From “Casper the Friendly Ghost” to professional acting and finally teaching, WSU professor Richard Taflinger of the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication has had no shortage of variety in his life.

Now a communication professor, Taflinger has been a musician, an actor, and still reviews scripts for screenplay.

“I’m still working on what I want to be when I grow up,” he said.

While pursuing a Ph.D. in theater with a specialization in mass media criticism, Taflinger did an extensive amount of research on situation comedy. He said he watched countless hours of sitcoms to figure out how comedy works.

“Believe me, there are very few laughs in analyzing comedy,” he said. “It is a grim business.”

Taflinger said he owned a chain of music stores before deciding to pursue his Ph.D, and said compared to the music stores getting his Ph.D. was like being on vacation.

Throughout his life, Taflinger has held a wide variety of jobs. In addition to acting and owning music stores, he has worked as a carpenter, a printer and a script doctor.

As a script doctor for the past 30 years, studios occasionally send Taflinger scripts and ask him to give his opinion.

He said he was even sent the script for “Casper the Friendly Ghost,” which just needed some tweaking.

Originally, Taflinger wanted to be a musician, but one day he said friends dragged him to a play audition for moral support. Although he had very little interest in the play, he ended up acting in it anyway.

He said he soon learned to love acting and took part in a touring Shakespearian company. He has performed in more than 100 plays and musicals with theaters around the Northwest, including sixty performances of ‘Comedy of Errors’ in one semester.

He said performing in “Fiddler on the Roof” was a highlight of his acting career, and he has played the main character of the musical, Tevye, several times.

Both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees incorporated theater or script writing, and his Ph.D. incorporated the media into that conversation.

Taflinger has been teaching at WSU for 33 years, and has taught 11 communication classes in every area except journalism.

He said he believes teaching and acting are the same, and added that he thinks all professors should take an acting class.

“Doing a lecture; it’s a performance,” Taflinger said.

His favorite part about teaching is the look that a student gets when they suddenly understand something, Taflinger said.

Hayden Wise, a sophomore communication major who was in Taflinger’s Com 101 class, said he found him an engaging instructor.

“I thought Taflinger was a good professor that made lectures interesting,” Wise said.

Taflinger also said he loves students who ask questions and truly want to know the answer and that knowing things is his hobby.

One of his students went on to write a script for the television series “Franklin & Bash,” he said. Taflinger added that the student named the villain in his script after him.

The student sent him the script with a note that said, “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“I’m really proud of some of my former students and what they are doing,” Taflinger said.