The Shackouls Honors College at Mississippi State University begins its season of activities with the college’s Classical Week celebration of Greek, Roman, and other cultures of the ancient world.

Classical Week, housed at the honors college, began 12 years ago and has grown into an annual event. The week begins Tuesday with the first of a two-evening play production of the comedy, “Trinummus” or “Three-Dollar Day” by Roman playwright Plautus.

The play will be performed at 6 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday at Mississippi State University’s Bettersworth Auditorium in Lee Hall. While the play is set in Athens, Greece 2,000 years ago, the MSU production showcases creative expression through transformational technologies and artificial intelligence, as students and robots act alongside each other.

Donna Clevinger, senior faculty fellow in the Shackouls Honors College and professor of communication/theatre, is directing the show. She said the production is an interdisciplinary project between students and faculty from the Shackouls Honors College and the Bagley College of Engineering, specifically the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

“A huge thank you is extended to Dr. Shahram Rahimi, the Gloria and Douglas Marchant Endowed Chair and Professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering for all his help and support with this interdisciplinary project,” Clevinger said.

The play was written by Titus Maccius Plautus (254-184 B.C.), Rome’s most successful playwright who grew in popularity as Rome rose to world dominance. His comedies are some of the earliest Latin literary works, many of which have survived in their entirety today. With a focus on entertaining his audiences, Plautus kept them laughing through non-stop action.

Written later in Platus’ life, the comedy is often praised for its beautifully written words, its moral lessons to society, which usually belonged to the tragedies of the classical period, and its individuality of characters, a departure from the period’s typical stock characters.

Casting for the human actors in the production began before classes started with rehearsals beginning immediately after.

“These students have worked very hard and made personal sacrifices to bring this timely story to the stage,” stated Clevinger. “They all took their roles seriously and had some fun along the way.”

The cast and production crew members are all Shackouls Honors College students. They include Richard Jones as the Town Merchant; Amelia McCall as the Dancer and Sycophant’s Attendant; Maggie McCord as Megaronides; Hays Romano as Callicles; Richard Sullivan as Lysiteles; Noah Atkins as Philto; Brayden Alford as Lesbonicus; Kore Pool as Stasimus and Stephen Weathersby as Charmides.

“You don’t really get to see this kind of play very often,” Sullivan, who is playing Lysteles, said. “It is a unique kind of play, and I enjoy being a part of this unique experience and getting to share that with people.”

“Enjoyed working with the humans and especially the non-humans!” Weathersby, who is playing Charmides, said.

Other students are working behind the scenes, including Maddy Green as stage manager; Ava Grace Noe as assistant to the director and Emily Ainsworth and Alicia Young as the backstage assistants for costumes and props.

“The integration of STEM into STEAM and STEAM into STEM is a beautiful act and I’m so honored to be a part of it,” Noe said.

Engineers working on the show include Assistant Professor J. Adam Jones, whose research focuses on various aspects of virtual and extended realities. He also directs the High-Fidelity Virtual Environments Lab (Hi5Lab.org); Derek Willis, a graduate student, whose research centers on integrating 2D and 3D workflows for data analytics using extended reality technologies; Zack Henkel, a Ph.D. student and graduate research assistant in the Social, Therapeutic & Robotic Systems (STaRS) lab; Kenna Baugus Henkel, a graduate research assistant in computer science specializing in human-centered computing within the STaRS lab. Kyler Smith, a first semester graduate student and Jade Thompson, an honors senior, also continue their research in the STaRS lab.

Other students who conducted research in art and music for the production include Daniel Hurley – who designed the star chart representing the night sky at the time of the original production that appears on the program and other promotional materials – and Madison Lott – who used AI applications, other sources and her own experimentation to create music for the show.

The production was awarded funds from Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities Initiative program from the Society for Classical Studies to defray the costs of the production, including sound equipment and microphones. A Bridge Initiative Grant also funded costumes for the production “in whole or in part by the CAMWS (Classical Association of the Middle West and South) Committee for the promotion of Latin.”

Orators Lecture Series

This year marks the seventh year that the honors college has sponsored the Orators Lecture Series. This program, housed in the Shackouls Honors College at Mississippi State University, invites speakers, representing various campus disciplines, to engage and enrich the campus and local communities through public forums, panel discussions, seminars, course work, research and public lectures. Each year, there is a specific theme to explore. The theme for 2024-2025 is: “Writing Humanity’s Next Chapter: Artistic Expressions in the Time of AI.”

This year, to kick-off the college’s Orators Lecture Series, the Shackouls Honors College will be hosting a talk-back immediately following each performance of Trinummus or Three-Dollar Day. Students from the play and faculty from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in the Bagley College of Engineering and the Shackouls Honors College will discuss and entertain questions around the theme, “The Intersection of Creative Expression Through Transformational Technologies.”

For information contact (662) 325-2522 or [email protected]