WSU theater professor was known for her dedication to her craft and to her students

There’s a picture circulating on social media that’s captivated most who have seen it.

An athletic man and woman with swords in their hands lean across a train coupling in a passionate kiss. It almost looks like a staged photo out of Hollywood to promote an upcoming romantic thriller.

Instead, it was an impromptu photo of Ed and Danette Baker, two staples in the Wichita theater community caught smooching during a 2011 photo shoot on a train parked under Kellogg.

Ed Baker shared the photo over the weekend after his wife died from small cell lung cancer at age 58.

Danette Baker, who was the program director of theater at Wichita State University’s School of Performing Arts, got cancer just over a year ago but had clean scans until nine weeks ago, when a virulent strain of the disease struck.

Ed Baker, the technical director at the School of Performing Arts, said his wife handled it like she did everything else in her life.

“She’s a badass.”

Her strength and passion but also her thoughtfulness and ability to listen are what friends and colleagues most remember about Danette Baker.

“It’s rare that you meet such a strong, direct woman,” said Cheyla Clawson, director of WSU’s School of Performing Arts.

“At first, I think I was a little taken aback but also so inspired,” she said. “It’s almost like she gave other women permission to be themselves.”

Clawson said frankness isn’t always rewarded in an academic setting.

“It was just refreshing that someone was just willing to share how they feel in an open, honest and authentic way.”

Longtime Wichita theater professional Deb Campbell called Baker petite but fierce with powerful movements and a strong stage presence.

However, she said, “Her superpower, if she had one, is that she listened with that same intensity that she spoke.”

Ed Baker said that “whenever she listened to somebody, she listened from a leaning forward position . . . with 100% of herself. I think people saw that.”

It’s part of how she influenced thousands of students and others in the theater community, many of whom have been sharing stories and tributes on social media.

Max Wilson first encountered Danette Baker as a professor when he was a freshman.

“She has this . . . dedication to her craft that is so inspiring but is so overwhelming for a first-year student.”

He said Baker pushed her students to be their best.

“There was just a matter of attention that she paid to everyone’s performances.”

There also was quite a load of homework and research, too, he said.

For instance, she would instruct students to “go out into nature and watch an animal and come back to class and perform your monologue inspired by the movement of that animal.”

“It’s actually a practice I still use,” said Wilson, who is executive director of the Crown Arts Collaborative, the nonprofit producing theater at the Crown Uptown Theatre.

Last year, Baker directed the collaborative’s first holiday show while undergoing chemotherapy.

Wilson called Baker a brilliant actress, but he said it’s the moments he spent sitting in her office during school that he most appreciates.

“It was just the constant affirmation,” he said. Without her belief in him, Wilson said, “I truly don’t think I could be doing the job I’m doing now.”

He called Baker “the biggest cheerleader of theater.”

Wilson said she would make social media posts that said, “All right, there’s a lot to see this weekend. There’s a lot of artists to support.”

Dan Schuster, who works at Emprise Bank but is active in the theater community, said Baker was extremely deliberate and cautious when teaching people stage combat and always willing to volunteer her help.

“She was such a generous soul.”

The two were planning to work together on an April production, and he said her death doesn’t seem real yet.

“I’m still kind of reeling from it.”

Ed Baker said though his wife studied dance from when she was a little girl, she also “was the only girl Boy Scout in the ’70s.”

That’s because she had three brothers who were all Scouts, and her parents were Scout masters, so she attended all the meetings, too.

Once, they were in a Scouting camp store, and her mother asked Danette — named for her Uncle Dan — if she might like a key ring, lanyard or another gift from the shop.

“She pointed to (a) Bowie knife and said, ‘That.’ ”

During the ’90s, the Bakers moved to New York to pursue their careers.

“What we found out was that we weren’t interested in New York, we were interested in people,” Ed Baker said.

He said it’s easier to learn and share in Wichita where it is not so cutthroat.

“As it turns out, that’s what our real thing was.”

Around 2007, Danette Baker began to study stage combat, training she had missed while in graduate school. She became so proficient that she started training others, which is why she and her husband did the 2011 photo shoot of them sparring. Baker used it as promotional material for her website.

“What we were doing was communicating with one another and safely performing choreography,” Ed Baker said.

Amid the violence, he said, “Sometimes it’s important for us to . . . let our bodies remind our brains that what we’re doing is a form of play, so we would kiss every opportunity we got when we were sparring.”

With Baker’s death, Clawson said she’s had a realization.

“It’s just rare when you lose someone when you really realize the decades of influence” they’ve had.

She said it “is a reflection of the teacher and artist and colleague she was. It’s incredible.”