Interview: Ana Nogueira Chats About New York Premiere of ENGAGEMENTS at Second Stage Theatre

Today the New York premiere of ENGAGEMENTS begins previews at Second Stage Theatre.

It's summer in New England and every weekend is someone else's engagement party. The wildflowers, specialty cocktails, and artisanal appetizers are totally Instagram-worthy, but the people are not quite so perfect. One night, Lauren takes it into her own hands to make sure that her best friend doesn't marry an inadequate suitor -- a drunken mistake that incites a cascade of calamities, threatening to expose all of Lauren's secrets. Engagements is a dark comedy about ugly feelings in an age of beautiful self-images.

BroadwayWorld chats with Ana Nogueira (who plays Lauren) about premiering ENGAGEMENTS, the rehearsal process and much more. Check out the full interview below!

Can you tell us a little bit about ENGAGEMENTS?

ENGAGEMENTS is a comedy about a series of engagement parties that take place outside of Boston. It's sort of about the battle between your outward self and who you present and your inward self and who you actually are. My character, Lauren, kind of does some things early on in the play that aren't exactly in step with the way you are supposed to be behave. That's a polite way of saying it. The play also feels like it's from another time. It feels like it could be an Oscar Wilde play. I think Boston is the place to set that because it's very modern. Everyone is very educated, everyone is very sort of up on the way to speak about political issues, but at the same time it still feels like we are all still wearing corsets and having tea. We actually do have tea in the play so...

Your character, Lauren, seems to be the "black sheep" of the play.

Yeah totally. She is the black sheep of the play, but she is working really, really hard to keep anyone from finding that out. Lucy Teitler, our playwright, who is just so fantastic- she sort of describes the play as being the conflict between self improvement and self acceptance, which is Lauren's battle. She wants to improve; she wants to be wonderful. She wants to be where the other people are. This magical world that she's in- in these engagement parties... She really isn't like this magical world.

So, the play is her journey. I think it's her attempt at self improvement and accepting the fact that maybe she isn't the best person in the world. And maybe, that's okay. I really love playing her because she, most of the time, wants two things simultaneously, which is very rare in a play. You are often told: "This is what your character wants. Now find out how they are going to get it." I think it's so unrealistic. I think in life it's so rare that we are lucky enough to know exactly what we want out of any given situation, or that a situation is clean and clear enough that it's easy to say what we want. Lauren, the whole play, kind of wants two things at the same time and it's going back and forth between getting one, but still trying to hold onto the other, even though they are in direct conflict with each other. It's great.

You start previews today! How did rehearsals go?

They've been really great. It's a great group. We all got close very quickly, which is necessary because it's a really quick process. So luckily we all got along on day one. There's moments of intimacy and all of those things within the play, so it's good that we all get along.

Then Kimberly Senior, our director, is just really fantastic at time management and moving us along. After only a week of rehearsal we were fully staged and just running the show and starting to find new things. It's a lot of fun. We laugh probably more than we should. We'll have to get that under control by the time people are sitting in the seats.

This is the New York premiere of the play. How is it working with Lucy Teitler's words and bringing them to life?

I know Lucy because I'm also a playwright and we were both in the same playwriting group at Ensemble Studio Theatre. So, I had seen workshops of this play before done by other actors. I always thought it was fantastic because the writing is amazing. It's really rare that you get to do a new play where the writing is this elevated and intelligent. It feels at once heightened and also completely real. So, it feels like if anyone is going to speak this way it's going to be these characters because of what they think of themselves and how educated they are and how much money they have and who they're trying to be. At the same time, it does feel like it's from another time. Lucy's writing is difficult but it's so well written. The whole play is a contradiction because it's difficult but the whole play is so well written and it also kind of glides off your tongue like you are doing Oscar Wilde.

Nogueira's Off-Broadway credits include: Mala Hierba (Second Stage Uptown), I'm Pretty F*cked Up (Clubbed Thumb), Knives and Other Sharp Objects (The Public/LAByrinth). National tours: In The Heights. Television credits include "The Vampire Diaries," "Blue Bloods," and "The Michael J. Fox Show." Ana is also a playwright whose work has been developed at Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Hangar, Barrington Stage Company and Colt Coeur. She is an alumni of the playwriting group Youngblood at EST and holds a BFA in theater from The Boston Conservatory.

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