VoE - EJ Westlake === EJ Westlake: [00:00:00] I hear people kind of sparring with each other, I usually hear people reminiscing about things, I hear very emotionally complicated kinds of conversations in the way that people kind of dance around them, and hear the things that matter to people and how they're interacting with each other. Those kinds of things really fascinate me. Jen Farmer: From the heart of the Ohio State University on the Oval, this is Voices of Excellence from the College of Arts and Sciences, with your host David Staley. Voices focuses on the innovative work of Arts and Sciences faculty and staff. With departments as wide ranging as art, astronomy, chemistry and biochemistry, physics, emergent materials and mathematics, and languages, among many others, the college always has something exciting happening. Join us to find out what's new, now. David Staley: Joining me this afternoon in the A SC Marketing and Communications Studio is EJ [00:01:00] Westlake, Professor and Chair of Theater, Film and Media Arts at the Ohio State University College of the Arts and Sciences. Before coming to academia, she co-founded and managed Stark Raving Theater in Portland, Oregon. She worked in Portland as a director and playwright and won the Oregon Book Award for her play, _A.E.:__ The Disappearance and Death of Amelia Earhart_. She continues to write and adapt plays, including plays for young performers. Dr. Westlake, welcome to Voices. EJ Westlake: Thank you. David Staley: I want to talk about the plays that you've written, but I wanna start specifically with _A.E. _and Amelia Earhart, which is sort of inexplicably in the, in the news again today. So I guess my first question is, why did you decide to write a play about Amelia Earhart? EJ Westlake: Many reasons. I would say that I've always been fascinated by Amelia Earhart and when I was a young person Joni Mitchell had just come out with her song about Amelia and my mother gave me the Doris [00:02:00] Rich biography for my, my birthday. It's a, it's a beautiful, very comprehensive biography of Amelia Earhart's life, and I devoured it and immediately became fascinated with how, to my mind she wasn't necessarily the best aviator of her time. She definitely had a passion for it, she loved flying, she loved the escape that it offered her. I think that on the other hand, she, she wasn't that adept of learning some of the very basic things like navigation and instrument reading, and what ended up happening, however, was that she was such an appealing personality and she married George Palmer Putnam of Putnam Publishing, and he made her a sensation and immediately started to sign her up to, to start doing certain [00:03:00] stunts for people. He was the person who organized, before they were married, he was the person who organized her being the first woman to cross the Atlantic. In that flight, of course, she wasn't the pilot, she was a passenger on a plane. David Staley: I'd forgotten that. Yes. EJ Westlake: She had, I don't know whether it was just accidental or whether she was kind of drawn to these people, but she often flew with very problematic characters, in this case, a, a man named Stoltz who was a drunk and it was hard for them to get him sobered up enough to make the crossing. But, immediately after that flight, she was a sensation and the attention was more or less unwelcome from her perspective. She used her platform then to raise awareness about the things that women can do. She famously made friends with Eleanor Roosevelt and offered her flying lessons and, it always bordered on what her husband [00:04:00] felt was not quite appropriate for a lady and somebody that he wanted to market as being both adventuresome and ladylike. But I was just fascinated by that story. David Staley: Yeah. So what's the play about? I mean, have you essentially just given us the, the plot, is this, is this...? EJ Westlake: Pretty much, pretty much, and it's, it's really kind of about like this exploitation of somebody who kind of wasn't that comfortable with the public eye, you know, loved doing the stunts, but wasn't really so adept that, that trying to find her way across the Pacific, for instance was going to be a very successful enterprise. The navigator she took with her was somebody who also had a drinking problem, no surprise there, and was increasingly problematic as the trip went along. And then their stopping point was supposed to be Howland Island, which is like a mile wide by two miles long, and so it was really kind of an impossible task. And so it's, [00:05:00] it's no wonder that she wasn't able to succeed, that her flight went down. And so, I feel like in a way she's kind of a tragic hero, somebody who was kind of exploited, went along with the exploitation because it gave her the things that she wanted ,but ultimately like it was going to push her into doing things that she wasn't able to do. David Staley: Is this how all of your plays begin, with a, with a character? Or I guess I'm interested in the genesis of the idea of a play. EJ Westlake: So, it's different for everybody. Certainly when you take playwriting, people are going to have different kinds of exercises and approaches. I took playwriting once from somebody who was like, no, I want you know, character breakdown and a plot