St. Peter, Schulte, productions go for the gusto

Maybe you’ve been at a youth sporting event, concert, or theater production in support of a kid you love, and at some point, a sneaking suspicion – almost too good to be true – flashes through your mind:

“Wait a minute, is this entertaining?”

When it comes to the theater productions put on by middle school students at St. Peter, Schulte, it probably does not take long for many first-time audience members to suspect that they may be in for a treat. Talk to people who have seen the shows. Don’t be surprised if they say that the stories, the sets, the technical elements, the costumes, the choreography, the singing, the acting, are all part of productions that are – not merely grading on a curve – straight-up enjoyable.

“We hold each other to a high standard,” said St. Peter music teacher Charles Wulke, who also directs the school’s annual music theater production. “We tell the kids: ‘We are going to put on an entertaining show.’”

Chances are, many who have seen some or all of St. Peter’s productions in recent years – “Madagascar,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Sound of Music,” “Newsies,” and “Anastasia” – are eager to drop $5 for the school’s latest show, “Peter Pan,” which opens on the evening of Thursday, April 30 and runs through the afternoon of Sunday, May 3 in the school gym.

According to St. Peter Catholic School Principal Brenda Hickok, the annual musical has become one of St. Peter’s most exciting traditions. “This year alone, 57 students are performing on stage and 29 are serving on the tech crew — and that doesn’t even include the countless families and volunteers who help bring it all together,” she said. “The excitement spreads throughout the entire school and parish, and it truly becomes a community-wide celebration. It’s a beautiful opportunity for students to discover their talents, grow in confidence, and experience the joy of working together.”

Turning points

Wulke grew up in La Cañada, California, and says his family’s Catholic faith deepened in 1998, when his great uncle, Fr. Alfred Kunz – a priest in Dane, Wisconsin – was found dead in a case that remains unsolved. Wulke was nine years old at the time.

“He was a canon lawyer and an exorcist who gave up his rectory to house the poor and lived in a closet at the school where he worked,” Wulke said. “One morning, he was found murdered outside his room.”

Fr. Kunz’s example as a brilliant man of steadfast faith prompted his niece – Wulke’s Mom – to become a regular at daily Mass. The rest of the family also focused more intensely on God. “That changed our whole family,” Wulke said. “We really started to embrace our faith.”

Another – and much lighter – turning point in his life came when he was in middle school, and his older sisters got parts in their high school’s musical production of “Anything Goes.” 

“I didn’t even know what musical theater was,” Wulke said. “As I watched, I thought, ‘This is amazing. People act, sing, and dance on stage. It’s so cool.’”

When he reached high school, Wulke auditioned for shows and played and a little boy in “The Music Man,” a Shark in “West Side Story,” and an executive in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” The experience reinforced his love of musical theater. 

Wulke went on to obtain an undergraduate degree in film scoring from the University of California-Northridge. All the while, he recounts, his faith was a significant – but not necessarily foremost – part of his life. Few of his close friends were Catholic during high school, he notes, and the atmosphere during those college years was even less faith-friendly.

“At the time, I was not an on-fire Catholic yet,” Wulke says, but goes on to note that his faith influenced the sort of film projects on which he was willing to work. He noticed that many of the films for which his classmates and professors composed music – especially as they sought to start their careers – crossed moral lines that he was unwilling to ignore. Even though Wulke completed a college internship on the television show ‘Justified,’ he graduated without a clear plan of what came next. 

He considered pursuing a master’s degree in jazz composition. “I really wanted to write musicals, and a lot of musicals are jazz-based,” he said. “I decided I would continue school.”

The University of Nebraska, Lincoln, had an MA program in jazz composition that interested him, and he had a connection in nearby Omaha – his sister’s future father-in-law – who (after Wulke flew to Omaha) lent him a car for the trip to Lincoln for the interview. But the California native was unaccustomed to snowy February in the Cornhusker State, and his stressful drive to campus in the borrowed vehicle had him sliding, zigzagging, and even occasionally careening down the wrong direction on one-way streets in a city notorious for them. 

After Wulke spotted a place to park and broke across three lanes of traffic to get there, he realized he had landed at the school’s St. Thomas Aquinas Newman Center. 

“I walked in, ran into the priest, and we started talking,” Wulke said. “He told me, ‘We have a great choir. Come check it out at Mass this evening.’ I thought, ‘I’m trying to figure out if this is where I want to go, so why not?’”

Wulke’s UNL interview went well, after which he observed the parish’s choir practice. “Then we went into the church, which at 10 p.m. on a normal Thursday night, was packed – there were people in the aisles kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament,” he said. “I wondered, ‘What is this place?’”

Instead of feeling like a lonely Catholic oddball as he often had in California, the devotion and community he witnessed at that Newman Center tugged at him. When UNL offered Wulke a scholarship, he enrolled. 

Music teachers meet

Soon Wulke was leading Bible studies, writing worship music, and training as a student missionary for the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS). After earning his graduate degree, Wulke was on the verge of becoming a full-time FOCUS missionary but accepted a job to teach music at the Most Pure Heart of Mary Catholic School in Topeka.

“I was brought in to start a musical theater program,” he said.

During that period, Wulke got reacquainted with the stage. “I got to perform in many different shows at the local community theater,” he said. “Some of my favorites included ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ ‘Seussical,’ and I even got cast in the role of St. Aphoridisius in ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame,’ who has his own solo.”

While all this was happening, Wulke seemed to have discovered some conversational chemistry with a young woman named Rebecca, a single young music teacher at Holy Cross Catholic School in Hutchinson, with whom he had connected through CatholicMatch.com. They had been unable to meet in person to that point, and Rebecca declined his invitation to see “Hunchback” so she could visit her hometown of Dodge City and spend Christmas with her family. 

