From genetic engineering to digital forensics to the plays of Harold Pinter, campus labs across the sciences, professional disciplines, and humanities showcase the talent, curiosity, and impact of Norwich faculty and students. Portraits of nine diverse researchers and the labs they work in.
BY SEAN MARKEY
The Norwich Record | Winter 2018
A place for focused effort, experimentation, exploration and discovery. If anything in the Humanities fits the definition of a lab, it’s theatre. “You can take risks and try new things,” says Assistant Professor of Theatre Jeffry Casey. In November, Casey directed actors in the Norwich student theatre troupe the Pegasus Players in a production of two short Harold Pinter plays, “Party Time” and “New World Order.” The works explore authoritarianism and torture while grappling with the theme of power. Casey, who joined the Norwich faculty in July, says producing theatre at a military college like Norwich is an opportunity to expose future military and civilian leaders to ideas through art. “Nothing is more important than [how] they think about power and what it means [to] have power and what it means to be complicit in injustice or justice.”
Casey, who also teaches classes on public speaking, writing, and literature, says he wants to push theatre at Norwich into other arenas. He has already visited ESL classes and says theatre students could support other campus programs in countless ways. “We live in a world of non-scarcity in some ways with so many products, particularly culture,” he says. “But theatre is a scarce resource, and that makes it more valuable.”
Related Story: Jeff Casey on Why I Teach
