Professor of Theatre and Communication Melissa Friesen took a sabbatical for the 2020-21 spring semester.
Melissa Friesen photo by Olivia Westcott
During her time on the sabbatical, she researched the plays of playwright Tina Howe to find deeper meanings.
Friesen’s initial plan was to work on a theatre project that was community based. Due to the ongoing pandemic, Friesen had to change her plans. She opted for doing a research project on dramatic literature.
“So I thought, ‘Who am I interested in or what topic am I interested in that I think I can do well socially distanced?’” said Friesen. “That’s where I kind of pivoted to Tina Howe … Once I focused on Tina Howe, which was pretty quickly, I read all of her plays. Kind of looking through and familiarizing myself with her plays that I didn’t know, and there were a lot I hadn’t read originally. From there, figuring out what particular trope I wanted to take in researching.”
Friesen already knew of Howe prior to her research and even looked up to her and what she had to offer in her plays. Friesen was drawn to the comedy, gender dynamics, wordplay and interesting dynamics Howe had to offer in her plays.
Since Friesen is the only theatre professor on campus, she is in charge of choosing and putting together the fall plays and the spring musicals. In the fall of 2005, Friesen chose Howe’s The Art of Dining as the play to be performed for the campus and village community.
However, due to Friesen not being on campus this past spring, there was no production of a musical. This was after the 2020 production of the musical Honk! was cancelled in 2020 due to the rising pandemic.
Senior bible and theology major and theatre minor, Adam Shanaman, is a lover of the theatrical arts. He has been a member of past Bluffton University theatre productions such as Helen, Guys and Dolls, and Arsenic and Old Lace. 
“Not having theatre classes or theatre in general [last semester] was very very strange,” Shanaman said. “I was very excited for Melissa to be able to go on her sabbatical, but not only not having a musical but just not having anything theatre-related last semester was just very disappointing.”
With having this opportunity to look more into a favorite playwright, Friesen was able to look further into what makes a play theatrical and was able to gain more practice in further analyzing scripts. Howe’s success as an American woman playwright was also very appealing to Friesen and her research.
With all of the plays Howe has written, Friesen took a more in-depth look at a set of four. The plays Birth and After Birth, Approaching Zanzibar, One Shoe Off, and Rembrandt’s Gift were all put together in a collection in which they are assumed to represent the cycle of marriage.
Through the research she had done, Friesen wrote a paper on these four plays regarding the characteristics tying them together. A main point in Friensen’s paper is on the use of wordplay and ritual present in Howe’s plays. In using the wordplay and ritual, Howe was able to write about coping with fears and uncertainty which was very interesting to Friesen.
Since completing her paper, Friesen has submitted her work to a journal and is hopeful she will hear back soon.
“In a time of extreme uncertainty and anxiety around COVID, it was very interesting to be trying to do a sabbatical project,” said Friesen. “It reinforces our need to be flexible and be curious about the world and be able to change your direction when life doesn’t work out exactly as we planned. I was glad to be able to have a project that I could do from home pretty easily; even if it wasn’t at all what I originally thought of. It even had to change over the course of the semester.”
