From left, Olivia, played by Erin Cunningham and Maria, played by Lacey Anna Nolan, discuss complicated matters in Twelfth Night. (contributed photo)

Audience members are encouraged to bring a blanket or lawn chairs since seating is not provided.
This popular comedy features the story of Viola, a young maiden washed ashore after a tragic shipwreck. Wishing to protect her virtue, Viola disguises herself as a boy and joins the service of the lovelorn Duke Orsino. Sparks fly and a comic love triangle develops when Viola is asked to woo the melancholy Olivia on behalf of Orsino. Meanwhile, the other members of Olivia’s household concoct their own schemes and love matches.

The play features swordplay, music, mistaken identities, clever clowns, and love lost and found again – all set against the backdrop of the mysterious country of Illyria. Director Elizabeth Helman said this story is perfect for Bard in the Quad’s unique outdoor setting.

“Twelfth Night is a play about excess and intensely passionate characters who fall in and out of love quickly and our concept for this production emphasizes Illyria as a world of extremes,” she said. “A large, outdoor venue allows us to create a very playful and theatrical world for these over-the-top characters to exist.”

The cast features Michael Pierson Bishop as Fabian, Matt Bradley as Malvolio, Jordan Brinck as Curio, Ian Burns as Antonio, Erin Cunningham as Olivia, Troy Eggers as Sebastian, Matt Holland as Feste, Kimberly Holling as Viola, Eric Nepom as Orsino, Jeff Nichols as Sir Andrew, Lacey Nolan as Maria, and Nick Sheler as Sir Toby.

Tickets are on sale now online at www.oregonstate.edu/dept/theatre  and are available at a discounted price until July 20. The “Early Bard” prices are $10, $8 students and seniors (ages 55 and older) and $5 for OSU students.

Tickets will be available at the Memorial Union office or by phone starting July 20. Call: 541-737-2784. Ticket prices will then be $14 for adults, $10 for students and seniors, and $7 for OSU students.

~ Angela Yeager

Linus Pauling, Nobel prize winner who used to teach at OSU, was a big fan of humor. (archival image courtesy of OSU archives)

“We have a lot of humor in the English department,” said Kerry Ahearn, associate professor and chair. “We’re all children of Mark Twain and Tina Fey here – Mrs. Twain notwithstanding.”

Teaching an appreciation of the humor in literature, he says, is a difficult task.

“I think comedy is like good silver – if you handle it much, it starts to tarnish,” he said. “In general, scholarship to my mind usually kills humor. I risked this many times, as when I’ve taught Twain and even Faulkner – who can be screamingly funny. I’ve killed Twain for decades. Twain, who saw pork-barrel politics and wrote, ‘Let’s say I’m an idiot. Let’s say I’m a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.’”

Ahearn said comedy is something to be prized.

“I tell students, ‘If you find great comedy, send it to me.’ Because writing humor is so hard – you can’t be a pretender. Hundreds have written tragedies. Comedy is infinitely more rare.”

Tracy Daugherty, distinguished professor of English, recently published “Hiding Man,” a biography of author Donald Barthelme, whom Daugherty says was “very much a humorist.”

“The most important thing about comedy is timing,” Daugherty says. “One thing I did was analyze the rhythm of Barthelme’s sentences. For humor, a sentence can’t be too long, or you lose the joke. If it’s too short, a reader doesn’t have time for the joke to register… Humor is Barthelme’s mode of seriousness – a way of slipping in very important ideas.”

Daugherty finds that teaching students about humor isn’t always easy.

“So much depends on context. If you’re teaching literature, reading works from several decades ago can be problematic: students may not get the humor when they don’t understand the context. For instance, I was teaching ‘Libra’ by DeLillo. In a passage about newspaper coverage of the JFK assassination, he showed how so many articles were about what Jackie was wearing. I wanted students to catch the absurdity. But one student came up to me after class and asked ‘Is that really how Kennedy died – he was shot?’”

Even when the topic of a course isn’t humor-related, throwing in a few jokes sometimes helps a professor relate to students.
“Humor is critical to my outreach and education work towards healthy aging,” said Sharon Johnson, associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science in the College of Health and Human Sciences.

Her courses, presentations, monthly cable TV show and weekly online and print column depend on humor to get the information across. And in addition, she helps people understand the dynamics of humor.

