NOTRE DAME DRAMA TEACHER TO RECEIVE STATEWIDE AWARD

Cindy King is about to receive a statewide teaching honor but she seemed more excited Friday about ticket sales for Notre Dame's upcoming musical.

Thirty minutes after going on sale, half the tickets for "The King and I" were gone. The musical will be presented April 16-19 at the school.

May 4, King will travel to Mexico, Mo., to receive an Educator of Achievement award from the Missouri Council for American Private Education. She will be one of only eight private-school educators across the state to get the award.

Missouri has 460 private schools with an enrollment of nearly 100,000 students. Most of the schools are Catholic or Lutheran, but independent, Hebrew and Seventh-Day Adventist schools are also members of MO-CAPE.

King, who is in her 26th year at Notre Dame, was cited for her ability to educate through extracurricular activities. She has directed the school's spring musical, always one of the high points of the Notre Dame calendar, all 26 years.

"It's outstanding," Sister Mary Ann Fischer, Notre Dame's principal said of the award while praising King's enthusiasm. "She has maintained that kind of excitement about working with students in extracurricular activities. Often you see the enthusiasm waning after a number of years."

King is the first Notre Dame teacher ever to receive the award. She was required to submit a portfolio and letters of recommendation. One of those letters came from Roger Seyer, a Notre Dame alumnus now appearing on Broadway in "Miss Saigon."

Seyer will be in St. Louis this summer, playing the Gene Kelly role in "On the Town" May 29-June 29 at the Kirkwood Community Center.

For King, who teaches drama and English, compiling the portfolio was more important than winning. "It forced me to put in writing the kinds of things I do in the classroom," she said.

But in the spring, much of her work occurs outside the classroom as preparations for the annual musical build. One recent night her male lead, Andrew Blattel, was struggling with his role and asked her, "Why did you pick me?"

After everyone else left, the two of them worked through his scenes. By the next rehearsal, a newly assured King of Siam had appeared, moving veteran actress Jessica Hency's Anna to tears.

"That's worth everything," King said. "That will never happen again. They'll learn to control it. But from now on, that's going to be theirs."

"The King and I" has a cast of 73 of which 15 are children, the youngest 5 years old. The children hail from all over the parish.

At one time, King planned to become a theater professional. She's willing to consider that divine providence brought her to Notre Dame instead.

There's nothing extracurricular about the spring musical to her.

"Doing shows is the essence of who I am. It's not my job," she said. "... If I saw it as a job there's a lot I wouldn't do.

"These are things that stick with them more than anything I do in the classroom."