OCU’s School of Theater will usher in their spring season with a production of Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear, featuring two OCU faculty in prominent roles. Professor Bill Langan will be portraying the titular character, an aged King of Britain whose political machinations divide his kingdom and family, while Professor Hal Kohlman is featured as the Earl of Gloucester, an underling of Lear’s whose advanced age has not brought him advanced wisdom.
King Lear, with its themes of age, struggle and loss, is uniquely suited to the faculty members’ lived experience.
“The cliche about Lear,” said Langan in an interview with The Campus, “Is you have to be a certain age to get Lear, but if you wait too long, you’re too old to play Lear because it’s very demanding. I think I’m in kind of a sweet spot.”
”The easiest way to identify Gloucester is that he’s a dad,” remarked Kohlman. “I personally feel that I became a better actor when I became a father.”
The two have a long relationship with the Bard; Kohlman worked for Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park for 20 years, performing over 30 roles there, while Langan cut his teeth at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
“Shakespeare has been the great passion of my career,” said Langan. This passion is equaled by the passion that both men have for teaching, and this process has been a chance for them to share the stage with their students and work together as actors.
“We sort of take off the teacher hat completely,” said Kohlman. “I feel like it’s really useful because all of a sudden we’re not teacher-student. We’re colleagues, and we’re working on the same project.”
One such student working alongside Langan and Kohlman is senior music theater major Mike Mariniello, who plays Gloucester’s illegitimate son, Edmund. Mariniello describes coming full circle as an actor in this show.
“My Acting 1 teacher was Hal, my Acting 2 teacher was Bill and then the next acting class I took was the one over the summer with Lance [Marsh, school of theater professor and director of King Lear]. It’s the three people that have kind of shaped my acting technique while I was here.”
The earliest known performance of King Lear was on December 26, 1606. Over 400 years later, the play retains its gravity.
“The fundamental essentials of what it is to be human haven’t changed,” said Langan. ”I want this to be worth someone’s time,” he said. “I want this to be important.”
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