On any given day walking through the Reynolds Building, it isn’t unusual to see a pixie-like woman bustling from office to office, stacks of paper rustling between her fingers as she hums “Cry Me a River” by Michael Buble, a smile rippling across her face.
Down the same hallway careless laughter echoes from an office next to hers where a jolly man sits, furiously flipping papers, a novelty tie hung around his neck, a sly glint always in his eye.
Steve and Dottie Frye are arguably some of the most recognizable figures on Harding’s campus. What has even more widespread notoriety is the show they both direct and head every year, Harding’s largest annual event, Spring Sing.
A musical revue styled show, Spring Sing attracts more than 10,000 audience members to the Benson Auditorium every Easter weekend. For 40 years now, Spring Sing has involved around 1,000 people on campus through directing, performing and producing. In accordance with the 40th anniversary, the Fryes selected “Larger than Life” as the theme, and have been working their hardest to truly make it so.
In 1992, Dottie Frye was asked by the head of the theatre department to begin work as a co-director of the hosts and ensemble. A few years later, Dr. David Burks created an artistic director position especially for Steve Frye, and the Fryes have been working together on the project ever since, which they both say they enjoy immensely.
“I love it,” Dottie Frye said. “We’ve worked together on everything we’ve done since college. The only time we couldn’t work together was when he went on to earn his doctorate, and even then he would do the class work while I typed his papers. I’m spoiled rotten.”
“It’s like working with your best friend, and even after all these years I still find joy in it,” Steve Frye said.
The two are the perfect match if there ever was one. But aside from their love for each other is an unconditional love for the people they work and surround themselves with. Neither of them ever find pressure in directing such a large show because they so fully trust the people around them to do their jobs exceptionally well.
Both Dottie and Steve Frye said the show is not just their work in any shape, form or fashion, but instead the product of a fabulous team of professionals.
And a huge part of that team is the student directors that are selected by each club to run the individual shows that make up Spring Sing. These students put in more time than almost anyone else, starting workshops in the early fall of each year to prepare for their show seven months later. They are taken through an intensive theater 101-style class to teach them the basics of staging and then a course on peer direction. Steve Frye and his co-club director, Cindee Stockstill, do everything they can to make sure the clubs reach their full potential, according to hostess Lindsey Sloan.
“It’s hard, but they all do it with such grace and handle themselves beautifully; it’s a real comment on our student body,” Dottie Frye said in comment to the student directors.
“You learn an interesting type of friendship,” Dustyn Stokes said about being directed by her peers in a club show. “It’s kind of a give and take of respect, but if handled correctly by both parties, then you will create an experience that is unique and incredible.”
And even under all the pressure of directing something that will be seen by thousands and judged for places and cash prizes, the directors are able to find joy in what they do as well.
“I have to say that it has been very rewarding to see students from all levels of talent and experience come together to make Spring Sing a work of art,” Dylan Petit, an Omega Phi director, said. “I’m very thankful for the opportunity to teach something that I love, and see all sorts of Harding students benefit from it.”
When the Fryes start discussing the future of Spring Sing they simply chuckle and give each other a knowing glance.
“Choir robes and risers,” Dottie Frye said. “That’s about all I can do anymore.”
“And a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling,” Steve Frye said.
But when they speak seriously about it, their true goals are high. The Fryes and the team that works side by side with them wants Spring Sing to be better than the other standing shows that can be found around the country and they want to do what other schools can’t. They want to touch people’s lives, in a way they feel only music and dance can. They want people to become a part of the experience. They want to be “Larger than Life.”
