Ohio

Can ancient drama heal modern divides? One rural Ohio college thinks so

Published

3 months ago

October 21, 2024

Can ancient drama heal modern divides? One rural Ohio college thinks so

Kenyon College’s auditorium resounded with the booming voices of tragic heroes and the sing-song prayer of ancient narrators. The epic conjured up images of panic-stricken people, grieving loss in a city that’s been reduced to ruins.

Students sat alongside professional actors, reading excerpts from “Trojan Women,” an ancient play that tells the story of the aftermath of the Trojan War. It’s a script that is more than two thousand years old, but Kenyon senior and performer Sofiia Shyroka said its themes still resonate.

“My entire family is Ukrainian. My father is actually fighting in the war and he’s on the frontlines right now,” Shyroka said. “And through reading this play, I think the thing that stood out to me the most was like, ‘Oh not much has really changed.’”

That’s why, nearly two decades ago, Kenyon grad Bryan Doerries founded Theater of War Productions, a national performance group that uses Classic theater to explore contemporary conflicts.

On Ohio campuses, conversations around the Israel-Hamas conflict are fraught. Some schools reported a wave of antisemitism and Islamophobia after the Hamas attacks last October. And protests erupted as students called for their universities to divest from Israel in the aftermath. It continues to divide campuses across the country.

Kendall Crawford

Ohio Newsroom

Bryan Doerries introduced the compilation of ancient works that were presented at Kenyon College. Actors and students read excerpts from “The Trojan Women” and the “Iliad”.

Doerries believes that ancient stories can be an antidote to the division.

“[We’re] going back to these ancient texts, often as a way of connecting with the emotions we should be feeling in the present about what’s happening around us,” Doerries said.

The Theater of War

His group has performed thousands of productions at prisons, military bases, hospitals, homeless shelters and college campuses across the country. They’ve tackled topics like addiction, sexual violence and racism.

It’s not the organization’s first trip to Kenyon, either. They visited the rural Ohio college last year to put on a production of Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People,” a political drama about a small town dealing with the discovery that its water is contaminated. Local county officials participated onstage and in a discussion afterwards about navigating public health crises.

Kenyon students and professional actors performed excerpts from Greek plays.

Now, with armed conflicts underway in Ukraine, Israel and Sudan, Doerries said his troupe is turning to Euripides to explore the human cost of war.

“I think it’s actually morally injurious to ignore the suffering of others, to ignore the suffering of innocent civilians or children, no matter what side you stand on,” he said. “So the play is a play that’s written by the Greeks about their enemy, the Trojans. And it’s sympathetic to the enemy’s perspective.”

Democratizing dialogue

The text is rich with emotion and moral complexity, brought to life by acclaimed actors Josh Hamilton and Chad Coleman. The reading ended with Greek soldiers executing the child of the enemy’s general. Academy-award nominee Debra Winger, known for her role in “Terms of Endearment,” beat her chest in agony onstage as Hecuba.

“Oh you heartless heathens value violence over reason. Why did this child die? What made you so afraid of him that you would murder an innocent boy?” Winger cries.

“The actors in our projects, they go for broke. They they commit to the extreme emotions of Greek tragedy. And in so doing, they basically move the walls of the room back and they say to the audience, ‘We’ve already gone there, you can meet us halfway.’”

Bryan Doerries, artistic director of Theater of War Productions.

But as the tragedy concluded, the curtain didn’t close. Instead, Doerries opened the floor for audience members to speak. Kenyon students and staff used the ancient text to talk about their personal experience with gun violence, grief, the feeling of complicity in distant wars.

Kenyon sophomore Maya Ferguson related the events onstage to the war casualties in Gaza.

“The girl who died when she was out roller skating. I saw an image earlier of a boy with marbles still in his hands … that inexplicable death of children,” Ferguson said.

Confronting conflict

Conversations about war have been difficult to have on campus. The night of the performance, though, students seemed comfortable as they talked through the play. That’s by design, Doerries said.

“We’re talking about the present conflicts, but we’re talking about it by way of the ancient past [which] creates enough of a buffer where people can hear each other’s perspective,” he said.

Sophomore Maya Ferguson reads alongside Josh Hamilton at Kenyon College's Theater of War production. — Sophomore Maya Ferguson reads alongside Josh Hamilton at Kenyon College’s Theater of War production.

Kenyon is just the latest stop on a long list of colleges that Doerries’s troupe will visit, including many campuses that have been hotbeds of protest in the last year.

The Theater of War isn’t meant to give these institutions a path forward or offer a solution for peace. Instead, Doerries ends each performance with a simple assurance.

“You are not alone across time,” Doerries said to the audience.

For students like Ferguson and Shyroka, that’s a comfort – and a calling: to not shy away from tragedy.

