What does the study of the humanities have to do with the stage?
For Lydia Kapp, graduate of Ralston College’s inaugural MA class of 2023, the answer is everything. A playwright, screenwriter, and actress, Lydia has long believed that storytelling is the craft of human consciousness. Her time at Ralston gave her the chance to exercise this conviction — through reading, writing, language immersion, and even acting itself.
During her MA year, Lydia performed two lead roles in Ralston’s production of The Bacchae, translated and directed by her fellow student Emily Wendt. Lydia had to embody the extremes of tragic hubris and disorder, first as the arrogant king Pentheus who scoffs at Dionysus, and later as Pentheus’s mother Agave who, rapt with Dionysian madness, tears her own son to shreds. Reflecting on the production Lydia wrote “Theatre has taught me many things, one of which is this: whatever the evil, it’s also in me.” Lydia and her cast mates, as embodied mirrors of both society and the self, proved that ancient drama still speaks with startling immediacy.
After graduating with her Masters in Humanities, Lydia applied to serve as a Greek tutor. In the years since, she’s come alongside students journeying into both the language and the personal transformation it unearths. In her own words: “Learning Greek doesn’t just give you a direct line to the ancients; it reveals the deepest layers of your perception, and, if you’re game, what lies behind it.”
Prior to Ralston, Lydia’s path was already richly layered. She holds a BFA in Theatre and a BA in Spanish from Southern Methodist University, studied at the Moscow Art Theater, trained in improv at Upright Citizens Brigade Los Angeles, and works actively as a playwright and screenwriter. Most recently, her immersive play The Incomplete Collection ran for six weeks in New York City with Linked Dance Theatre. Her essay on the intersection of acting and Austrian Economics was published by the Foundation for Economic Education, and for the last two years, Lydia has offered acting workshops to Ralston students as a way of fusing mind and body in the spirit of play.
Whether she’s writing, on stage, in the classroom, or on a hike through the Peloponnese with bright young minds, Lydia invites others into the richness of the human story. For her, the humanities are not a collection of relics to be admired, but an inheritance to be lived.
Lydia has now also taken on the role of Advancement Associate at Ralston College.