outline, and that's certainly not how I work best. I usually start to hear conversations in my head and then I like to just sit with an actual writing implement and paper and start to sketch these things out. And I [00:06:00] haven't done that in a while, i've been kind of focusing on things that, that we might do for young audiences and my partner was involved with a drama club at Slauson Middle School in Ann Arbor when we lived there, and I would help her and the kids sort of shape things that they had written into, into plays. That was a lot of fun. But yeah, that was, that was definitely how I approached things. David Staley: Then when you say you hear conversations, say, say a little more about that. What are you, what are you hearing? EJ Westlake: I hear people kind of sparring with each other, I usually hear people reminiscing about things, I hear very emotionally complicated kinds of conversations in the way that people kind of dance around them, and often, if I'm around people, I love to kind of eavesdrop, I have to say, and hear the things that matter to people and how they're interacting with each other. Those, those kinds of things really fascinate me. David Staley: So this is all in advance [00:07:00] of a plot or a narrative? EJ Westlake: Right. David Staley: It precedes that. So the plot emerges from these, from these conversations. EJ Westlake: That's right. That's right. David Staley: Have you ever had a character surprise you or maybe even resist you? EJ Westlake: I would say so. I have to say, you know, there are definitely plays where, I was writing this, this comedy called the _Foofy Open Toed Shoe,_ it was a, not necessarily politically correct lesbian feminist mystery farce, and I had the, the arch villain in the play was a chauffeur named Helen Wheels, and I would say I was definitely sort of locked in a battle with her to try to tell her story in a way that she wanted me to versus like what I thought. And I always say that, Helen Wheels kind of hijacked the play. David Staley: You said you've been doing work with young audiences. EJ Westlake: Yes. David Staley: Tell us about the differences. What's, what's the difference? Are we talking about like writing plays for, for young people or...? EJ Westlake: Mostly adapting material for young people. When my [00:08:00] partner was working at Slauson Middle School, there were two separate projects she had them working on. One was _The__ Odyssey_, and... David Staley: Homer's _The Odyssey_? EJ Westlake: Yes. David Staley: Oh, wow. Gosh. EJ Westlake: And, and... David Staley: Light, light fair there. EJ Westlake: Right. And the other was _A__ Midsummer Night's Dream,_ and she would have them read certain material or she would introduce like scenes to them and then she would have them improvise based on the scenes, like they, they spent like a month reading _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, these middle school students. And they were great, and so they would improvise different scenes from it and she would record the improvised scenes and then I would take that. ,You know, back to my office and, and I would, transcribe what they had come up with and I would add in some Shakespeare and I would do a little, you know, smoothing over of, of ways that, you know, I thought that that would work for a middle school audience. And then we also had to like, condense it down to an hour. So, that was a lot of fun. It was, it was really fun to sort of help the kids and they were very excited when they would [00:09:00] see something that they had come up with. They had Titania and Oberon fighting over the, the boy and the middle school students had named the boy Bob. David Staley: Okay. EJ Westlake: So they were fighting over Bob, and then Bob would be like, can I say something? And they're like, no. So that was, that was really fun. And then, the men in the sort of lover's quadrangle that's happening, decide to have a GOB to compete for the, the affections of, of Helena. So it was really fun. David Staley: And I know you've also directed plays. Are you directing your plays or are you directing others, or both? EJ Westlake: When we ran Stark Raving, I would direct my own work, but since then, in academic settings, i've been directing other work and, and I'm really interested in the, the adaptation process. So, at the University of Michigan in the Duderstadt, which was a sort of multimedia center, we did a multimedia version of _Agamemnon_. David Staley: Oh, okay. EJ Westlake: And I was [00:10:00] more focused on how women are portrayed in politics, and it was during that current election cycle that was happening in 2016. So, for instance, Cassandra was a Sarah Palin type character and Agamemnon was a, a George W. Bush type character, and Clytemnestra was very, very much Hillary Clinton. And it was how women are portrayed in the media, and so each scene in that Greek tragedy became a, a media frame, and so, one was a press conference, another was, sort of NPR movie review, and another was a Skype call from a soldier back to his family. And it ended with something called the Nike Lake Show. David Staley: Is that like Ricky Lake? EJ Westlake: Yes. David Staley: Is that... okay. EJ Westlake: Yes. And featured, you know, the chorus were the people in the audience sort of hurling insults