The play’s the thing for Michael Ouellette, an actor, director, and librettist who guides MIT theater arts students to find the real depths beneath the surface of plays. In moving from reading to performing a play, he says, “I try to open the door and take my students into the world of the play.”
Ouellette’s door into that world opened when, at the beginning of his teaching career, he played Feste, the clown, in a performance of “Twelfth Night.”
“I had carried Shakespeare’s words inside my head for years. Now I was inside the play—living the character, immersed in his life,” he says. “The experience went beyond the words. It was risky, engulfing, and intoxicating.”
As senior lecturer in theater arts at MIT, Ouellette has directed 22 student plays, including 10 by Shakespeare and others by Richard Sheridan, Jean Anouilh and Aristophanes. The Tech, MIT’s student newspaper, consistently applauds Ouellette for bringing out the best in student actors and demonstrating new approaches to the classics.