Finding a Play
For a theater student, nothing puts a finishing touch to his or her acting career at Marquette more than a senior capstone. For Matthew Wickey and Eleni Sauvageau, they will be experiencing the capstone together when they produce and perform in Two Rooms.
The capstone, the final project and a culmination of anything and everything a student has learned in theater, is a privilege to put on.
The beginning of a senior Capstone entails choosing a play to perform. Without the play, there is no capstone. Once a play is selected, each student participating in the capstone must submit a proposal to the capstone faculty describing why he or she would like to put on that particular play.
"It's very detailed," Sauvageau said. "You have to show what your mission is, what you hope to accomplish with this play and how it's going to show that you have grown as an artist."
Wickey says he has grown as an artist and come a long way since he arrived at Marquette. As actor in high school as well, he says he now knows different terminology and objectives for being an actor that he has learned through classes, and he understands the acting process he must go through with each character he portrays.
For Sauvageau, the classroom has become more important as she has progressed as an actor, and even earlier classes now seem more important.
"Now, doing this project specifically, I realize how useful every single lesson, up from Acting One to Acting Five, has been."
She added examples such as marking up your script with stage directions and learning your beats and objectives for the production do not seem important when you first learn about them, but projects like the capstone show just how valuable it all is.
"If you don't understand what you're saying, everything else is pointless," she added.
The play, Two Rooms, is the story of wife Laney and husband Michael, living in Lebanon as professors. Michael is taken as a hostage victim, and Laney proceeds to remove all furniture from his office. This creates a shrine that represents the room he is in, the empty prison cell, and the room that used to be his, the most personal space he has.
Wickey and Sauvageau have wanted to do the capstone since they were sophomores in high school. When they began throwing around ideas and Sauvageau brought up Two Rooms, Wickey knew it was meant to be. As a student in Acting One, Wickey performed a dialogue from the character Michael, who he will be portraying in the play. Wickey said the play they chose needed to relate to him as an actor, so that description fit the bill. During Sauvageau's sophomore year, she took a costume design class and part of the syllabus was reading the play, and it touched her deeply.
"I was crying afterwards and I just kept reading it. I think I read it four more times because I wanted to. I felt like I instantly knew that one day I wanted to be in that show, and that's a very rare feeling."
WORKING TOGETHER
Different from the majority of the capstones will be that Sauvageau and Wickey are doing the project together. Normally each individual student would put on his or her own play. However, the two spoke with faculty, who Sauvageau admitted were skeptical at first, then wrote their own proposals and convinved the faculty they could work as one and not butt heads enough where the production would be in doubt.
At first the proposal was rejected, but Wickey and Sauvageau's friendship was a main selling point for the two actors. The faculty also knew Wickey and Sauvageau were good friends, which Wickey says helped.
"We're both very honest with each other, and we always have been and always will be," Wickey said. "If you can't hear critiques from your peers and friends, how will you be able to take that from someone you don't even know? That's how you succeed in the world of acting."
The third big member of the production is John Schneider, a well-respected actor and producer in Milwaukee. The pair, who have both worked with Schneider, said what they love most about their director is that he isn't afraid to let an actor know if he or she is performing poorly, something actors can get away with at other times.
Sauvageau appreciates how Schneider does not take any part of the acting process for granted.
"For John, sometimes we'll have a rehearsal, and we'll go through all of our lines and finish it, and John will say 'that was terrible,'" Sauvageau said. "He really pushes you to be your very best and really think in the mind of someone else. He works with you in such a way that opens up your mind to different possibilities and makes you understand things in a different way."
Not only will Schneider be vital in the production of the play, but he is also taking some of the pressure off Wickey and Sauvageau. Before he agreed to produce the play, Wickey and Sauvageau potentially would have had to take on the whole production by themselves, including: costume design, set design, production, and acting. With Schneider in the picture, the pair said the play will improve drastically and they can also focus on acting.
POTENTIAL ISSUES
Within the play itself, the pair noted that inevitable issues do arise. One problem during rehearsal has been avoiding falling into a repetitive cycle. Because the play features basically one set, the two rooms, the actors must avoid using the same emotions during each scene, Sauvageau said. Also, she said some of the dialogue is "writerly."
"Writerly," in her words is: "When you read a book and it describes things, and when you read a play you want it to be more conversational.
"Some of the dialogue is very journalistic and it's weird because it's like the writer put it in himself as a writer, so it's difficult to make that natural," she added.
