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Performance has taken hundreds of forms across hundreds of years, and one of its most interesting forms is wrestling. Is wrestling real or fake? Are professional wrestlers like The Undertaker and Charlotte Flair actors? Why do masked luchadores never reveal their faces? For the 2024 fall semester, incoming first-year students were offered the first-year seminar “Theatre Professional Wrestling.” Led by Matt Ripa, M.F.A., visiting assistant professor of theatre, the class isn’t just answering these questions, but seeing them answered live.
“The class explores the theatrical nature of professional wrestling, from its roots in circus, vaudeville, and wild west shows to the sports entertainment on TV today,” said Ripa, “We learn about acting, stage combat, character, and scriptwriting.” The class offers a lecture three times a week where students complete projects, such as creating their own wrestling personas, as well as deep dives into the earliest forms of wrestling and its counterparts.
"The class explores the theatrical nature of professional wrestling, from its roots in circus, vaudeville, and wild west shows to the sports entertainment on TV today."
“It has been said that ‘wrestling is Shakespeare for the masses’ in that it has all of the drama, storytelling, twists and turns, and action that one would want out of the best Shakespeare production,” added Ripa.
On Sept. 18th, the class made a trip to the Mohegan Arena in Wilkes Barre, Pa., to see a taping of All Elite Wrestling Dynamite and Rampage, one of the country’s top wrestling promotions, beside WWE. The class has also hosted a costume designer for professional wrestlers for both AEW and WWE on Zoom, giving students an incredibly rounded look at the current state of wrestling. Course material touches on questions of gender and race, and tackles matches like scripts, leading to the construction of student’s own wrestling matches.
“All my life I've been a huge fan of professional wrestling. So when I saw that the class was offered and it was almost at full capacity, I made sure to secure my seat before it was too late. What interests me about the class is getting to look behind the curtain and discussing all the work and care that goes into the acting and the character work,” said history major Al'jaleel Lambert ’28. “The trip to AEW was awesome and everyone had a good time. The most fun I've had at college was practicing acting with one another in the theater.”
“Beyond the topic of wrestling, Professor Ripa has been helping us prepare for future classes. One recent assignment was to identify a research topic and find sources to make an annotated bibliography, and soon we will work on an introductory paragraph for a full research paper. I know this will help me with future classes,” said film major and 3D animation minor Alyse Buchert. “My favorite part of this course was when we created our own wrestling personas. Being someone who wants to make movies, I got deep into the character writing. I gave my persona a real name, a fleshed-out backstory, and I went all out for the costume. The Royal Rumble promos we had to make were fun, too. Lots of people got creative!”
“Theatre Professional Wrestling” is just one of Lycoming College’s First-Year Seminars, designed to help students establish the skills necessary to be successful in college by encouraging critical thinking in the classroom and promoting written, oral, and information literacy. Students can broaden their minds and discover a new interest by selecting a First-Year Seminar outside of their primary areas of interest. Each First-Year Seminar meets a general education requirement, so all advance students toward graduation. Other first-year seminars include “Zen and Art,” “Medieval Food and Culture,” “The Pursuit of Happiness,” and many more.