Madi Task, chair of Peer Theatre and Casey Murray, president of Off The Lake Productions help bring educational entertainment to residence halls. Credit: Jasmine Hilton | For The Lantern
When Madi Task, a fourth-year in English literature, joined Peer Theatre, she was looking for an avenue to express her love of acting and community service. Now chair of the team, Task wants other students to discover that same passion.
“This is for people who want to find their place in theater,” Task said.
Peer Theatre, a programming initiative created by Off The Lake Productions at Ohio State, is a team of actors, facilitators and writers who put on educational, yet entertaining performances in residence halls about problems students could face on campus, such as discrimination, exclusion, mental health and LGBTQ issues.
“Peer Theatre is an entertaining means of delivering important messages to students,” said Casey Murray, a fourth-year in strategic communications and president of Off The Lake Productions.
Started in 2013, Peer Theatre is an Involved Living Organization. Its mission is to craft skits that promote the four pillars of residence life: community, wellness, diversity and learning on campus.
The team collects stories from their peers’ own experiences and creates scenes out of them.
“When it comes to writing those stories, we want to make sure that we’re getting the most amount of material from the people who have lived these stories,” Task said.
Task said that while exchanging story ideas one day, one of her fellow castmates shared how his friend told him about how someone revealed that he was gay, forcing him to come out.
The team decided to create a performance based on this situation as a part of its LGBTQ series. It hoped the skit would resonate with students who might have faced a similar dilemma, Task said.
“Things like gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, they’re all different,” Task said. “It’s not something that people are familiar and comfortable with yet, so when you talk about it we find a lot more people asking questions.”
The team’s main goal is to open up dialogue among students and create a safe space for them to discuss issues they haven’t been comfortable talking about in the past.
“We’re trying to find an engaging way to present a topic that would otherwise not be talked about or talked about in a boring way,” Murray said.
Off The Lake is a service-based organization, costing $1 or a donation of a canned good per performance. All of the proceeds are donated to charity.
“We’re using our skills as a way to better the community and help others,” Grace Morgan, a third-year in international business, said.
Most theater organizations face auditions and the looming factor of competition. In Peer Theatre, students don’t face any means of rejection. Each applicant is promised a role in any category of his or her choosing, which includes directing, acting and stagehands, Murray said.
Next semester, the team will offer students the opportunity to put on a night of one-act plays at Short North Stage from Feb. 1-2, 2019.
“It’ll bring in a totally different audience than we’re used to, which is exciting,” Murray said.
But the group’s goal to create more programs doesn’t end there.
Since the group was formed, Peer Theatre has prided itself on having diversity among its performances and is looking to take its inclusion a step further by incorporating a diversity and inclusion initiative, Task said.
The diversity and inclusion initiative is meant to educate members on topics of race and gender. Task said when it comes time to choose a performance to put on for students, members will be taught how to approach sensitive matters in the show, with the goal of performing scenes appropriate for all audiences.
“The more members we can get in our organization who share those stories and perspectives, the more stories we can tell and the more dialogue we can start,” Task said.
