Kevin McClatchy as Prospero in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” McClatchy held the role in the first production of the play for the Shakespeare and Autism Project. Credit: Courtesy of Kelly Hunter
Director Kevin McClatchy faces students on the stage, sharing feedback after an emotional scene. The theater is empty, aside from the cast. The lights are set to half-house, leaving the back of the theater in the dark.
With comments about line delivery, stage movement and ideas on how to make the scene different for the next run-through, the conversation between McClatchy and the student actors is very casual.
That kind of direction is an idea he carried into his term as Ohio State’s Artist Laureate. The laureate program is designed to bring the arts to underserved communities, allowing the chosen recipient to travel across Ohio to share their work.
“People have a burning need to be heard, and if you can create an atmosphere that is storytelling and support, it’s like a Hall of Fame experience,” McClatchy said.
In August, McClatchy finished his year as the laureate. His role leading the art focus on the university may have ended, but the associate professor of Theater, Film and Media Arts is still influencing the campus through his directorial work and curriculum development.
As the university’s artist laureate, McClatchy also brought back his solo show, “Scrap Heap,” which explores a veteran’s experience in active combat and the aftermath of serving in the armed forces. According to the Wexner Center for the Arts, McClatchy first brought the show to the stage in 2015, bringing it back to campus in 2023 and 2025.
“A lifelong friend of mine, whose story it is, they’re only a gateway to this community conversation, which becomes this profound exchange,” McClatchy said.
This semester, he directed “After the Blast,” one of the student theater shows at the Proscenium Theater on campus, and continued his work with the Shakespeare and Autism Project for its 14th year at Ohio State.
The Shakespeare and Autism Project is a methodology invented by Kelly Hunter, artistic director of Flute Theatre in London, and is designed to make theater more accessible to those on the autism spectrum.
“[The project] uses Shakespeare to create sensory games for autistic people to play that allows them to share time and space in a way that they wouldn’t normally have,” Hunter said.
But before any of that, McClatchy was working in Philadelphia after getting a journalism degree from Washington and Lee University in Virginia. After spending the first 24 years of his life observing theater from the sidelines, McClatchy decided to pursue his passion.
“I quit my job and moved to New York, having never taken an acting class, having never seen a professional production of a play and just knowing that if I didn’t go, I was going to regret it,” McClatchy said. “I couldn’t not go.”
McClatchy said he stayed with a friend when he first got to New York, testing out different acting classes and workshops until he found the one that stuck with him.
“I got involved in [a] theater company and from there it’s just hustling,” McClatchy said. “Getting experience, getting on stage, figuring out how you do things.”
After working in both New York and Los Angeles, acting in plays, soap operas and movies, McClatchy and his wife Lisa made the decision to move to Columbus to be close to family.
“I started teaching an acting class here because I [had] taught some workshops in Los Angeles, and my class started to get popular,” McClatchy said.
McClatchy decided to audition for the master of fine arts program at Ohio State, and only Ohio State, to have the option of teaching in a university setting.
“[The program] completely transformed how I viewed myself as an artist, and frankly, as a spouse and as a parent, and a lot of that was because of the partnership we had with the Royal Shakespeare Company,” McClatchy said.
During the time McClatchy was completing the MFA program, Ohio State had a partnership with the theater company, which then expanded into a pilot study on the Shakespeare and Autism Project in 2011.
Hunter said she met McClatchy a year prior to that pilot study, which is what led to his first performance with the Royal Shakespeare Company and his involvement with the Shakespeare and Autism Project.
Hunter said McClatchy’s debut performance with the company was in the show “The Tempest,” one of Shakespeare’s final plays. The play follows Prospero, who uses magic to cause a shipwreck, leading to confrontation, his daughter’s marriage and a final act reconciliation.
“I asked [McClatchy] to be part of the first production of ‘The Tempest’ that was played in 2014, and he took the role of Prospero,” Hunter said. “[He] was a big part of creating the first theatrical version of the work I do with people with autism.”
During an early production of the show, Hunter said McClatchy and one of the autistic participants experienced a moment where the participant began remarking on his feelings, referencing how he felt like he was floating and like he was an exploded star, working through his stream of consciousness.
“[McClatchy] understood this and gave himself to it entirely,” Hunter said. “When we asked him afterwards whether he was quoting something, he said he didn’t even remember what he said. All of us knew that we [had] witnessed something really extraordinary.”
In his dozen years at Ohio State, McClatchy has remained involved in the project and continues to direct the Shakespeare and Autism Project in Columbus, regardless of recent road bumps the program has been facing.
“It hasn’t been easy making this project last as [long as] it has,” Hunter said. “The project continues every spring semester at [Ohio State] simply because of his tenacity. The work requires very talented and soulful actors to do it, which is why [McClatchy] was extremely good at this.”
Outside of Shakespeare and Autism in the spring and “After the Blast,” which ran from Nov. 13–21 at the Proscenium Theater, McClatchy will shoot his own short film this summer.
Despite the balancing act of his academic, professional and personal life, McClatchy continues to pursue personal projects, create his own work and develop a challenging curriculum at Ohio State to push him to keep growing as a professor and actor.
“You want to challenge yourself to write things that matter, write things that affect people, write things that challenge you,” McClatchy said. “Those are the things that are going to be memorable.”