“I am always looking for a light-hearted approach. When people laugh, they start breathing better. And when they breathe better, they are cognitively more receptive to the information I’m giving.”

Johnson also has a full presentation titled “Laughter – the Healing Power.” In it, she analyzes and demonstrates types of humor: parody, satire, slapstick, nonsense, black, dry, puns and sarcasm. She presents various theories on what makes us laugh, and why.

“I get invitations to speak to organizations of community-dwelling older adults. When I list my possible topics, they usually want the one about laughter – especially lately in these economic times.”

Jon Lewis of English focuses on film and cultural studies, including comedy in film. In fact, his dissertation was on comedy in film. He said it’s hard to talk about what’s funny in an analytic way.

“The minute you start to investigate, it kind of destroys it,” he said. So instead, he places comedy within a historical framework.
“For instance, in silent film the humor is completely crude,” he said. “There’s Chaplain selling hotdogs from a cart on the street: the comedy is sexual, physical, plays on stereotypes – when America was even more puritanical than now. Comedy is always an attack on propriety.”

Today’s humor has its own rude edge.

“Looking at humor in film now – there’s the whole gross-out thing, like in ‘Something About Mary,’ and ‘Dumb and Dumber.’ We live in such a rude culture that those films really had to go far. There’s the popularity of the Jackass films for teens – guys who are sort of stunt men do outrageous, physically unbelievable gags – like someone going into a porta-potty that gets knocked over and dragged down the hill. It’s hysterical in a way.”

Many comedies released during the Depression were about the rich and ridiculous.

“They show that even if you have money, you aren’t necessarily happy – which is a message the rest of us like to hear.” Lewis said. “Comeuppance for the rich and powerful, and someone like Chaplain coming out on top.”

Lewis and other OSU faculty said that teaching someone how to be funny is perhaps the hardest part of addressing humor in the classroom.

Charlotte Headrick, associate chair of Speech Communication who teachers and directs in the Theatre Arts program, likes to quote the actor Edmund Kean to her students: “Dying is easy; comedy is difficult.”

OSU’s Theatre Arts Program meets the challenge of humor head-on. Headrick exuberantly lists its choices of productions of comedy, past, present and future.

“Where do I begin?,” she says. “We devoted one entire season to A World of Comedy in 1999-2000, producing an Irish, an American, a Russian and a French comedy.”

In comedy, as in life, timing can be everything.

“We try to teach students to hold for laughs,” Headrick said. “That means when the audience reacts to humor, the actor should not keep talking, so people don’t miss the next line. The actor should stay in character, wait, and come back with energy.”
In his scholarship, Marion O. Rossi, associate professor, director and acting coach in the University Theatre and director of JumpstART in the department of art, said comedy actually addresses a basic need.

“Comedy is simply the artistic version of the basic human need for humor. Humor is not just about laughter,” he said. “It’s about coping with pain and desire and loss and difference – and the joyous release we feel when we laugh at life’s vicissitudes rather than succumb to them. The connection between humor and pain is so visceral that sometimes we laugh so hard we cry and, more often, we laugh even as we weep.”

Though no OSU scientist is currently measuring, weighing or charting laughter, humor is alive in laboratories and in the field. The Linus Pauling Institute’s researchers and staff are serious, of course, in their focus on micronutrients in promoting health and preventing and treating disease. Yet they are inspired by not only the scientific genius of Linus Pauling, but also his sense of humor.

“He was a funny person,” recalled Steve Lawson, administrative officer, who worked directly with Pauling. “In his famous lectures about vitamin C and health, he would often begin by holding up a vial containing 13 grams of C, saying ‘This is how much C a goat’s body synthesizes each day.’ Then he’d hold up a vial that looked almost empty, saying ‘This is how much the Food and Nutrition Board says we need. I think that a goat knows more about nutrition than does the Board!’”

The LPI crew is known for incorporating humor into their days. “Mainly impromptu– most of it not memorable!,” Lawson said.

“Much of it is irony. And in the stress of trying to get grant applications out by the deadlines, you’ll hear black humor about losing funding.”

Adrian Gombart, also of LPI and an associate professor of biochemistry and biophysics, considers humor essential for scientists.

“Research can be long and hard, and a lot of it doesn’t go the way you want,” he says. “With all the technical hurdles, and hypothesis-changing, maybe only 10 percent of what we do gets published. So a good sense of humor and an optimistic attitude really go a long way toward success.”

