the drake performance center sign in front of the door to the building

In the performance, nine senior graduates will be responsible for creating a segment that tells the narrative of Central Ohio’s opioid epidemic. Credit: Mackenzie Shanklin | Photo Editor

Despite unprecedented challenges, Ohio State’s Department of Theatre senior graduate students are finding a way to tell the story of Ohio’s opioid epidemic. 

In a typical academic year, the senior graduate students are presented with a topic to feature in their final play performance. This year, Tom Dugdale, assistant professor in the Department of Theatre and the director of the unnamed project, chose an issue that hits close to home for Ohioans: the opioid epidemic. 

In 2018, 3,237 people died from an overdose involving the use of opioids in Ohio, according to data from the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Ohio providers wrote 53.5 opioid prescriptions per 100 persons, a number that’s 2.1 prescriptions higher than the United States rate of 51.4 prescriptions per 100 persons, according to the website. The Ohio Hospital Association estimates that 110,000 Ohioans are currently suffering from an addiction to opioids. 

Although Dugdale expected the topic to be challenging, the unanticipated pandemic created a new set of challenges for his students. 

The performance, which has yet to be titled, will star the department’s nine senior graduate students. Typically performed in the art of being in a play, the COVID-19 outbreak forced the department to change to a virtual format, Dugdale said. Now, each student is responsible for creating a segment that tells the narrative of central Ohio’s opioid epidemic. 

The segments will then be compiled into one video, a task that Dugdale said has never been done or required by the department before.

“It jumped from (being) this play to this multi-piece film structure, and in terms of what I expect from them at the end (now) is a piece we can show an audience,” Dugdale said. 

Research for the project was done through a partnership with Maryhaven, a comprehensive behavioral treatment center specializing in addiction recovery in Columbus, Connor Graham, a senior theatre graduate student, said. 

Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, the students went on weekly visits to spend time and talk with patients at the center who are in the process of rehabilitation from drug addiction, Dugdale said. They would listen to the stories and develop relationships with the patients.

“We have read a lot of books and watched a lot of documentaries and received statistics (on opioid addiction), but attaching those numbers to someone’s actual true story really makes it personal and helped me connect with this issue in a new way,” Matt Greenburg, a senior theatre graduate, said.

Drawing from their experiences at the center, the students are then tasked with creating a video segment that encompasses an individual’s journey through addiction. It’s a process that requires empathy, Graham said.

“We approached this with a level of empathy and respect so that we don’t cause any more pain than what already exists, but we are certainly hoping to illuminate the problem in the service of education and maybe even healing,” Graham said.

The students hope the performance will encourage future filmmakers to acknowledge that addiction is an everyday reality for people and the way addiction is displayed in productions currently isn’t accurate, Jacob Athyal, a senior theatre graduate student, said. They also hope it will start the conversation around destigmatizing drug addiction, reminding people that it can affect anyone.

“It’s a much more complicated conversation, because they’re not just those addicts — they’re just you wearing different shoes,” Athyal said. 

The project does not have an official date of release for public viewing but is expected to come out at the end of January, Erin Parsons, a senior theatre graduate, said.