“She’s held together an entire theater program with paper clips and rubber bands,” said colleague Ron Blackley — a fitting description of Teresa Durbin-Ames’ 26-year career of dedication.
Durbin-Ames began teaching at Ashland University in 2000. When she arrived, the theatre department was thriving and full of students, but due to budget cuts, she has since seen it go through many different seasons.
Surprisingly, Durbin-Ames did not originally intend to pursue a career in theatre. She began an undergraduate degree in chemistry and planned to become a high school teacher. However, after following the example of a mentor who taught both science and directed school productions, she decided to make the switch in May of her senior year.
“I went down and sat in the office of the theater director and said, ‘If I wanted to think about grad school in theater, what would I have to do?” Durbin-Ames said.
After finishing her Ph.D. in theatre from Bowling Green State University, Durbin-Ames found the decision to call Ashland her home for the next 26 years an easy one. “I’m from Columbus originally, so Ashland was right smack in the middle. It was a perfect place location-wise, and they were looking for something that matched my strengths,” Durbin-Ames said.
Durbin-Ames stepped into a theatre program with a plethora of students and resources to continue putting on productions for the students and community to enjoy.
“It was very robust when I arrived in 2000… we had 30 to 40 theater majors, five full-time faculty, a full-time tech director and arts and events person. We did four shows a year, and there was just a lot of energy, a lot of activity,” Durbin-Ames said.
Roughly 10 years into her time at Ashland, the theatre department began facing significant budget cuts that slowly reduced both productions and enrollment in the major. In 2020, the university ultimately decided to sunset the theatre major, transitioning the program into a minor, which required Durbin-Ames to become highly adaptable in many different circumstances.
Ron Blackley, chair of the music and theatre departments and a close colleague of Durbin-Ames recognized the significant amount of responsibility she took on as a result of the program changes.
“As the administration gradually reduced theatre faculty due to financial issues, Teresa took on increasing responsibility and essentially held the program together,” Blackley said. Durbin-Ames found the increase in workload to be quite significant, but her passion for the arts keeps her ahead of the challenges, allowing her to continue focusing on creating meaningful theatre experiences for students despite the demands placed on her role.
“You’re trying to do the job of three people… making sure there are posters and programs and publicity, finding people to build sets and costumes… just figuring out what we can do with the people we have,” she said.
Despite the heavy workload, Durbin-Ames can find joy in it all. One of her favorites aspects of her job are student relationships, and she noted that is something she will carry with her into retirement. “I have often connected with students who didn’t think they were interested in theater and then they take a class and are like, wow, that was kind of cool,” Durbin-Ames said.
As she prepares to step away from a career lasting more than two decades, Teresa Durbin-Ames says what she will carry with her is not the adversity she overcame, but the people. “I’ll take just so many memories and relationships, seeing where our graduates are today,” she said. For Durbin-Ames, those connections and the students who passed through her classroom are what defines her time at Ashland.
