Climenhaga, Joel

Joel Climenhaga was a writer and playwright, as well as a professor of theater at Kansas State University. After being born in Zimbabwe in 1922, Climenhaga’s family moved frequently throughout his childhood. Climenhaga began his writing career in 1937 by writing short stories and poems, many about his childhood in Africa. From 1939 to 1941, he attended Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania, but he did not graduate. In 1942, Climenhaga moved to California to work at Upland Lemon Growers Association. He entered the U.S. Army in 1945 as a conscientious objector and was discharged in 1946. From 1948 to 1950, Climenhaga attended Chaffey College in Ontario, California, earning his A.A. in Theater Arts, Art, and English in 1949. Climenhaga then attended UCLA from 1950 to 1956, earning his B.A. in Theater Arts in 1953 and his M.A. in Theater Arts in 1958. While at UCLA, Climenhaga wrote the play “Marriage Wheel,” which won the Samuel Goldwyn Award, and in 1956, he published his play “Heathen Pioneer: a comedy in one act.”

After completing his studies, Climenhaga was a visiting professor at Wilmington College and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. From 1963 to 1968, he was an Associate Professor of Speech, Drama, and English at Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri, where he was also the chairman of the Department of Speech and Drama from 1964 to 1968. In 1968, Climenhaga became an Associate Professor of Theatre, as well as a member of the graduate faculty, at Kansas State University, a position he would hold until 1987. Climenhaga also served at K-State as the Director of Theatre from 1968 to 1987 and the coordinator of the New Play Program from 1972 to 1987.

Climenhaga continued to publish his plays and writings while at K-State. This included the works “Hawk and Chameleon” in 1972, and the “One Man’s Frontier” column in the “Flinthills Journal” based in Wamego, Kansas from 1979 to 1980. Other works of his published throughout the 1970s include “Awakening,” “The Back Shelf Dispatch,” “Below Ground Level,” “Counsel for the Offense,” and “Greenage.” From 1981 to 1987, some of his newspaper columns were broadcast over K-State’s radio station, KSAC, in a bi-monthly program entitled “One Man’s Journey.”

Climenhaga left K-State in 1987 to become a professor of Theatre Arts and English and the coordinator of the New Play Program at Tarkio College in Tarkio, Missouri. He worked at Tarkio until 1991. Throughout this time, he published multiple collections of poems, as well as the newspaper column “Dear Good People.” After briefly working for one year from 1991 to 1992 as professor of Theatre Arts and coordinator of the New Play Program at Teikyo Westmar University in LeMars, Iowa, Climenhaga retired in 1992 and moved to Bisbee, Arizona. In retirement, Climenhaga remained active in theater and writing, including serving on the Board of Directors of the Bisbee Repertory Theatre. Climenhaga died in 2000, and his work “Eighty Six Thousand Five Hundred and Fifty Three: a Sequence of Journey Poems” was published posthumously in 2001.

Written in February 2021 by Jarrod Kuckelman.

Creator Source: Local Authority File
Biographical/Historical Note Author: Cynthia Harris