Inside the classroom: Theater and Sports brings two worlds together

By Margaret Wilson

The art of theater often means taking the real world and shrinking it down to the size of a stage. But in plays about sports, that world often includes swimming pools, basketball courts, or even a whole marching band at halftime. 

However, the spectacle isn’t the only thing jumping off the page in the sports plays being read in THTR 286: Theater and Sports. While the plays may center around sports like swimming, soccer, football, and even sumo wrestling, they’re also entwined with issues of ethics, equality, competition, and more. 

“I hope the students use the richness of all these plays that we’ve used as a catalyst for deeper thinking, deeper learning, deeper understanding of how the world works,” says Prof. Mary Jo Lodge, who is teaching the course for the second time. “[I want them to learn] what it means to be able to think critically about the world, but also be able to cultivate an artistic lens through which to view it.” 

Students perform a self-written play about tennis as their final project. | Photo courtesy of Mary Jo Lodge

A proficiency in theater isn’t a requirement for this course; in fact, a majority of the students enrolled this semester are student-athletes with little to no prior experience.

“Students who take theater classes don’t have to graduate and go to Broadway,” Lodge says. “It is really important that some of those students become great, informed audience members and arts patrons. All of us in theater, not just on the stage, have an important role to play.”

Students in THTR 286 spend their time reading and discussing plays with sports at the center, but also get to see how sports (and their issues of ethics and justice) play out in other popular media by watching films like Bring It On and Field of Dreams. Watching the way sports are portrayed in art, and relating it to their own experiences, helps connect two worlds that can often feel completely different. 

Playwright Lisa Sanaye Dring visited Theater and Sports to speak to students about her play, SUMO. | Photo by JaQuan Alston

“We’ve spent a lot of time talking about how much theater and sports have in common,” Lodge says. “Whether you’re in football or at the high school play, it’s about getting people to fill the seats. How do you do that? How do you engage with audiences and get them to come back?” 

Thomas Grippo ’25, pictured center, was an offensive lineman on the Lafayette football team enrolled in Theater and Sports during Spring 2025.

“My perspective on theater has definitely changed [after taking this class],” says Thomas Grippo ’25, an anthropology and sociology major who played offensive line for Lafayette football for two seasons. “I didn’t realize all of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into a production, and all the practice required to make a play successful. The work ethic and team mentality of both sports and theater are very closely related.”

Over the semester, students have been able to watch videos of stage productions and even attend a talk by playwright Lisa Sanaye Dring, who wrote the play SUMO, which the students read and discussed during their class. 

Students in Theater and Sports, as well as student athletes in the Oaks Leadership Academy, were invited to attend a talk by playwright Lisa Sanaye Dring. | Photo by JaQuan Alston

“I think the kind of materials we’re covering is opening theater up to students who might not have considered it to be something that’s interesting to them,” Lodge says. “It isn’t as foreign as it feels.”