Jorgensen’s office, a closet-like room cluttered with all manner of books and props, is messy in an endearing way. During normal times, a slew of students would congregate outside his door, chatting and reading while waiting to meet with him. Today, it is quiet. A few students tinker with props in the workshop, a few colleagues wander around the green room and backstage. Everyone, of course, is masked. More than any one room, it seems that the entirety of Robsham Theater is Jorgensen’s office, community center, playground—he is at home here.

This has been a strange year for Jorgensen in many of the ways it has been a strange year for everyone. Shortly after he accepted the position of chair of the department he has worked in since completing graduate school at Northwestern 25 years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic brought just about everything to a halt. Still, he retains his sense of humor, joking about spending the past year indoors, bingeing TV shows, bulking up his quarantine belly, and thinking about finally getting around to gardening. But coming back to campus last fall, Jorgensen, his colleagues, and his students, were adamant about bringing theater back (safely) to the Heights.

“[Coming back this fall,] I was really committed [to the idea] that, if everyone did it correctly, we could make something,” he says. More so than the finished product, the journey is imperative to Jorgensen. “Make the thing,” he repeats, almost mantra-like. “Of course I want the show to be good. But for me,” he continues, “it’s so much more exciting to see a student develop and be able to experience that thrill when a show goes well and you just know you nailed it. Because it’s hard! There are so many moving parts to make that thing happen.”

Experience can be a generous teacher. Since the pandemic upended campus life, Jorgensen and his team at Robsham Theater have proved willing pupils, adapting remarkably to the new normal. After putting on two productions in the fall, they built on their success by bringing another four plays to the stage this spring semester. They have found or created ways to make their safety adjustments work in favor of their art—for example filming their production of Twelfth Night and setting it during a plague (complete with a character donning a Renaissance plague mask), using a measuring stick to keep actors socially distanced during rehearsals, or even putting actors in individual sealed plexiglass boxes for a new play set during COVID (though Jorgensen jokes about the dubious legality of subjecting students to these innovations).

As for his students, he cannot speak highly enough of them and their commitment. “The students have really responded because this is so important to them. They have been so careful so that these productions can happen. I really admire them for that,” he says.

Jorgensen’s brief tenure as chair of the Theatre Department has certainly been saddled with its share of challenges, but he does not betray any signs of exhaustion. Rather, he seems genuinely excited—albeit with a healthy dose of caution—about producing the upcoming shows and teaching his classes. He says, “For me, the nature of doing theater is, ‘What’s the next project?’ You get to travel, in a sense—What’s the next world I get to live in with my students?”

When asked about his proudest career moment, his mind immediately goes to shows—the production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Noises Off, and Peter and the Starcatcher—before settling on a former student who had recently reached out to him. Now a physician, the student emailed Jorgensen a decade after taking Introduction to Theatre just to share how much he enjoyed the class. “There are a lot of people, I think, who see Robsham as home,” Jorgensen says, a contented smile curling across his face. “Hearing things like that,” he says, “makes up for the constant feelings of impostor syndrome—like, why do they let me do this? Like my brother says, ‘Yeah, you have a PhD, but it’s in clown school.’ And I say, ‘No! They don’t give a PhD for clowning.’’’