You like it here?

Oh, sure.

I like it, uh, fine.

I meant the university.

Oh, I thought you meant, uh.

Yes, I can see that you did.

I meant university.

Well, I like it fine.

Just fine.

You, you've been here a long time, haven't you?

Oh, yes, yes.

Ever since I married, what's her name, Martha.

Even before that, forever.

You see, I think that the theater is central to life, and I don't think you can exist without it.

What do you think of that for a declension, young man?

The best summary that I've ever heard about what the theater is, is an art form or just what it is.

Clifton Fadiman once said that theater is the most immediate way that one human being can tell another what it to be a human being.

And I think that's absolutely true, that that relationship between an audience and a live actor on stage in a very fine piece of dramatic literature is really.

Reveals to the spectator enormous amounts of things about his own life and his own feelings.

And no other art form does that as immediately as the theater does.

The Ohio State University Department of Theater has been training young people for careers in the professional theater since the mid 1940s.

Presenting more than 100 public performances each year, the department manages three theaters and provides training in stage management, lighting, directing, and acting.

Disturbed our sport, therefore the wind piping to us in vain as in revenge hath sucked up from the sea contagious fogs which falling in You have to be a producer, and you have to make money, and you to be success, and have to win the Big Ten Championships every year.

And you also have to teach.

And so it's a very, very contradictory and competitive kind of world.

It's very exciting in terms of production.

Graduate student Charles Murray plays Nick in this scene from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Well, I'm sure I don't know, he just finished saying the same things that motivated you were the same thing that motivated me.

I said, I imagine they were.

Oh, I see, you did.

George is trying to figure out Nick.

And Nick is not the sharpest, the wittiest character in the world, even though Nick would like to impress George.

And it's just a very slow, halting scene because Nick just can't really capture George's interest.

And being a more realistic play, the nuances of everything you do is magnified.

He's very much a black man The policy of the Ohio State University School of Theater is non-traditional casting, and I like it, because, but I certainly wouldn't want a role that would radically change with my being in it, and I think that's the way you have to look at all roles, is figure out who can do the best job and will it, will any sort of interracial or intersexual thing change radically what the play is trying to say.

Ill met by moonlight proud to touch.

What?

Jealous Oberon?

Ferry skip hence, I have a swore in his bed and company.

Terry, rash wanton!

I'm not like that.

Then I must be thy lady.

We simply think that in a four year period, not only theater majors, but all students should have an opportunity to see all kinds of plays.

The teaching environment is difficult because you are teaching people how to act.

Generally in the professional theater you assume that you're dealing with people who are very wonderful actors.

Now we have wonderful actors here but we also have people who have never done Shakespeare before, who are uncomfortable on stage, uncomfortable with their own bodies.

So you're teaching them how to relate as an actor to their material.

The scene that you are going to be seeing from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream.

Is the first meeting that we see of Titania and Oberon, who are king and queen of the fairies.

Forgeries of jealousy and Never since middle summer spring met we on hill in dale forest or mead by pivot fountain or by rushy brook Or by the beached margin of the sea to dance our ringlets to the whistling wind But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport Therefore the wind piping to us in vain as in revenge hath sucked up from the sea contagious fogs which falling in the land of every pelting river-maid so proud that they have over-born their continents.

And this same progeny of evils comes from our debate, from our dissension.

We are their parents and originals.

Do you amend it then?

It lies in you.

Why should Titania cross her Oberon?

I do but beg a little changeling boy to be my henchman.

Set your heart at rest.

The fairy land buys not the child of me.

I think theater, you can't do it unless you are committed to it moment by moment and that's a good lesson to learn for life too.

We have a kind of slogan around here that this is where performance and scholarship meet and we try very hard to make them both work together.