at, at just this. David Staley: Of course. EJ Westlake: And, you know, so that was a lot of fun. And that, those are the kinds of things that I like to do here. I co-directed with Tom Dugdale, _The Country Wife_, [00:11:00] which is one of my favorite plays of all time. It's a restoration comedy and it's hilarious. So, that was fun. David Staley: What's the hardest part of directing that may be the audience doesn't see or doesn't realize? EJ Westlake: I would say, you know, it's easy for me to come up with blocking, which is blocking means figuring out where the actors are all going to be moving on stage. So the traffic of the stage and, and having people move around is relatively easy. I, I'm not saying I'm, I'm good at it, but I enjoy doing that and I find it easy to do. The hard part is helping actors depending on the actor, some actors really really want some strong guidance in figuring out the through line for their particular character in a play, and that's not always easy. Sometimes, you know, I forget like how an actor feels about a particular portrayal that they're doing. During _Agamemnon_ for instance, I was like, you know, [00:12:00] just, this is total white trash is what I was saying, that, that he would be willing to come in and, and murder his king, and he's hooking up with, you know Clytemnestra. And there's this, the whole backstory of the House of Atrius. Anyway, and the young man playing just this, like wasn't satisfied with that. He was, he was really kind of hurt by that suggestion. And I was like, of course you're gonna be invested in the character that you play, of course, you know, and that's, that's natural. And so, what I needed to give him instead was a through line of what he thought was good and noble and right about what he was doing as a character. So that's, that's an easy thing for me to forget. David Staley: Being a director is as much being a reader of the play as anything. EJ Westlake: That's the very first thing you do before you embark on doing anything to do with the play, you read and you go through and you analyze and you do some research, but it's, reading and understanding and interpreting a text. David Staley: Which playwrights have most influenced you? EJ Westlake: I would [00:13:00] say both Anton Chekhov and Edward Albeee. I thought I was going to be Edward Albee when I was in high school. I was like, I'm gonna be Edward Albee. Of course I can't be Edward Albee, only Edward Albee can be Edward Albee. But, but also Anton Chekhov because I love the amount of unspoken meaning. You know, in theater we have the subtext of any conversation among two actors, and, and it comes back to conversation, right? It comes back to what people really mean instead of what they're actually saying, and, Chekhov was one of the very first people to write plays where people weren't doing these asides and telling you what's really going on in their head, and so you had to just glean that. And for an actor and a director, that's a very exciting kind of enterprise to, go through a script and decide what it is that people are really saying. And Chekhov is kind of a master and I, I think most easily misunderstood by a lot of directors and actors for that reason, because it's not [00:14:00] easy and it's a kind of, you know, dark kind of Russian outlook that, you know, he'll, he'll just say, write out in his letters, I'm writing a comedy, and you'll read it and you'll be like, wait, this person shoots themselves, how is that a comedy? And I think that you know, as Americans, we like things to be just a little more... people to be a little bit more plain dealing, you know, but very different in Chekhov's Russia. But it's, it's a beautiful it text and it's a very complex, and the characters are really fabulous. David Staley: I'd like to talk a little bit about your research, which is, which is extensive, and I know you're about to publish, or you have just published an article on historical pageants, and I'd like to hear a little bit more about this research, and maybe give us a sense of what... EJ Westlake: Yeah. David Staley: What we mean by historical pageants. EJ Westlake: That's a good question. A historical pageant is usually where a community, some of these spring from different kinds of religious festivals that people have, but in the [00:15:00] 1960s and seventies, a lot of communities in the United States in particular wanted to kind of highlight their communities as tourist destinations especially as a lot of other industry was kind of going away. The interstate system was kind of redirecting traffic away from a lot of, some of the, the smaller towns that had been en route on some of the earlier highways. And so, you'll see a lot of places started to have different kinds of folk festivals and food festivals and there started to be the Johnny Appleseed days in Lake City, Minnesota is one example. And people started to write these historical pageants about their community history. One of the most prolific riders of these was a man named Kermit Hunter, who actually happens to be an OSU alum and a native of Ohio. David Staley: Excellent. EJ Westlake: And [00:16:00] then Kermit Hunter moved to North Carolina and started to study there with Paul Green, who was another famous playwright, and they founded the Carolina Playmakers. The