From Extra-ordinary living magazine Fall 2023
Nancy Edmonds Hanson
Perhaps you know Steve and Gwen Stark from their lifetime of involvement in local theater – he on center stage in roles ranging from Snoopy in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” and Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” to Harold Hill in “The Music Man;” and she behind the scenes as the director of some 100 plays and musicals at Fargo South High School.
Or do you recognize Steve Stark’s name as the creator of more than 4,000 editorial cartoons, drawn in his bold, distinctive strokes, published in The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead over the better part of 40 years?
Are you one of the 5,000 students who fell in love with theater and speech during Gwen’s 40 years of introducing teens to the thrill of public performance?
Or have you attended elementary school over the same long span of years? Then perhaps you know Steve as Mr. History, the costumed historian whose fast-paced tales of the regional past – accompanied by lightning-quick 20-foot-long illustrations across the stage behind him – have captivated generations of young students well beyond the bounds of Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo.
The Starks are perhaps Fargo-Moorhead’s best-known twosome who have dedicated their lives to theatre on every stage and from every angle. Married (so far) for 51 years, Steve and Gwen have made unforgettable contributions to the local arts scene. Now retired, their connections to countless homegrown performers and audiences reach deep into the traditions of high school, college and community theatre, not to mention countless offshoots – improv comedy, variety shows, radio, school lyceums, and conventions and seminars in more than half of America’s states.
And don’t forget the 4,000 or so editorial cartoons signed with the Stark flourish, featured on The Forum’s editorial pages for almost 30 years.
The Starks have been a team since 1970, when they co-starred at North Dakota State University in its Little Country Theatre production of “Antigone 70.” The re-envisioning of a classical Greek drama, “Antigone” had been recast in the spirit of the Vietnam anti-war movement of the day. Gwen, then a graduate student in speech and theatre, starred in the show with Steve, still an undergraduate. It was, as they said in the day, “far out.” (“None of us us had never even read the original,” Steve posits. Gwen corrects him: “I had.”)
The two young actors connected at a cast party after the show closed. “Two weeks later, he asked to marry me,” Gwen remembers.
Gwen, a native of tiny Ray, North Dakota, who calls herself an introvert, graduated from Dickinson State College before joining the theatre graduate program at NDSU. The gregarious, ultra-outgoing young actor she’d soon marry came from Minnetonka, Minnesota.
They spent the next year apart. Gwen found her first job teaching theater and English in Two Harbors on the north shore of Lake Superior, six and a half hours away. Meanwhile, Steve completed his studies at NDSU, alternating weekend drives with his fiancee. When he finally snagged his diploma, he joined her on the North Shore and set out to find a job.
Oddly enough, it was his childhood doodling rather than his star quality that landed him a position. He’d drawn cartoons for the NDSU Spectrum back at NDSU; now he offered his services – sharp-witted commentary drawn in bold strokes – to the Lake Country News Chronicle, along with the newspapers in Duluth and Hibbing. “Then, when the Two Harbors editor who’d hired me resigned,” he says, “something unexpected happened. The owners made the publisher.”
While Gwen spent the next nine years teaching and directing the theatre program at Two Harbors High School, Steve became the voice of their community as editor of the weekly newspaper. His only prior experience was cartooning for NDSU’s Spectrum student newspaper. Now he found himself writing every feature, editing the entire paper, taking all its photos and selling its ads. In his spare time, he completed a master’s degree of his own at the nearby University of Wisconsin – Superior.
The couple returned to Fargo in 1980, where Steve accepted a job writing and creating his distinctive illustrations for the NDSU Extension Service. By now, their older son Andrew was a toddler; Gwen was six months into a difficult pregnancy. But after Jack was born, the couple realized she needed a job to help make ends meet. With her teaching experience in hand, she approached both Fargo high schools.
“North High said no, but Principal Vic Warner at South was more receptive,” she says. “He signed me up to direct three plays a year … for $900.” The first: “Dirty Work at the Crossroads,” a musical melodrama.
“I told him that I needed to teach a class to make ends meet. He said, ‘What if we invent a theatre class?’” Twelve students signed up the first year. A year later, the number had doubled. By 1988, she was a full-time member of the faculty.
“We kept inventing additional levels of theatre,” she remembers. “By the end of my 31 years at South, I’d created classes from grades nine through 12. It’s like choir, you know. You teach the same things but at higher and higher levels.” Among her most memorable courses were those introducing teens to improvisational theatre, leading to Donkey Hotie’s Improvcicles, still going strong. She retired from teaching in 2013; in 2016, she was named to the Fargo South High Hall of Fame.
Meanwhile, Steve was dividing his free time between the Community Theatre and F-M Civic Opera Company. He moved on from NDSU to become head copywriter at Flint Advertising, director of Bonanzaville USA, and marketing director at The Forum. He played behind-the-scenes roles in Gwen’s shows, too, often designing sets and costumes and even directly several plays.
