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What Most Excites You About This Production?

It is something special to engage in new work that tackles real folks dealing with real problems so beautifully.

What Is The Greatest Challenge You Face With This Role?
  

One of the biggest actor challenges of this play is dancing to the rhythm of the text. The words and the pacing are musical. Daniel gave us words that move, so we gotta dance baby! As I discover more about Angela and her rhythm, it has become easier to shake to her jig. She is a fast talker who isn’t afraid to share her opinion with a little tabasco on her tongue. She is quick, hyper fierce and a little rough.

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What Kind of Research Are You Doing to Prepare?

I have never been to a mortuary or even thought about going to one.  A friend of mine worked in a morgue for a while. We engaged in many conversations about what his experience was like working with dead bodies, communication with the families of the deceased individual, and the culture of sanitation when working with a deceased corpse that may withhold essential evidence to a case. Youtube videos have also been helpful in understanding a sense of being in the space of a mortuary.


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What Have Been Some of Your Favorite  Previous Roles?

Helena in the play Eclipsedwritten by Danai Gurira. Helena has a monumental amount of strength and resilience even when others see nothing. Recently I played the speaking role of Her in the Dance Theatre of Harlem’s spoken word ballet Far but Closewritten by Daniel Beaty. As an actress/Poet it was a magical experience using text to collaborate with dancers. It was innovative, challenging, and a little out of body sharing emotion and the arch of a character with the dancers as well as the audience.

Since This Play Is About Unearthing Secrets – What  Secret About Yourself Would You be Willing to Share?

I am a chocoholic.

One time I knocked half of my front tooth off in a basketball game. Thank god for good dentist!

I was a shy as a kid.


What Do You Hope Audiences Take From  This Production?

The audience will witness many characters in this play find forgiveness, acceptance, or peace in some way. I only hope they are moved to embrace the courage to practice one or all of the three with themselves or someone they love.





 
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What Most Excites You About This Production?

What most excites me about this production is the originality of the work, the complexity of the characters, and the realness of the issues they face. It’s very challenging to play a character who isn’t a character; she is such a sincere representation of an actual person. Stephanie is remarkable: she laughs in the face of a terrifying disease and her strength and courage is admirable.

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What Is The Greatest Challenge You Face With This Role?

The greatest challenge I’ve faced with this role is the obvious one: portraying (as accurately and respectfully as possible) a person with cancer. It’s been difficult for me to go to a place I’m terrified of going in real life. I want to give Stephanie the strength I’ve seen in people who have cancer and don’t let it affect their life negatively. I’m amazed at these people who keep going in spite of everything, people who survive and never give up.


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What Kind of Research Are You Doing to Prepare?

My fellow actors in the show have given me a great deal of research ideas. Jake gave me information about the Center for Disease Control and discussed epilepsy with me and how to not “act” it too much; Dan told me about a broadcast he heard on “This American Life” about a cancer survivor; Q told me about her young friend who is currently battling cancer, and Morgan especially, who is being so brave in regards to his recent loss. I greatly appreciate their help and hope I’m doing it justice.

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What Have Been Some of Your Favorite Previous Roles?

Melibea/Isabelle/Hippolyta in The Illusion by Tony Kushner with Sound Theatre Company, Heidi in The Heidi Chronicles at Washington State University, Lucy in Dracula at WSU.
 
Since This Play Is About Unearthing Secrets – What Secret About Yourself Would You be Willing to Share?

I have a deep-seated desire to be on a BBC television series. As a British person. Even though I am not British.


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What Do You Hope Audiences Take From This Production?

Life is short. Keep going. Do something for yourself that you’ll be proud of. Don’t be afraid of anything.


 
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What Most Excites You About This Production?

 
There were many reasons I was thrilled to b offered the role of Sylvia in this production.  It's exhilarating when an actor is given the opportunity to work with a company/director they love and actors they enjoy and respect, on a riveting new play set in their hometown. Feels like a perfect storm in the best sense of that term.

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What Is The Greatest Challenge You Face With This Role?
 
Painting Sylvia's vulnerability with her confidence, her sensitivities with her edge, and her compassion with her survival instinct must be done with a narrow brush.  Our natural tendency is to dislike someone if they've make choices that hurt others; The challenge is to expose the mentality and circumstances that informed those decisions.  I'm fascinated with getting to the heart of what motivates people to do what they do, how easily one decision could have been a different one, and how the smallest choices we make every day end up shaping our lives in drastic and sometimes devastating ways.

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What Kind Of Research Are You Doing To Prepare?
 
Knowing your character means walking in her shoes, having a foundational grasp of her life and the life experiences that shaped her.  For instance:  What would it have been like to grow up at a Catholic orphanage in the early 40s?  How did she fit in to the world as a single female janitor in the 50s?  Having an understanding of the time, reading the books she read, and discovering what kind of person she must have been to rely on herself for all those years has informed my process immensely
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What Have Been Some of Your Favorite Previous Roles?