goal of this particular group was to literally go to different communities and help them kind of write plays that would celebrate their heritage. So, several of the plays that are performed today are, are plays written by Kermit Hunter, one of the most famous being _A__ Journey to the West_, which is the play that they do in the Cherokee community in North Carolina which has to do with Cherokee history. The play that most interests me is a play that was performed in East Tennessee, and it was performed probably for about a decade about a community in East Tennessee known as the Melungeons, and the [00:17:00] Melungeons were classified as a group of what they call Tri-Racial Isolates, people who were indigenous, African, and European, and isolates because they lived in a community in Appalachia and kept to themselves. The interesting thing about this particular community is that over time, they have referred to themselves and have told a story of their history that changes over time. And the purpose of these particular stories was to escape the fact that free persons of color didn't have the same rights as white people. And so, in different times on the census, you'll see that they'll be classified as a person of color or they'll be classified as Black and it'll be scratched out and Portuguese written instead. And so, for a long time they kind of insisted that they were Portuguese. When you look at the newspaper accounts of [00:18:00] them, some of the initial accounts are of these kind of monsters that live in Appalachia, and there were even reports where people would say, my parents would tell me when I was a little kid, if you're not good, the Melungeons will get you. So, they were definitely demonized. David Staley: Mm-hmm. EJ Westlake: What happened over the course of the 20th century is the story changes and it becomes kind of more sensational, like that they're actually people who are indigenous and white, but not African. The story that they're Portuguese morphs into the story that they actually predate Columbus and they're the ancient Phoenicians. There's a, even a relatively current story that, that says that they're one of the lost tribes of Israel. David Staley: I was gonna say, this from "lost tribes - ish". EJ Westlake: Right. And so, it's just fascinating the way the story kind of gets told. Well, now we have DNA. David Staley: Oh. EJ Westlake: And one of the most [00:19:00] definitive studies has pointed out that among the core families a few of the core families have African DNA, none of the families have indigenous DNA. So, it was just a, way of sort of performing their ethnicity that help them escape prejudice and help them find legal loopholes. It's still very much now people in the sort of wider Melungeon community, because a, a lot of people now are of course saying that they're Melungeon, self-identifying as Melungeon, whether they're actually part of the core families or not. And this has had a definitely there are mixed reactions among people about the DNA evidence. And as, as somebody noted recently on, I think on Terry Gross on _Fresh Air_ noted that the story isn't completely written yet, that, that, you know, the science of DNA is always evolving. And so, I think that there are people holding out hope that this kind of [00:20:00] slippery racial identity is, is still in play. The play that Kermit Hunter wrote came down on the side of, it's very vague and, and what it insinuates, but they spend a lot of time saying, well, this person's so dark. How come they are? And I, I think they're Black and I don't think they're Black. And, but there are allusions to the, the Phoenician myth, the idea that they came before Columbus and they're from these mysterious people who sailed over before then. You know, he, of course was hired by the community to write this play, and so I think that he very much wanted to kind of play into a very positive kind of representation and given the racial politics, that was the most positive kind of representation he could, he could provide for them. David Staley: And remind me again, when is this, when is he writing this? EJ Westlake: 1969. David Staley: Oh, okay. EJ Westlake: 1970. So at the, height of a lot of racial tension in the United States. David Staley: Mm-hmm. The second edition of your textbook coming out shortly, _World Theater: The Basics_. Tell us about [00:21:00] this textbook. It's obviously about world theater, right? What does it say about world theater? EJ Westlake: So, Rutledge approached me, the, the publisher approached me, several years ago to write this, and it was to fill a gap in the material that was available for people who wanted to, to teach about theater that you don't usually get in the classroom. Historically, the theater history class was always European theater from the Greeks to now, right? So, more and more universities started to offer a world theater class, which covered pretty much everything else. And although I think most people would, would say that in their theater history classes, they were introducing things like Japanese Kabuki Theater for instance, or African writers like Wole Soyinka and _Death and the King's Horseman,_ Nigerian writer. But, some people wanted to have more in their curriculum and so there was a need for a book that, that dealt with