Plans to meet in January also fell through – for another good reason – so Wulke didn’t give up. In February 2018, he leapt at Rebecca’s invitation to join her to watch a Hutchinson Community Theater performance of “Beauty and the Beast.”

“She was with her co-workers and we all watched the show together,” he said. “They saw I wasn’t weird, and so afterwards the two of us went out for ice cream together.”

They quickly became a couple and married in June 2019 – he was 30, and she was 26 – and as they looked to begin raising a family, the Wulkes considered the benefits of living in or around Wichita, where Rebecca had relatives, including her uncle, St. Peter history teacher Corey Green.

Greater than the sum

Wulke accepted a job of teaching music at St. Peter in early 2020, shortly before Covid-19 disrupted everything. “We bought our house during the spring break from which we never returned,” he said.

During the 2020-21 school year, which entailed teaching music without singing, Wulke sought to build on a St. Peter tradition. “I learned that this program was the brainchild of Pastor Fr. Bernard Gorges, Principal Brenda Hickok, and my predecessor, Danielle Greenway. St. Peter put on really big shows,” he said. “I put a lot of pressure on myself for us to go above and beyond a typical middle school production and make it a spectacle.”

That first show, “Madagascar,” faced some very particular challenges, he recalls. 

“It felt like we were throwing things together,” Wulke said. “We had to pray that no one got sick two weeks before the show, because if anyone got Covid during that time, they would have been out for the whole run.” 

“During production week, we were stressing out, wondering if we could even pull it off,” he continued. “We were still working on choreography and trying to make sure everything was ready, but when the time came, audiences were quite happy.” 

Student interest also increased, such that 32 appeared on stage for “Madagascar” in 2021, and 48 appeared in 2022`’s “Beauty and the Beast.” Although participants put in countless hours of preparation, he acknowledges, there were still instances of doubt – that have resurfaced before each show – in which rehearsals not far in advance of opening night raised questions about whether the show would be a debacle.

And yet, he says, the kids pull it off every time.

“Usually it happens right before spring break: Nothing is going right,” Wulke said. “You can’t hear the singing, the choreography is not in sync, and I wonder if we are going to get it together. We get into tech week – drilling and drilling and drilling – and I’m telling the kids, ‘Guys, people are going to watch this.’ Then we get to opening night, and things fall into place.”

According to Wulke, one reason that happens is because of the people who oversee each department, such as choreographers Emma Powell and Alex Harter, costume manager Christy Weber, and props manager Matt Weber. “I may steer the ship, but I have learned to trust them,” he said. “We talk through some things, but they have a lot of leeway.”

Wulke also acknowledges that the cast and crew have also been graced by unseen help, adding that he wants them to be mindful of that. “We definitely talk about how the whole is greater than the sum of our individual parts,” he said. “I urge them to think about how we are using the gifts God has given us to show beauty and truth and how God is going to tie it all together.”

All-hands-on-deck

There is another reason Wulke consciously leans on those around him – and ultimately – God. Whether at home or work, he simply cannot do it all. Not only are he and Rebecca parents to five-year-old RoseMary, four-year-old CJ, and two-year-old John Paul, but Rebecca is also pregnant with the next wave of Wulkes: triplets scheduled to debut in this world later this month.

“Our family has experienced a lot in a short time,” he said. “A while back, CJ had a brain tumor, spent a lot of time at Children’s Mercy and St. Jude, and is doing fine now – praise God! With the triplets, Rebecca is due for a C-section on the Monday of performance week. Right now, when we go anywhere that involves a lot of walking, she’s in a wheelchair.”

Wulke affirms that his vocation as a husband and father takes precedent over the show, but even if contingencies force him to miss some rehearsals and/or performances, he insists that the show must go on.

“The kids are prepared, and Alex is ready to step in as director,” he said. “Christy and other volunteers will run everything behind the scenes, and Matt Weber and Chris Baalmann will make sure that all the sets and props are accounted for. In fact, Matt and Chris have designed some very impressive sets for this particular show.

“If I can be there, I will be,” he adds, “but one way or the other, it is going to go off without a hitch.”

And, he continues, the hard work will extend well beyond the cast, crew, and directors. “St. Peter Schulte is a very tightly-knit community,” he said. “The people here have really supported my family and the kids in these shows. These are community events, with mothers and grandmothers sewing costumes and Knights of Columbus helping feed the kids. It’s all-hands-on-deck support. It is such a blessing to have the constant support of our pastor, Fr. Curtis Hecker, and principal, Brenda Hickok, as well as the staff from all parts of the school.”

That sense of community extends to alumni of St. Peter’s shows, Wulke reports, noting that he delights in seeing them return to encourage the latest show’s cast and crew. He also expresses appreciation for how well the school’s fifth graders embrace their jobs on tech crew, and for how the shows’ success attracts some with no previous interest in theater.

“I’ve had eighth graders audition who’ve never been in a show,” he said. “I ask why they want to join, and they say seeing their friends in the shows makes them want to try.”

Peter Pan is scheduled to take place at 7 p.m. on the nights of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, April 30-May 2, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 3. Wulke indicates that some of the technically challenging aspects of Peter Pan – such as simulated flight – are very much part of the plan, as are sets such as the Lost Boys’ cave hideout and a massive pirate ship. 

“That is going to be bigger than anything we have ever built,” he said. “It is going to be awesome.”

Even more awesome, he reflects, are the occasions when he looks into life’s rearview mirror and detects God’s hand at work. Wulke hopes his students do the same. “These kids do such amazing work, and it’s been an honor to watch them grow as performers, and in their faith,” he said. “They learn more about the gifts and talents God has given them and put them to use for his glory. Many have no idea what they can do until they try.”