"Actress Enjoys Playing Variety of Roles" 

Professor built Waubonsee Community College theatre, communications divisions

Maria Bakalis has played many parts: director, mother, teacher, political campaigner, proud Greek-American.

And that’s not even counting her stage roles.

“The first thing I ever wanted to do was plays,” says the petite woman, sitting in her office stuffed with playbills, play posters and photos.

Bakalis, 60, of Glen Ellyn, was promoted to a full professor position at Waubonsee Community College in Sugar Grove this year but has been building the theatre and communications departments for 26 years.

“She built the curriculum,” said Bill Marzano, dean of the college of communications, humanities and fine arts. “The woman can do everything.”

She acts in and directs several productions a year and has performed throughout Illinois and abroad.

A career in the arts has always been a goal for Bakalis, but she has blended that with a passion for teaching, an appreciation for diversity and a heavy dose of humility.

“People sometimes have a ’star system’ misconception about theatre,” she said. “There are no stars. Everyone is an interconnected piece.”

ALWAYS ACTING
Bakalis’ directing experience started in her parents’ grocery store on the south side of Chicago when she was in fifth grade. To convince other children to be in her plays, she would offer them candy from the store.

Her father was a Greek immigrant and her mother a second-generation Greek-American who wanted to instill a sense of heritage in Bakalis and her brother. Three times a week, she traveled to Greek school to learn language and history.

She graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor’s degree in speech and theatre, Northeastern Illinois University with a master’s degree in communications and theatre, and got her doctorate in adult continuing-education from Northern Illinois University.

She taught at an inner-city Chicago high school before moving to a community college and came to Waubonsee in 1979. She said the high school was an important educational experience.

“Poverty, drugs, security—every issue you could think of was reflected there,” she said. “Some of the students you know overcame a lot just to be in class that day.”

ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE
When Bakalis came to Waubonsee, the theatre department had two classes. She has added multiple classes in communications and theatre in her time there.

She also directs plays and the student theatre group Stage Performers, Etc. She co-wrote a book for one of her classes on interpersonal communication.

She acts in and directs community theatre throughout the Chicago area and has received acting certificates from academies in London and Athens.

Several years ago, she debuted her one-woman show “La Maria,” which she also wrote, about the life of opera diva Maria Callas.

The show runs about 80 minutes, with Bakalis’ acting interspersed with Callas’ singing.

“I spent a year reading everything I could get my hands on about her,” Bakalis said. “She was a very complicated person. She appeared arrogant, but really she was very insecure.”

She’s performed the show throughout Illinois and in Greece, Callas’ birthplace.

Her performances earned her the Twentieth Century Award for Achievement in the Field of Theater from the International Biographical Centre of Cambridge, England, in 1999.

“I wanted to combine her perspective on art and what was going on in her own personal odyssey,” Bakalis said.

She still reads through the script once a week in case anyone requests that she do the show.

Next year, she plans to tour Greece again with the show and perform it in Greek.

FAMILY TIES
In the mid-1970s, Bakalis joined a political campaign without knowing it would change her life.

While working on the campaign of a Democratic, Greek-American candidate for state comptroller, she met her future husband, the candidate’s brother.

Michael Bakalis was elected state comptroller in 1976. Maria married George Bakalis the next year.

Michael Bakalis also ran unsuccessfully for governor against Jim Thompson.

George Bakalis was a teacher before he went to law school and spent a decade as an attorney.

He was appointed an associate judge in 1990 and was elected as a Republican circuit court judge in 1996. He most notably oversaw the Marilyn Lemak trial and sentencing of the Naperville woman to life in prison for the murder of her three children.

“You can definitely tell who’s the judge and who’s the actor” in the relationship, Maria said. “I do things to reveal feelings and emotions, and he’s got to suppress that.”

The couple has two grown children, a teacher and a caterer.

LEARNING TO LISTEN
Bakalis enjoys acting because it allows her to be expressive and promote empathy, she said.

Acting can be a great community at its best and turn toward cliquey at its worst, she said.

“It frees you to express all sorts of emotion that in daily life you don’t always have the ability to express,” she said. “The goal is to make a concept universal, so people see something in themselves.”

One common misconception she said she often has to correct in young actors is that there is a star of the show and that acting is an individual field.

“It can’t be an ego issue because you want to connect to the audience and make people think and feel,” she said. “The minute you start thinking about yourself, there’s a disconnect with the audience.”

Also an important tool is learning how to listen, even onstage, she said.

“When you’re on stage, you’re only as good as the other actors with you,” she said. “Acting is reacting. I can’t express my feelings until I hear what you’ve said.”

Bakalis’ students say she is tough but fair and encouraging. Besides her acting awards, she was awarded the Woman of the Year in the Arts by the United Hellenic Voters of America in 2002 and was the recipient of the Waubonsee Faculty of the Year award in 1998. She is now working to direct a play originally written by Halsted Street immigrants in 1939 about their experiences in Chicago. She is usually busy with a play — or a few — and she likes to keep that schedule.

“I think that to be part of the ballgame, you’ve got to keep active,” she said. “Otherwise, you’re not a participant; you’re an observer.”

(Originally published in the “Daily Herald,” October 2, 2005.)