this, and Rutledge has its basics series, which [00:22:00] are small easily approachable, easily digestible books for intro students. And they were like, 80,000 words, all of world theater, and go. And, and I was like, that's impossible, but okay. And I love a challenge, so I solicited a lot of input from people in the field and said, what do you feel needs to be covered in such a book? And I, I got a lot of responses for people who were very excited about this and had great ideas for me, you know, and I say this in the acknowledgements of the book, that I, I leaned on people who are experts in all of these other areas because my area is the Americas. David Staley: Mm-hmm. EJ Westlake: You know, and mostly like Nicaragua, some Guatemala, and then the United States. And, and those are the things that, that I know. So you know, I needed to find somebody who knew more about like, contemporary Chinese drama, for instance, or, someone who knew more about [00:23:00] indigenous performance in Canada. So, I had a lot of eyes on it and I had a lot of help and, and I'm super grateful for that. But otherwise, it was a really fun project because it gave me a chance to just sit down and learn about all these forms that I had read some about but didn't know a whole lot about, and I enjoyed it so much, I really did. And, and working on the second edition was, was really fun too because you know, between the first edition and the second edition, a couple things happened, one of which being COVID. David Staley: Yeah, sure. EJ Westlake: And so, we had to think about like, what does that mean when you have a lockdown and people are unable to go to something that's supposed to be done live. David Staley: Mm-hmm. EJ Westlake: And what does that mean in terms of, you know, that's supposed to be a special quality of, of the theater, is it's liveness and suddenly now you have all of these, these Zoom performances going on all over the world, and it, it forced people to be really inventive and, and to have to adapt. And what [00:24:00] does it mean now that people sort of, for a while lost the habit of going to live events and are even still kind of a little, shy about, doing so, and that, that now at the university, we have a whole generation of high school students who didn't get bitten by the theater bug when they were in high school, and so they're not coming to college like, you know, just burning to major in theater. And so, how do we reintroduce people to those experiences when they, they missed that sort of crucial stage? David Staley: Do you have an answer for that? EJ Westlake: I don't know. I, I mean, I feel like our department in so many ways is open to everybody on campus and, and we get a lot of people. One of my favorite students to work with was both an actor and a physics major. So I think the arts are for everybody, so I'm, I'm hoping that people feel invited. That's an invitation by the way to all of you. Please, you know, audition for our shows, take our classes. We have a lot of great classes in theater and film, so, [00:25:00] so please give us a visit. David Staley: So, it's possible you've already answered this, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. So, a moment or two ago you said that in high school you were gonna be Edward Albee. EJ Westlake: Yes. David Staley: So, you knew in high school you were gonna be a playwright? EJ Westlake: Yes. David Staley: Why were you so certain in high school that you were gonna be a playwright? EJ Westlake: So, when I was in the sixth grade, my sister dated a flying monkey. David Staley: I'm sorry? EJ Westlake: My sister was dating this young man who was part of this family who were very much involved with community theater in our family, and they were doing The Wizard of Oz. David Staley: Of course. EJ Westlake: And this is at the Dayton Children's Theater, I grew up in Dayton, Ohio. And, interestingly, and of course I don't remember him, but Rob Lowe was one of the munchkins. But, since this flying monkey had to go to rehearsal all the time and my big sister was watching me, I also had to go to the theater all the time and I was like, this is great, this is wonderful. And then there were auditions [00:26:00] for one of the first children's theater pieces that I ever auditioned for, and it was a really funny children's rendition of Aristophanes' _The Frogs_. David Staley: Mm-hmm. EJ Westlake: And I played Dionysis, and our hippie director had this great idea that we would perform it at a pool so that we could canoe across the River Styx, and of course, pools have terrible acoustics, but that didn't matter. And that was it, and it became a second home for me. It really became a, a refuge because, you know, I was a strange kid and strange kids often find themselves drawn to artistic places where there are other strange kids and I loved it. I, I spent every moment I could taking children's theater classes and, you know, when I could get a bit part in a community theater play, I did that and I just, I just loved it, so. David Staley: But you knew you were gonna be a playwright. Why Edward Albee, why not Anton Chekhov? EJ Westlake: I saw the other community theater that, not the one that I was taking classes at, but there was [00:27:00] a second community theater called the, the Dayton Theater Guild, and they