In many of the monologues, set in difficult and strenuous times, some of the dialogue is eloquent and wordy, which makes it hard to connect to given the times of war, Wickey said.
The pair both agreed that striving to give the characters they play layers, and not letting them be just one-dimensional, is important because that is how real people are, and the main goal of an actor is to make the audience believe they are real people.
"These people are real," Wickey said of the characters they portray. "In order to be an actor, you must truly believe the person you are portraying is real. Because if you don't believe it, no one in the audience will, and that's one of the most important thing in acting."
Finally, for Sauvageau personally, one issue with the particular play is finding the right tone of voice for the play. As an intimate, almost melancholy script, actors are still expected to project their voice so as to be heard by the audience.
Since as long as she has been acting, outside of this year, Sauvageau has received notes that she must be louder in her performances. Now she is loud enough but finds herself performing a play where she must keep her voice softer.
RESPONSIBILITIES
For both actors, the capstone has been a much more hands-on experience with plenty of responsibility. Rather than just acting, the two are now involved in the production of the play, the scheduling of meetings, discussions and meetings with designers, and decision-making with costumes, among other tasks.
"It's your capstone and you are responsible for it," Sauvageau said. If it sucks, it's your fault. If something happens, we did it and it's our fault."
The task of having so much responsibility has been both a positive and negative experience for the pair. Both have been on crews for different plays so they have experienced everything individually, but having to do it all at once is "overwhelming but doable," according to Wickey.
The two must balance being an actor in the play and a director making sure everything else is ready. With the capstone, the cast is much smaller than a regular production, making things more intimate and easier to deal with in small spaces. The cast has been forced to practice in the studio rather than on the main stage, but that has not been as much of an issue because of the small cast.
"It's more of a closed in feeling, and that's kind of nice with a play like this," Wickey said.
EXPECTATIONS
With such pressure and high expectations of producing and performing the capstone successfully, Wickey joked that he hopes to garner an Academy award from the play.
In all seriousness, Wickey can not wait to see the production go up. Since they have been talking about the capstone for almost three years, seeing it finally go up will meet expectations enough. Sauvageau says the two are critics of each other in a respectful way, but that it also pushes them to reach a goal where they do not have to critique.
"I just desire to be truly happy with what we've put up," Wickey said. If I can truly believe in what we did, and know we did it to the best of our ability, and we had fun doing it, then I'm happy."
The capstone, the final project and a culmination of anything and everything a student has learned in theater, is a privilege to put on.
The beginning of a senior Capstone entails choosing a play to perform. Without the play, there is no capstone. Once a play is selected, each student participating in the capstone must submit a proposal to the capstone faculty describing why he or she would like to put on that particular play.
"It's very detailed," Sauvageau said. "You have to show what your mission is, what you hope to accomplish with this play and how it's going to show that you have grown as an artist."
Wickey says he has grown as an artist and come a long way since he arrived at Marquette. As actor in high school as well, he says he now knows different terminology and objectives for being an actor that he has learned through classes, and he understands the acting process he must go through with each character he portrays.
For Sauvageau, the classroom has become more important as she has progressed as an actor, and even earlier classes now seem more important.
"Now, doing this project specifically, I realize how useful every single lesson, up from Acting One to Acting Five, has been."
She added examples such as marking up your script with stage directions and learning your beats and objectives for the production do not seem important when you first learn about them, but projects like the capstone show just how valuable it all is.
"If you don't understand what you're saying, everything else is pointless," she added.
The play, Two Rooms, is the story of wife Laney and husband Michael, living in Lebanon as professors. Michael is taken as a hostage victim, and Laney proceeds to remove all furniture from his office. This creates a shrine that represents the room he is in, the empty prison cell, and the room that used to be his, the most personal space he has.
Wickey and Sauvageau have wanted to do the capstone since they were sophomores in high school. When they began throwing around ideas and Sauvageau brought up Two Rooms, Wickey knew it was meant to be. As a student in Acting One, Wickey performed a dialogue from the character Michael, who he will be portraying in the play. Wickey said the play they chose needed to relate to him as an actor, so that description fit the bill. During Sauvageau's sophomore year, she took a costume design class and part of the syllabus was reading the play, and it touched her deeply.
"I was crying afterwards and I just kept reading it. I think I read it four more times because I wanted to. I felt like I instantly knew that one day I wanted to be in that show, and that's a very rare feeling."