Prior to moving to Seattle I was an Artist in Residence with Insurrection Theater Company in Phoenix, AZ whose focus was alternative new works.  Two of my favorite roles with them were Angela (Goth, Astrophysicist, Lesbian, Vampire) in VAMP and
Artemis (polygamist) in MAN ON DOG.  Both characters were kind, smart, women with complicated secrets.  I enjoy playing characters who aren't decidedly "good" or "bad".  Black and White is boring, let's see some Gray in there!

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Since This Play Is About Unearthing Secrets - What Secret About Yourself Would You be Willing to Share?
 
This play's secrets are dark enough that even if we had things in common I certainly wouldn't admit to them.  I will say that when I
was in elementary school I convinced my younger brother Peter that he should jump off the roof of our 1 story house using a department store shopping bag as a parachute.  He tried, it didn't work.  I then emphatically explained that he hadn't held the bag open enough and should give it another go.  Amazingly he did, but this time he hurt his ankle upon impact.  I felt the sting of well deserved guilt and opted to make it up to him by attempting the inadequate parachute roof jump myself.  It was an interesting moment in life, climbing the tree to the roof, walking across the roof, looking down, knowing it would hurt, knowing I deserved the intentionally inflicted pain.  I jumped, the parachute bag was useless, it hurt.  I remember my mother coming outside and seeing us writhing in pain on the lawn with the shopping bag conspicuously in view.  I don't recall if she pieced it together.

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What Do You Hope Audiences Take From This Production?
 
My hope is that this play illustrates the light and dark that exists within all of us - without that recognition, you can never really choose love instead.


 
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 What Most Excites You About This Production?

Having the opportunity to debut new work is both brilliant and terrifying. It’s freeing because the vision for the play can go into any direction and it allows you to chip away at the piece until it’s what you want.

The terrifying aspect is that all of those decisions and choices are on you in the end. Though, it’s the good kind of terrifying that makes you excited to get out of bed and go to the theater to get to work.


What Is The Greatest Challenge You Face With
This Role?


As far as challenges go, I’m most excited about aging from a 23 year old college student to a 69 year old college professor in the same scene. I feel as though it’s something that is exciting and it reminds the audience of that they’re in live theater and, even there, anything can happen.

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 What Kind of Research Are You Doing to Prepare?

I’ve been going through a lot of old photographs of the period, from the University of Washington libraries to migrant workers in Eastern Washington. Reading a great deal of Ovid, as well.

What Have Been Some of Your Favorite Previous Roles?

Some of my favorite roles so far have been Charles / William from As You Like It at Seattle Shakespeare Company, Bernard in The Waves (directed by Sheila Daniels) and Jefe in El Paso Blue (directed by Aimée Bruneau) at Cornish College of the Arts.

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Since This Play Is About Unearthing Secrets – What Secret About Yourself Would You be Willing to Share?

 I cannot swim. I hope that you don’t use that against me.

 What Do You Hope Audiences Take From This Production?

The correct pronunciation of Ovid.

But seriously, a sense of what any one of us leaves behind. The fact that we leave things behind and those things can be all that are left of us when we’re no longer around. It makes me wonder what people will think of me, and who I was, when I’m not around to explain anymore and all they’re left with are the details.



 
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What Most Excites You About This Production?

It is thrilling to be a part of bringing this production before
an audience for the first time. I think what is most exciting is the intensity of the play, and having the opportunity to work with such talented people.


What Is The Greatest Challenge You Face With This Role?

Joseph is a wild ride. It is one of the heavier roles I have had
the opportunity to play. He is a truly tragic character and at times, quite terrifying. The greatest challenge is to let go. Let him breath. Open the tap and get out of the way…


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What Kind of Research Are You Doing to Prepare?

Beyond researching the references in the text, I did some work
with a physical therapist to understand how recovering from a fractured hip and walking with a cane would be. The majority of Joseph is internal though so, I actually found myself reading and listening to a lot of Leonard Cohen. This older weathered composer singing about love seemed to resonate with Joseph’s
character.

 “Maybe there's a God above, And all I ever learned from love,
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you;…
Hallelujah”



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What Have Been Some of Your Favorite Previous Roles?

My favorite role previous to this would be Charlie in The Foreigner (telling a story in gibberish for an entire scene is too much fun). After that would be George in Moon Over Buffalo, and playing myself at the end of Accomplice.


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Since This Play Is About Unearthing Secrets – What Secret About Yourself Would You be Willing to Share?

Secrets? I have no secrets… really,… really,… er,… yeah…

What Do You Hope Audiences Take From This Production

I hope they find the play new, different, and bold. For Joseph, it is a tragedy. I hope the audience takes away a renewed appreciation for what they have, the importance of their relationships, and the fragility of this life.