Saratoga News After years of teaching and directing Shakespeare, Judith Lyn Sutton becomes a poet in her own right. Photograph by George Sakkestad Reaping Rewards Judith Lyn Sutton has tilled three creative fields and reaped many benefits By Mary Ann Cook Common wisdom concedes that it's difficult to gain distinction in creative fields. But Judith Lyn Sutton has managed such a feat in not just one but three different arenas. A long-time teacher--she has taught English and sometimes drama for nearly 30 years at Saratoga High School--Sutton has regularly won accolades for her teaching. And she is well recognized for her founding of the theater companies VITA (Valley Institute of Theater Arts) and its successor, STAR (Shakespeare Theater Arts Repertory), which were both based in Saratoga, but have subsequently closed. And now comes a third field for Sutton to till, poetry--and she is reaping rewards in that arena. For one, she was invited to be a featured reader at the San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival held last weekend. Her work is being regularly published and commended. Since concentrating on poetry for the past three years, she has accumulated a scrapbook full of awards and publications. And she has put together a theatrical program from her poems, set to music by Paul Page, a fellow SHS teacher. The program is called "From Darkness Light: A Celebration of Life in Poetry and Music." The impetus for this work came from her successful battle against cancer, a journey to wellness. Soprano Allis Druffel, a teacher at Santa Clara University, sang in the program; others in the cast were Bill Peck, Sutton's VITA co-founder and John Swartz, her husband. This music/poetry production was presented in October at three area churches to gratifying numbers of Sutton fans. With the onset of illness, Sutton was forced to give up the never-ending demands of maintaining a theater company. Her withdrawal; the sale of VITA's home, the Mountain Winery; and the continuing search for money to keep it going, marked the end of the theater companies. VITA had operated for 16 years and STAR for three. After beating cancer, Sutton turned her attention to poetry. Writing poetry is considerably less taxing than "pushing 40 people up the hill," which is her particular metaphor for putting on a play. Of course poetry had always been part of her life, so this new emphasis wasn't a very sharp turn. Poetry was part of her classroom teaching, and she had written productions for VITA and STAR that combined her own narratives with famous poetry and prose. So poetry had always been there--but in the background. Now it was time for poetry to take the forefront. In the two days before her most recent presentation of "From Darkness Light ..."--at St. Lucy's Church in Campbell, Sutton received notice about five of the poems that were part of her "journey to wellness" presentation. One poem won a prize in the Mississippi Valley Poetry Association contest; one won a contest sponsored by Lyric Lines in Grants Pass, another won an honorable mention in that contest; and two poems were chosen to be used for a calendar to be produced by Candlelight Journal in Maine. Sutton recently received a 1998 President's Award for Literary Excellence from the Iliad Press in Michigan. This is the second year she's won that award. Early portents of poetic success hovered: as a student she won poetry kudos and had a box of her poetry stashed away in her closet. But that secret box wasn't accumulating much but dust during her teaching and theater-building days. The box survived a house fire and, though charred outside, the poetry remained intact. To someone who daily deals in metaphors, this incident carried quite an emotional punch. By this time the box has had to be replaced, obviously spilling over with her work. Sutton earned a master's degree in English and drama from San Francisco State University. In her master's program she combined the two disciplines--weaving a play together by combining classic sections with her own narrative, a technique she would later use at VITA. Her first teaching assignment was a year at Los Gatos High School, then came an opening at Saratoga, and she's been there ever since, save for three months off due to illness. "I always knew I wanted to teach. My teachers inspired me and I wanted to inspire others." Two recent awards that are student-originated serve to confirm the strength of her impact. One is the Dorothy Wright Award for excellence in teaching from San Jose State University and the other is a similar award from UC-San Diego. As for the theater side of teaching, "I fell in love with directing," she says about her early teaching days. So much so, in fact, that she spent a year or two at ACT. It was while she was studying at ACT that she decided the South Bay needed ACT-like drama training too, and that was the genesis of VITA. At ACT she re-met Bill Peck, a former student who was also studying there. Together they forged a theatrical training company, VITA. VITA's home for its first three years was at the home of Bill's parents, Willys and Betty Peck, who, conveniently enough, have both an indoor and outdoor theater. By VITA's third year, the acting academy had attracted 150 students. "By that time we needed a showcase for all those actors," Sutton says. VITA then found a home at the Paul Masson Mountain Winery and began to produce plays, mainly Shakespeare, mainly in summer. The list of students who have gone on to acting or theater careers--Lance Guest, David Warner, Karen Robinson, Dean Robinson--is itself a testimonial to Sutton's teaching. Interestingly, these students were all products of the first few years of VITA's existence. Though she has taught at Evergreen and Mission colleges, it's high school students she relates to most. "There's something special about high school students. A difference can be made. Big changes can be made." "I want to teach my students the importance of literature. There's a famous quotation that goes something like this: 'In literature can be found the greatest possibilities for creating change, for creating things to make you think.' And you can see this happening in the minds of high school students. You can see them come alive to all the possibilities. "I'm proud of all the people I've touched in the theater. I'm proud of having taught students about the importance of our connections to the past (via the 60 or more research cards she requires for research on the Renaissance in her college prep class). "I'm glad I'm able to get across to students that we're all part of a great circle. That Leonardo da Vinci had the idea for a computer long before the world had ever heard of any of the Silicon Valley giants." All these portions of her career were fulfilling, each in its own way, but for now poetry presents "an exciting new direction." The fulfillment these days and the thing she's proudest of is seeing her work in print. After working with other authors' words, putting them in students' minds and mouths, and seeing them re-created on stage, "It's very rewarding to see my own words on the page," to join the august company of published authors. She's no stranger, of course, to hearing her own words on stage. At VITA she put together "Cherished Christmas Classics," which wove a new story, her own, with well-known Christmas classics from Dickens, Willa Cather and Truman Capote. She was looking for a theater classic akin to the Nutcracker that the whole family could enjoy each year. And so she changed the manuscript yearly. Other productions at VITA that combined her narrative with the well-known classic works of prose and poetry were two stories about Shakespeare--one about his life, one that celebrated his brilliance. A cherished memory of her own: In one Christmas classic she included a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay called "Harp Weaver" and set it in Russia. The harp weaver mother dies weaving dreams for her children. That was the year the Russian regime was bursting apart. Her theatrical sense relishes the timing. As for future ambitions: She'd like to see a book of her own poetry printed. Marketing poetry, participating in competitions can be rewarding, but the time eats into time that could better be spent penning poetry. Sutton enjoys doing readings, and has gained a reputation locally for what she calls "fashioning commemorative moments" for milestones in people's lives--events like weddings and anniversaries. "My theater background helps me create commemorative moments," she says. And intertwining prose and poetry is a recurring motif in her life. For a wedding at a Saratoga estate, she produced a commemorative celebration akin to that in "Midsummer Night's Dream." First the wedding ceremony was performed, then the entertainment, which was a presentation of Sutton's poetry-cum-narrative. The poetry is, of course, tailor-made, custom-cut individually for each family, each bride and groom, after interviews and consultations. As a teacher born and bred, Sutton, knows above all, you don't stint on research, even for a one-time performance. [ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Saratoga News, November 18, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.