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Ohio

Ohio State Defensive End Mitchell Melton Entering the Transfer Portal for Final Year of Eligibility

Published

7 hours ago

January 5, 2025

Press Room

Ohio State Defensive End Mitchell Melton Entering the Transfer Portal for Final Year of Eligibility

Mitchell Melton will play a sixth year of college football, but it won’t be at Ohio State.

The fifth-year Ohio State defensive end opted to enter the transfer portal on Sunday, according to multiple reports.

Ohio State linebacker Mitchell Melton is entering the transfer portal, a source tells @CBSSports/@247Sports.
Melton, who is repped by @APSportsAgency, is a former top-185 overall recruit who has 12 tackles and two sacks this year.https://t.co/9Xz4TxxKfX pic.twitter.com/He1Laiy5vp
— Matt Zenitz (@mzenitz) January 6, 2025
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Initially recruited to Ohio State as a linebacker, Melton moved to defensive end after missing the entirety of the 2021 and 2022 seasons due to injuries. He’s seen occasional playing time as a rotational player over the past two seasons, recording 15 total tackles with 6.5 tackles for loss and three sacks.

Had Melton stayed at Ohio State for the 2025 season, he likely would have remained in a backup role for the Buckeyes. While Jack Sawyer and JT Tuimoloau will exhaust their eligibility after this season, Kenyatta Jackson Jr., Caden Curry and incoming Idaho State transfer Logan George are the most likely candidates to lead Ohio State’s depth chart on the edge next season. C.J. Hicks is also a potential candidate to become a full-time edge player next season.

Melton still has another year of eligibility because he took a redshirt in 2021 after all players received an extra year of eligibility in 2020. With Melton and Patrick Gurd departing, Ohio State will not have any members of its 2020 recruiting class on its roster next season, as the rest of its scholarship players from that class (Gee Scott Jr., Josh Fryar, Ty Hamilton, Cody Simon and Lathan Ransom) who remain with the Buckeyes are set to exhaust their eligibility after this season.

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Ohio

Gamethread/How to watch Northwestern at Ohio State: TV, radio, streaming, injury report

Published

14 hours ago

January 5, 2025

Press Room

Gamethread/How to watch Northwestern at Ohio State: TV, radio, streaming, injury report

Northwestern women’s basketball will face off against No. 10 Ohio State to open up the 2025 portion of its season. The ‘Cats (7-7, 0-3 B1G) head into the New Year, coming off back-to-back conference losses against Washington and Oregon. A win would be an ideal wait to start this next slate of 15 Big Ten games, but Ohio State (13-0, 2-0 B1G) is undefeated and has proven to be among the best in the country. The Buckeyes not only lead the Big Ten in points per game with 85.9 but sit 10th nationally, while also housing a top-30 scoring defense.

Broadcast Information

Location: Schottenstein Center (Columbus, Ohio)

Game Time: 12 p.m. CST

TV/Streaming: B1G+

Radio: WNUR Sports

Northwestern Injury Report

Rachel Mutombo — OUT

Lauren Trumpy — OUT

Crystal Wang — OUT

Taylor Williams — QUESTIONABLE

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Ohio

Ohio task force launches resources, recommendations for how to use AI in schools

Published

22 hours ago

January 5, 2025

Press Room

Ohio task force launches resources, recommendations for how to use AI in schools

While artificial intelligence, or AI, continues to grow and improve, infiltrating classrooms across the region, some educators are feeling stuck.

More than a dozen districts had AI policies in place when The Enquirer surveyed local school systems at the start of the school year. But dozens of others didn’t know where to start.

“The issue is so complex a topic,” Norwood City School District Superintendent Mary Ronan wrote in an email to The Enquirer. “AI touches everything from Siri to spell-checkers to ChatGPT to software that moves students to different skill levels based on their response and on and on. Districts need guidance from professionals in the field to encompass all the issues.”

That guidance has finally come.

The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce launched the Ohio AI in Education Strategy in December. The toolkit includes recommendations for AI policies. The guidance also has resources on how to incorporate AI literacy into education preparation programs and how to integrate AI into Ohio’s learning standards.

Lt. Gov. Jon Husted led a coalition of educators, industry representatives, AI experts and other professionals to develop the recommendations, which can be found online. On the site, there are resources for teachers, parents and policymakers.

“This toolkit is not intended as a mandate to use artificial intelligence in education, but instead as a trusted and vetted resource that will aid Ohio’s educators and parents in their mission to prepare our students for this emerging technology,” the executive summary on the website reads.

Below are the coalition’s recommendations for K-12 school districts:

Form an AI task force.
Establish a policy governing the use of AI in schools.
Offer AI professional development and support for staff.

When it comes to creating AI policies, the coalition recommends:

Clearly define how students and staff should use AI.
Provide standards for maintaining privacy and personally identifiable information.
Include guidelines on how to use AI ethically.
Consider and outline how to evaluate AI tools from third party vendors.
Consider how AI use might impact learning objectives and student assessments.

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