He studies the effects of vitamin D, which some researchers are looking at regarding brain function and moods – but Gombart’s focus is on the immune system.

“I do make sure I have plenty of D,” he says. “And I try to surround myself with people who have a good sense of humor. Far Side cartoons are popular in labs. Someone put on our door this anonymous quote: ‘It may look like we aren’t doing anything, but at the cellular level we are really quite busy.’”

~ Jana Zvibleman

The Mikado

One of Gilbert & Sullivan’s most famous operettas, “The Mikado,” opens at Oregon State University on Aug. 14.

“The Mikado” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 14-16, with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday, Aug. 17. The production will take place in Withycombe Hall, 2901 S.W. Campus Way, Corvallis.

Tickets are $14, $10 for seniors and $7 for students, and are available at www.oregonstate.edu/dept/theatre and at the University Theatre box-office in Withycombe Hall on the OSU campus. For ticket information, call 541-737-2784.

“The Mikado” features some of Gilbert and Sullivan’s best-loved songs, including “The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring,” “A Wandering Minstrel I,”  “Here’s a How de Do,” and Three Little Maids from School.”

According to director Charlotte Headrick, this is the fifth time the play has been produced at OSU since it debuted in 1909. The 1927 production included a tour of Oregon logging camps.

Cast in the production include: Colin Fant as the Mikado, Scott Ingham as KoKo, Tom Bombadil as Pooh Bah, Nickoli Strommer as Pish Tush, Jeff Larkin as Nanki Poo, Abbe Groh as Yum Yum, Emily Thielen as Katisha, Allison Duever and Delaney Deaver as Peep Bo, Megan Sand as Pitti Sing.

Chorus members include Amy Rowles, Allison Duever, Delaney Deaver, Katie Badowski, Jene Jacobson, Maarike Teose, Jillian Bower, Amy Severin, Christine Eagleson, Tim Brassfield, Bryan Bernart, Matt Smith, Junho Chang, Tony DeMeo, Steve Ermer and the director of the OSU marching band, Brad Townsend.

The choreographer for the production is Megan Matthes, assisted by her students Ashley Selvey and Cassie Allen. The scene designer is George Caldwell, the music director is Joseph Prather and the costume designer is Kim Decker. Richard Poppino serves as music consultant.

Adapted and directed by Scott Palmer, whose “Romeo and Juliet” in 2006 and “Much Ado About Nothing” in 2007 broke all OSU Theatre box office records, the 2008 production includes a three-week performance schedule of 15 shows over three weekends.

Palmer’s adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” will be performed in the style of the great silent films of the 1910s and 1920s, with costumes reminiscent of the Ziegfeld Follies and the silent film comics. As in the past, the Bard in the Quad production will take place in the large grassy outdoor quad of the Memorial Union on the OSU campus.

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” will be performed Wednesdays through Sundays, July 16 through Aug. 3. Tickets are $14 for general admission, $10 for seniors and students and $7 for OSU students. Tickets can be purchased online at: www.bardinthequad.org, by phone at 541-737-2784 or in person at the Memorial Union box office at the OSU campus during normal business hours.

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” features a cast of more than 18 actors, including the return of visiting artist Maggie Chapin as Bottom and new visiting artist Johanne Scoular as Helena. All of the actors will be playing recognizable icons of Hollywood’s silent film era, such as Rudolph Valentino, Theda Bara, Charlie Chaplin, Fanny Brice and Harold Lloyd.

“This is probably the most challenging outdoor show I’ve ever directed,” Palmer said. “The script is complex, and includes a lot of new materials, including original source material Shakespeare used when he created the story for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’”

Visiting artist Chapin is helping to coach the actors from the community and OSU in the production on the appropriate style of performance from the 1920s.

“There are so many things for the actors to learn and remember – how to act in the style of 1920s silent films, how to move and react like the great silent comics and how to tell the story and project your voice for an outdoor audience,” she said. “Not to mention how to drive a Model T car and how to line-kick like Ziegfeld Follies’ dancers.”

The cast meets every evening for a one-hour voice and body training session, followed by two to three additional acting coaching sessions with the visiting artists each week. The result, said Palmer, is “a very complicated, extremely funny, and completely unique version of ‘Dream.’”

More details on the production, including information about a pre-show lecture series, will be announced at a later date.