Richland Campus drama professor and director Andy Long and the student cast of “Self-Injurious Behavior” have done an excellent job of portraying somber realism. The drama department presented this as a participating production at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival last October. Competing in Region 6, which includes colleges and universities in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. Richland is one of only five groups selected to advance to the regional competition. This is the first time Dallas College has been chosen.

Tragedy has struck at Richland campus, in a theatrical sense, as the drama department puts on its rendition of the Greek tragedy “Antigone.”

It’s the first play to grace the stage in Fannin Hall on April 27, since the two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the closing of campus buildings.

“The last thing you can do during a pandemic that is spread the way this one is, is be in a small room yelling at each other and spraying [germs],” said director Gregory Lush. “Theater is about conflict, so its heightened emotional states consist of almost always volume and projection. It was just impossible. The school had just shut down. It wouldn’t have been possible.”