![\"Jerry](\"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_5490_optimized_2000-300x200.jpg\")
Words and photos by Ethan Shones\nFebruary 20
\nA screen in the corner of the theatre goes through a slide show. It starts in the fall of 2001, featuring photos of a theatre production. It then goes to spring of 2002, and repeats this pattern all the way up to fall of 2025, a production of the children\u2019s show \u201cOuch!\u201d
\nBelow this TV is a table with a wide assortment of food, from lasagna to tamales, to pizza, to fruit, and so on. RCTC students both old and current gather and tell stories, laugh, talk about their time at RCTC, followed by a series of performances.
\nWhat do they all have in common?
\nAside from being RCTC students, these people have all been in a play directed by RCTC Theater Director Jerry Casper, who is retiring after some 70 productions and 27 years as a teacher at the college.
\nI was one of those students. I started working with him in fall 2021, when I appeared in his production of \u201cWomen,\u201d a comedic adaptation of \u201cLittle Women.\u201d Aside from 2025\u2019s production of \u201cOuch!,\u201d I have worked with him on every play since.
\nTo celebrate his retirement, I sat down with Casper to talk about his career at RCTC as well as his last production here, \u201c8 Minutes Left.\u201d
\nMarch 26
\nI wait near the box office of the Hill Theatre for my interview. A couple minutes go by, and I see my interview subject poke his head out from the entryway to the theatre.
\n\u201cHey, could you help me out for a moment?\u201d he asks me.
\nHe\u2019s spilled his coffee coming into the college.
\nThe man whose coffee I am helping clean up is Gerald (Jerry, for short) Casper, RCTC\u2019s longtime theater director. After 27 years of serving as a teacher and theatre director here at RCTC, Jerry has decided to retire in order to focus more on writing and get back into acting as well.
\n\u201cI have gotten into play writing so much. I love that. I still like directing, and I\u2019ll still direct in the community. But I\u2019m not young anymore. I\u2019m 65, and I would like to just spend my time writing plays and seeing if I can get them produced,\u201d says Casper.
\nCasper got his start with theatre in high school, thanks to a friend.
\n\u201cA friend of mine, when I was a junior in high school, talked me into taking drama class\u2026\u201d
\n\u201c\u2026I was in choir, but I never really thought about theater, but he talked me into taking a drama class. So we took it together my junior year, and then again my senior year, and I just got really bit by it,\u201d says Casper.
\nHe got involved doing the curtains for play productions, and as he watched his friend up on stage acting, he says he thought to himself, \u201cI think I could do that. I think I could do it.\u201d
\nHe auditioned for the school production of \u201cNanette\u201d the next year and got his first role in the chorus.
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\nHe also cited his drama teacher as a major influence, who helped him get into competitive speech (or \u201cforensics,\u201d as they call it in Kansas) after doing a monologue for a class project. He gave Casper the task of a one-person version of the Elizabethan tragedy \u201cDoctor Faustus.\u201d He had from Christmas until February to remember the lines and characteristics of nine separate characters.
\nCasper attended Fort Hays University in Kansas, where he got his Bachelors in Theatre before marrying his wife Ruth Casper, who teaches psychology here at RCTC. The couple moved to New Orleans after she got accepted into a PhD program after her BA.
\n\u201cBecause she\u2019s brilliant,\u201d says Casper.
\nA car crash would send them back to Kansas, where he went back to do his master\u2019s degree, and it was there where he got into writing.
\n\u201cI started writing pieces for myself, and eventually, when I was in grad school, I took a playwriting class and got really interested,\u201d says Casper.
\nHe wrote his first full length play, a one-person show called The Fourth Wall.
\nThe play, says Casper, was \u201cabout a nerdy teacher who would stalk and murder students that picked on him, before ultimately revealing at the end that the audience was the ghosts of the students he had killed.\u201d
\nThe play was nominated for the American College Theater Festival, where it was selected it to be performed over one of their main shows and was nominated for the Irene Bryan Scholarship.
\nCasper has had two separate teaching gigs at RCTC. His first one started when his wife got an offer to teach here. He moved with her and got a part time job teaching speech and teaching at the Rochester Civic Theatre. He almost immediately set up an improv group.
\n\u201cSo I was like trying to piece together whatever I could to exist. And that\u2019s how I got here the first time. Eventually that dried up and I had to leave because there were there was no work for me. Moved up to the cities, taught at Kaplan Educational System. My mother was really sick back in Kansas, and my drama teacher had left\u2026 and it just so happened that that high school position was open. I went back to Kansas and taught high school after that for for a while to be around my parents, until they both died,\u201d says Casper.
\n\u201cThe week that I settled [my father\u2019s] estate, and I\u2019ve always thought this is meant to be, Greg Miller at Civic Theater called me and said, \u2018Hey, Young People\u2019s Theater position is open.\u2019 (which doesn\u2019t exist anymore).
\nCasper applied for the job, moved back to Rochester, and within a week, the tech director at RCTC told him the then-theater director was retiring.
\n\u201cIt was like, \u2018Oh my gosh, this is the job that I should have. This is where I really want to be.\u2019\u201d says Casper.
\nAnd the rest is history.
\nJerry\u2019s last show here at RCTC is \u201c8 Minutes Left\u201d by E. B. Lee, a dark comedy consisting of non-sequential scenes surrounding how people are reacting to the end of the world. Interestingly, this was not his first choice. He had read a few different scripts alongside it, including initially planning to do a play he wrote himself. The whole time though, E. B. Lee\u2019s script sat in the back of his mind. It appealed to him for two reasons.
\nFirst, the way the play is structured works well for scheduling, since almost every scene has different characters.
\nSecond, the characters are very well written.
\n\u201cI just think it\u2019s a really good script\u2026really interesting characters\u2026I found\u2026each scene\u2026you\u2019re kind of\u2026seeing the ends of\u2026multiple plays, essentially, because with\u2026 the whole idea of it being end of the world and all, every scene feels like final in\u2026their own specific ways,\u201d says Casper.
\nLooking back at his time at the college, Jerry remembers it very fondly.
\n\u201cWhen I got this job, my predecessor left me a note and he said, \u2018Really happy for you that you got this job.\u2019 And he and I knew each other when I was here in the 90s. \u2018It\u2019s a really good gig. Be good to Gary Schott Snyder (who was the tech director) because he\u2019s unique, and he was incredible \u2013 an artist.\u201d
\n\u201cEvery job has its frustrations and its issues, but this has been a really good gig. My favorite thing about this job are all of you, the students that I\u2019ve gotten to work with and have met and gotten close to in a way I don\u2019t think you do in a regular job,\u201d says Casper.
\nThose connections span geography and generations.
\n\u201cI\u2019m still in contact with\u2026actors in New York and even people up in the cities who\u2026do theater part time or don\u2019t do theater at all anymore\u2026 I\u2019ve made close friends with my students over the years, and that\u2019s the best thing\u2026 I\u2019ve been so lucky that my students have accepted me and like me. Feel like they\u2019ve learned from me.\u201d
\n\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve done something good with my life thus far, and I couldn\u2019t think of anything else I\u2019d rather do. This has been the best thing in the world, and it\u2019s all connected to you all. It\u2019s connected to students\u2026I like you all. I like working with you. I like doing it. I wouldn\u2019t change it. If I could go back and change it, I wouldn\u2019t change it. It\u2019s been great.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"