COLUMBUS, Ohio — The start of the fall semester marked a new school year for many students, and, for the students of The Ohio State University Department of Theatre, Film and Media Arts, it also meant a brand-new, state-of-the-art facility.
The new building is located along College Drive in the heart of the campus’ burgeoning arts district.
"This new space is beautiful," said Maranda DeBusk, lighting faculty at the department of theatre. "It's got all sorts of new technology and innovation and it's a beautiful part of this arts center in this part of campus."
The vibrant new four-story building is home to a proscenium theater, a thrust black box theater, design spaces, rehearsal studios, acting classrooms, an expansive scene shop, a lighting studio and an impressive new costume studio. The building also houses many new editing and studio spaces for the film and media arts students.
"[It's] a really excellent space for students to learn," said DeBusk.
The students are breaking in the new proscenium theater space this weekend with the department's first play in the new building.
"She Kills Monsters" is a play from 2011 written by Qui Nguyen. Set in 1995 Athens, OH, the story follows a young woman who, after losing her entire family in a car crash, sets out to learn about her younger sister through a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that was left behind.
"We're really taking advantage of the new building, the new theater," said Emily Broski, a fifth year theatre and psychology major who portrays older sister Agnes in the play. "We have so many special effects, so many lighting effects, so many...crazy monsters, crazy costumes - everything that you could want in a DnD crazy fantasy show, I think we have it."
"She's dealing with grief; she's dealing with growing up," explained DeBusk who also served as the lighting designer for the production. "She's dealing with what it means to be 24 while dealing with what it means to lose your family and she's trying to figure out how do you balance that; how do you heal with that and live in that, and she finds that by encountering what her sister leaves behind which is a DnD campaign."
For her part, DeBusk took advantage of the new facility's lighting capabilities when designing the more than 800 lighting cues for the magical show.
“From a lighting perspective it’s just a lot of fun,” DeBusk beamed. "You’ve got things flying in and out, you’ve got costume changes, you have everything working together in synchrony in a way that really shows off what theater can do."
“She Kills Monsters” runs through Nov. 3. For more information, just visit the production's website: https://theatreandfilm.osu.edu/events/she-kills-monsters
For more on the closing of Ohio State's Department of Theatre's previous home, The Drake, check out our previous story.