goal is to grow the theatre arts program here itself so that every student on campus feels they have a place here and can find their inner creativity when it comes to performing arts," Wheaton said.