The Paul Baker Experience: Crossing the Finish Line

“The time has come” the walrus said “to wrap this thing up; you’re not even a student anymore.” Well…it was something like that. I wasn’t really listening.

The completion of the Great Process Paul’s Papers Project has mirrored my exit from Trinity. Each time I say goodbye, it turns out there’s an opportunity or responsibility that keeps me on campus a little bit longer, and it’s been that way with Professor Baker. Trying to make the collection as sensible, orderly, and lasting as possible has meant going back and making little changes, not quite letting go. But now our days are numbered. I project that Paul’s papers will be processed post haste just as my time at Trinity (and in Texas) trickles from tide to tiny tributary before it terminates. I’m going to miss it of course. All of it. Working in the archives for four years has given me a special insight into the history of our institution. I consider all of the personalities preserved here my intellectual ancestors, and I have fit myself and everyone I’ve ever met at Trinity into the fabric of our collective story. 

Hanging out with Paul Baker has only reinforced this feeling. The plans, notes, and photographs of the first Ruth Taylor Theatre, the barely recognizable old Attic theatre space, the dressing rooms with their familiar concrete walls and forever-worn out lighted mirrors—these look like home to me. Even in the records from Baylor and the Dallas Theater Center, it’s easy to trace the Baker influence as it made its way toward Trinity. As usual, I find the collection’s photographs most compelling and exciting. Those pictures of Professor Baker and Charles Laughton that thrilled my little heart at the beginning of the project are still there of course, along with an unidentified photograph that I am determined is of Katharine Hepburn. My favorites, however, are pictures of a 1946 production of The Skin of Our Teeth, the first play directed by Professor Baker after his return from serving in WWII. They are beautiful and reminded me of what a wonderful time I had in Trinity’s 2014 production of the same play. It’s important to me that they be preserved and seen. 

Then there’s one more reason I’m so fortunate to be closing my time here with Paul Baker. In the first week of August when I start my internship for the Actors Theatre of Louisville, I’m going to be officially really and truly untethered from Trinity, from my cherished faculty, the theatre department, and the archives. I’m hopeful that my studies of our theatrical and educational past will arm me for my future, that I will be able to embody the tirelessness, passion, and stubbornness so clearly visible in the remnants of Paul Baker—my intellectual ancestor. 

There’s not much time left here for me, Trin-Trin, but Professor Baker will be here and available to you for years and years to come. I recommend you get lost down in the archives once or twice before the time comes for you to untether.

Don’t let these humble boxes fool you. #yesfilter

1960s photograph of actresses in the stage right dressing room of Trinity University’s Theatre One

--Kate Cuellar, Class of 2015