Ohio State Mansfield’s 2026–2027 theatre season moves from Shakespearean absurdity to Revolutionary-era drama, Broadway-style farce and even the unexplored corners of the Star Trek universe. The new season at Founders Auditorium combines two fully staged productions with special readings and conversations, giving audiences several very different reasons to return to the Mansfield campus over the coming months. General admission for regular productions is $10, with $6 admission for students and seniors.
Hamlet From the Sidelines
The season opens October 23 with Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, presented in partnership with the Mansfield Shakespeare Company.
Stoppard’s celebrated dark comedy retells Hamlet from the perspective of two minor characters who suddenly find themselves at the center of events they barely understand. The play continually crosses the boundaries between reality and performance as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern move toward an ending the audience already knows is coming. The production also arrives during the 60th anniversary season of Stoppard’s best-known work, which has become one of the landmarks of modern theatre.
Performances are scheduled for 7:30 PM Friday, October 23; 7:30 PM Saturday, October 24; 2:30 PM Sunday, October 25; and 7:30 PM Monday, October 26.
A Play That Helped Shape a Nation
The season turns to American history in November with Cato: The Play that Made a Nation, a staged reading and conversation presented as a free Veterans Day celebration. The program returns audiences to the winter of 1778 at Valley Forge, when George Washington’s Continental Army was facing disease, shortages and internal division. Washington ordered a performance of Joseph Addison’s Cato, a drama centered on Cato the Younger’s resistance to Julius Caesar.
The Mansfield presentation uses an abridged version emphasizing liberty, duty, honor and the tension between personal conviction and political expediency.
Free performances are set for 2:30 PM Sunday, November 8, and 6:30 PM Wednesday, November 11.
Comedy Takes the Stage in March
Spring brings The Play’s the Thing, Ferenc Molnár’s comedy adapted by P. G. Wodehouse. The farce follows a young man who overhears what appears to be a romantic encounter between his fiancée and her leading man. His playwright uncle quickly invents another explanation: what the young man heard was merely a rehearsal. That solution requires the uncle to hurriedly write and stage the imaginary play he has just invented.
The comedy was a New York hit in 1926 and, like Hamlet itself, plays with the uncertain line between theatre and reality.
Performances are scheduled for 7:30 PM Friday, March 5; 7:30 PM Saturday, March 6; 2:30 PM Sunday, March 7; and 7:30 PM Monday, March 8.
Going Where Star Trek Never Went
One of the season’s most unusual offerings arrives in April when Live Long and Prosper will feature staged readings from unproduced scripts written for the original Star Trek television series. The program marks the 60th anniversary of the show’s first season and will draw from original-series scripts and writers’ guides held by Ohio State’s Rare Books & Manuscripts Library. Faculty, staff, students and community artists will perform selected excerpts, supplemented by images and other material from the university’s Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute. A discussion will follow the reading.
The free Mansfield performance is scheduled for 6:30 PM Monday, April 5, at Founders Auditorium. A second presentation will take place at 4:00 PM Wednesday, April 7, at Thompson Memorial Library on the Columbus campus.
Community Members Can Join In
Ohio State Mansfield is also emphasizing that its theatre program extends beyond campus students. The program welcomes participation from both the campus and surrounding community, including opportunities to audition or work behind the scenes. Its Theatre Club offers chances to direct, produce, design, write and perform while taking part in studio productions, service projects and other collaborative activities. All Mansfield performances take place at Founders Auditorium. Tickets may also be purchased at the on-site box office beginning 45 minutes before performances, and the university says the auditorium has ample seating.