WORKING TOGETHER
Different from the majority of the capstones will be that Sauvageau and Wickey are doing the project together. Normally each individual student would put on his or her own play. However, the two spoke with faculty, who Sauvageau admitted were skeptical at first, then wrote their own proposals and convinved the faculty they could work as one and not butt heads enough where the production would be in doubt.
At first the proposal was rejected, but Wickey and Sauvageau's friendship was a main selling point for the two actors. The faculty also knew Wickey and Sauvageau were good friends, which Wickey says helped.
"We're both very honest with each other, and we always have been and always will be," Wickey said. "If you can't hear critiques from your peers and friends, how will you be able to take that from someone you don't even know? That's how you succeed in the world of acting."
The third big member of the production is John Schneider, a well-respected actor and producer in Milwaukee. The pair, who have both worked with Schneider, said what they love most about their director is that he isn't afraid to let an actor know if he or she is performing poorly, something actors can get away with at other times.
Sauvageau appreciates how Schneider does not take any part of the acting process for granted.
"For John, sometimes we'll have a rehearsal, and we'll go through all of our lines and finish it, and John will say 'that was terrible,'" Sauvageau said. "He really pushes you to be your very best and really think in the mind of someone else. He works with you in such a way that opens up your mind to different possibilities and makes you understand things in a different way."
Not only will Schneider be vital in the production of the play, but he is also taking some of the pressure off Wickey and Sauvageau. Before he agreed to produce the play, Wickey and Sauvageau potentially would have had to take on the whole production by themselves, including: costume design, set design, production, and acting. With Schneider in the picture, the pair said the play will improve drastically and they can also focus on acting.
POTENTIAL ISSUES
Within the play itself, the pair noted that inevitable issues do arise. One problem during rehearsal has been avoiding falling into a repetitive cycle. Because the play features basically one set, the two rooms, the actors must avoid using the same emotions during each scene, Sauvageau said. Also, she said some of the dialogue is "writerly."
"Writerly," in her words is: "When you read a book and it describes things, and when you read a play you want it to be more conversational.
"Some of the dialogue is very journalistic and it's weird because it's like the writer put it in himself as a writer, so it's difficult to make that natural," she added.
In many of the monologues, set in difficult and strenuous times, some of the dialogue is eloquent and wordy, which makes it hard to connect to given the times of war, Wickey said.
The pair both agreed that striving to give the characters they play layers, and not letting them be just one-dimensional, is important because that is how real people are, and the main goal of an actor is to make the audience believe they are real people.
"These people are real," Wickey said of the characters they portray. "In order to be an actor, you must truly believe the person you are portraying is real. Because if you don't believe it, no one in the audience will, and that's one of the most important thing in acting."
Finally, for Sauvageau personally, one issue with the particular play is finding the right tone of voice for the play. As an intimate, almost melancholy script, actors are still expected to project their voice so as to be heard by the audience.
Since as long as she has been acting, outside of this year, Sauvageau has received notes that she must be louder in her performances. Now she is loud enough but finds herself performing a play where she must keep her voice softer.
RESPONSIBILITIES
For both actors, the capstone has been a much more hands-on experience with plenty of responsibility. Rather than just acting, the two are now involved in the production of the play, the scheduling of meetings, discussions and meetings with designers, and decision-making with costumes, among other tasks.
"It's your capstone and you are responsible for it," Sauvageau said. If it sucks, it's your fault. If something happens, we did it and it's our fault."
The task of having so much responsibility has been both a positive and negative experience for the pair. Both have been on crews for different plays so they have experienced everything individually, but having to do it all at once is "overwhelming but doable," according to Wickey.
The two must balance being an actor in the play and a director making sure everything else is ready. With the capstone, the cast is much smaller than a regular production, making things more intimate and easier to deal with in small spaces. The cast has been forced to practice in the studio rather than on the main stage, but that has not been as much of an issue because of the small cast.
"It's more of a closed in feeling, and that's kind of nice with a play like this," Wickey said.
EXPECTATIONS
With such pressure and high expectations of producing and performing the capstone successfully, Wickey joked that he hopes to garner an Academy award from the play.
In all seriousness, Wickey can not wait to see the production go up. Since they have been talking about the capstone for almost three years, seeing it finally go up will meet expectations enough. Sauvageau says the two are critics of each other in a respectful way, but that it also pushes them to reach a goal where they do not have to critique.
"I just desire to be truly happy with what we've put up," Wickey said. If I can truly believe in what we did, and know we did it to the best of our ability, and we had fun doing it, then I'm happy."
