Dead Man’s Cell Phone
By Sarah Ruhl
Directed by Beth Kattelman

October 28 – November 6
Blackbox Theatre

An incessantly ringing cell phone at the café table of a dead man leads Jean on a surreal journey where she encounters the dead man’s family and mistress and eventually even speaks with the dead man himself. Sarah Ruhl’s magical realism comedy explores the nature of memory and how technology both connects and isolates us where the mundane cell phone becomes a magical device transporting her character beyond the boundaries of the living world to the afterlife.

MacArthur Fellow Sarah Ruhl is one of the most widely produced playwrights in the United States. Previous Ohio State Theatre productions of Ruhl’s work include Orlando, In the Next Room (Or the Vibrator Play), and Eurydice.

The Importance of Being Earnest
By Oscar Wilde
Directed by Tom Dugdale

November 13 – 20
Proscenium Theatre

Good friends Algernon and Jack use the same alter ego—Ernest—to pursue the innocent Cecily and Gwendolen who insist on marrying a man named Ernest. Gwendolen’s mother, the formidable Lady Bracknell, forbids the match. Using wit, puns, farce, mistaken identity and a handbag, Wilde’s “Trivial Comedy for Serious People” satirizes the superficiality of England’s aristocracy and the hypocrisy of Victorian morality.

Irish playwright Oscar Wilde (1584 – 1900) is best known for his Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. His four comedies of manners (Lady Windermere’s Fan; A Woman of No Importance; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest) made him one of the most successful playwrights of his day. The Importance of Being Earnest is Ohio State Theatre’s most-produced play.

Romeo and Juliet
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Kevin McClatchy

March 4 – 11
Proscenium Theatre

In a city torn apart by violence and in streets filled with death, two teenagers from feuding families discover forbidden love. Driven by the impulsiveness of adolescence, Romeo and Juliet, scions of the leading families of Verona, embark on a whirlwind journey of love-at-first-sight romance, intrigue, and destruction. 

The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet was one of William Shakespeare’s (1564 – 1616) most popular plays during his lifetime and continues to be one his most produced. It is frequently taught in American high schools because of its teen themes.

The Bedridden Prince
By Joseph Lustig and František Kowanic
Co-Created by Lisa Peschel, Mandy Fox, and Karen Mozingo
Directed by Mandy Fox
Choreography by Karen Mozingo
Musical Direction by Theo Jackson

April 8 – 17
Blackbox Theatre

A community of prisoners and their King attempt to protect the young Prince Bettliegend from being shipped away to certain death. A wizard has put the prince under a spell that leaves him bedridden. The King offers the hand of this daughter, Princess Dienstfrei to any man who can free his son from the spell. In the end, the prince accepts his deportation order rather than sacrifice a fellow prisoner by remaining in bed.

The Bedridden Prince by Joseph Lustig (b. 1874) with music by František Kowanic is a cabaret written as a satirical fairy tale and performed by Jewish prisoners in the Terezín/Theresienstadt Ghetto in Czechoslovakia during the Holocaust. It features songs based on popular melodies by Jaroslav Ježek (1906 – 1942), composer for the Liberated Theatre of Jirí Voskovec (1905 – 1981), and Jan Werich (1905 – 1980). The script was lost, but the songs, a poster, and survivors’ memories of parts of the show were preserved and serve as the groundwork for this devised piece.

This production is one part of a three-part international, interdisciplinary, and collaborative research and performance project focused on the Holocaust and Jewish history, theatre, and representation. The production, in combination with two department courses, will provide students with experiential learning in researching and devising theatre from archival and testimonial sources. After presenting it in Columbus, the department will take the production to the Prague Quadrennial, the largest international event in the field of scenography, performance design, and performance space.