did _Seascape_. David Staley: Okay. EJ Westlake: And _Seascape_ is Edward Albeee's play about this elderly couple on the beach kind of reflecting on their lives, and that's pretty much the whole first act. At the end of the first act, some lizards crawl out of the ocean to start talking to them. And so, the second act is them talking to these lizards and I was like, that is brilliant. That is awesome. I wanna write a play where lizards crawl up out of the ocean and talk to people. And I just read everything I could get my hands on by Edward Albee and, was just a, a devotee and I, I finally got to meet him. David Staley: No kidding. EJ Westlake: He came to, when I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, he came to Madison because the Madison Repertory Theater was doing _Three Tall Women_. And my girlfriend at the time was the head of wardrobe, and the artistic director wasn't feeling well, and, and he told my girlfriend, he said I have to go, Please tell Mr. [00:28:00] Albee I can't come to the reception. And my girlfriend said, I'm gonna go talk to Edward Albee. You want to come with me? And I was like, yeah. And it's funny 'cause you know, you get to grad school and you're like, oh, I'm too cool to like Edward Albee anymore, you know, because I'm, you know, watching Lori Anderson, but I was such a geek. My girlfriend went up to him and, and said, Mr. Albee, I just wanted to tell you that Mr. Streeter said he's not feeling well and can't come to the, the reception, but all the while Edward Albee is like glancing over at me because I looked like a maniac. I had such a huge grin on my face and I, I couldn't speak 'cause I would've said something really stupid. But I, I must have looked like a you know, a crazy person at that moment. David Staley: Was it all you expected or was it maybe a disappointment to meet your hero? EJ Westlake: Oh no, it was, it was fabulous. It didn't matter that, that he just said thank you and that's all he said, and that was the extent of the conversation. I was just starstruck. David Staley: Well, tell us what you're working on now. EJ Westlake: I [00:29:00] have some unfinished business. I have a book that's been torturing me for the last couple of decades and, my first book was on Nicaraguan and Guatemalan nationalist drama, and there's a trickster character that I talk about very briefly called Güegüense, and he's a Wiley kind of, you know, Wiley Coyote kind of character. And the colonial governor is like you're passing through my territory, you need to pay me taxes. He drives up and down the, the road to Mexico and gets you know, things to trade and to sell and stuff like that. A lot of it's stolen, of course. And he says to the governor, that's great, you know, you're right. I should pay my taxes, and I'm so rich, you know, so I, I should pay a lot of taxes. And the governor's like, oh, oh, fantastic. And Güegüense says, I'm so rich that my son should marry your daughter. Y ou know, and he, he's been showing the governor all of this stuff [00:30:00] that he has, and again, junk, but, and probably stolen, but he convinces the governor. The governor has, you know, gold stars in his eyes. The governor agrees, and so the end is, is this wedding. So really, Güegüense is very tricky, turns the tables, he manages to get the better end of the deal. And so, people in Nicaragua have embraced this trickster figure as kind of a national figure, and I, I'm very curious about that. I'm, I'm curious about post-colonial situations where tricksters then become national symbols. In the case of Nicaragua, both the fascists in the 1930s embrace this character, then the Sandinistas in the 1970s embrace this character. There's a lot of ambivalence about this figure because he is self-serving and he's a rotten human being besides, and is it good that he, gets the better end of the deal, or is he just, you know, part of the elite class who are [00:31:00] benefiting from imperial relationships, you know, that, that are really end up screwing everybody else. And yes, so I'm, I'm really curious about that now and especially in the wake of what's happened is Daniel Ortega, who is the president there, has been centralizing his power, you know. David Staley: Daniel Ortega, part two. EJ Westlake: Daniel Ortega, part two, somebody who I greatly admired back in the seventies and the eighties is now somebody unrecognizable to me in that regard. And so it, it raises a lot of questions about populism in general and these populist figures and, you know, so some people point to Daniel Ortega as the Güegüense, as this trickster and being not a good thing. So I, I want to explore all the different kinds of dramatic adaptations there have been of that and look at kind of the larger picture for, you know, all of us who have believed in, in populist, you know, figures [00:32:00] who've, who've come up. You know, I think it's a cautionary tale in so many ways. David Staley: EJ Westlake, thank you. EJ Westlake: Thank you so much for having me. Jen Farmer: Voices of Excellence is produced and recorded at The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences Marketing and Communications Studio. More information about the podcast and our guests can be found at go.osu.edu/voices. Voices of Excellence is produced by Doug Dangler. I'm Jen Farmer.