But it was a chance request by F-M Convention & Visitors Bureau director Vince Lindstrom sent him off on a second dramatic path – portraying Teddy Roosevelt. “Vince was pitching a convention he wanted to bring to Fargo, and he needed a gimmick,” Steve recalls. “That was me.” Outfitted in the garb and persona of North Dakota’s beloved Roughrider, Stark was an immediate hit with his with his toothy, mustachioed grin and hearty laugh. (The conventioneers did come to Fargo.)
That characterization propelled Steve onto stages across the region. He headlined dozens of events in what he remembers as pretty much every county in the state. The roughrider persona evolved into a more presidential Teddy; he dived into history to present an authentic picture of the 26th president and his championing of America’s natural environment … so vividly accurate that the U.S. Forest Service booked him to travel to its event all over the country.
Steve’s living history performances caught the eye of educators, too. Dubbed Mr. History by his young audiences, Steve became a frequent speaker at lyceum programs in dozens of North Dakota schools. He branched out from playing Teddy with a growing portfolio of historical characters. He dressed in buckskins to tell of Lewis and Clark. He became a riverboat captain for the River Keepers annual programs for Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo classes. At the dedication of the North Dakota Heritage Center in Bismarck, he summed up the whole of the state’s history in 60 minutes – at the same time illustrating the dramatic story in charcoal on yards and yards of paper posted behind him on the stage.
“I just adored those kids. That was the best,” he reminisces.
Mr. History also took his turn on TV and radio. He portrayed TR on the History Channel and History Channel International, as well as American Public Radio. He wrote and narrated many seasons of Prairie Public TV’s “Dakota Datebook.” When Merrill Piepkorn put together the traveling variety troupe dubbed “Dakota Air: The Radio Show,” Steve became its head sketch and comedy writer, as well as one of the players.
The most dramatic scene of Steve’s entire life occurred during one of those performances, this one at the Ashley, North Dakota, centennial in 2013. “I felt dizzy,” he says. “When intermission came, I walked backstage. That’s when they tell me I died.”
A member of the troupe rushed back on stage and called out, “Is there a doctor in the house?”
There were, in fact, two – young doctors who’d returned to their hometown for the celebration. They performed CPR on the spot and literally brought Steve back from the dead.
It was, Gwen says, a miracle. “If they have to perform CPR in the hospital, they say you have a 7% chance of survival,” she says she learned later. “Out of the hospital, your chances are 5%.”
And the oft-told story of Steve’s rescue has an epilogue. Ten years later – in July – Steve was checked into Sanford Hospital for more heart problems. Gwen picks up the story: “He had a new doctor that day, Darren Lang. He looked at Steve and finally asked him, ‘Did you ever perform on stage?’ Steve said yes. Then Dr. Lang told us, ‘I was the one who brought you back. I always wondered what happened to you.’”
Even his brush with death eventually became part of Steve’s professional credits. Several years after recovery from his heart attack, he was booked for a presentation at a medical conference on CPR in Washington state. “When Steve told them about his own experience,” Gwen notes, “they made him the keynote of the conference.”
Today, though, persistent health problems have brought Steve’s life on stage to a quiet close. A stroke in 2019 sidelined him for a time, but relentless determination to recover did bring him back for a time. But the lingering effects have slowed him down. He has stepped back from Mr. History, though the Starks’ license plates still read “MRHSTRY.” He retired from his regular editorial cartooning for The Forum late last year – wrapping up more than 30 years producing nearly 4,000 always-timely, often-pointed caricatures and commentary for the editorial page.
Today Gwen and Steve are virtually inseparable. They spend time with their three grandchildren: Andrew and Mridula’s son Liam, 10, and daughter Juliana, 7; and Jack’s 17-year-old daughter, Madelynn. Andrew teaches graphic design and illustration at NDSU; Jack and a partner operate a restaurant tile business based in West Fargo.
The Starks enjoy reflecting on their decades in theatre and the countless lives they’ve touched as educators. While higher-profile professional opportunities have been proffered along the way, they have remained an integral part of the Fargo-Moorhead arts scene. As Gwen says, “This is exactly what we wanted to do.”
One such temptation came Steve’s way early on, during his college days. Gwen remembers when his Little Country Theater performance caught the eye of a visiting director from the Juilliard School of Performing Arts in New York City. He tried to convince Steve to go east to study there for a career on Broadway.
“Steve never wanted that,” Gwen reflects. “He wanted to get married and have a family.
“I told him, ‘Go, go.’ You know, go see what it’s like.
“But he said no.”
“I didn’t want to be auditioning for jobs every week, year after year,” he reflects. “And, even if you got one, you’d be tied to doing shows every single night of the week and matinees on Sunday. That wasn’t the life I wanted for us.”
Steve laughs – that big, warm laugh so familiar to both audiences and friends – and adds, “And Tal Russell [a director of the Little Country Theatre] reminded me that you have to keep on looking 20 years younger than you really are forever … and you can never lose your hair.”