Student Blog: UGA Theatre Students Go Pro

In most college theatre programs, it is nearly impossible to be involved with a university production and a professional regional show at the same time. The University of Georgia, however, allowed their students who participated in producing their Fall play to kill these two birds with one stone. 

Constellations, a play by Nick Payne, opened at UGA’s Cellar Theatre on September 24th and ran various performances of the show through October 4th. Yet, this was not its closing date. The production was rehomed for one weekend at the Aurora Theatre in Lawrenceville, GA, a union theatre about 40 minutes away from UGA’s campus. Here, the team of participating students gained experience by working with Actor’s Equity members to adapt their show to its new space.  

I had the privilege of speaking with three of the four performers involved with Constellations: Samara McKnight, a third-year public relations and theatre major, Jacob Arkin, a second-year political science and theatre major, and Caleb Phillips, a third-year theatre major with an acting emphasis. I also was able to talk to the show’s stage manager, Lucy Hinton, who is a third-year theatre and entertainment/media studies major. 
 

“You know, I was in a routine (at the Cellar Theatre), and we had to completely change that routine in like two to three days,” said McKnight, in regards to shifting stages. “A responsibility of mine was to maintain what we had built in the rehearsal room, even though I was in a different space and moving in different ways.” 

Arkin felt similarly, and he also provided me with a detailed picture of the original rehearsal process. “It was probably 80% tablework, where we would sit down and talk about what the characters were feeling in the scene, what had happened directly before, because the context, of course, changes every time the universe changes,” Arkin explained. 

Constellations is written to be a two person show, but UGA’s production utilized four actors, though it was not a typical case of double-casting. A male and female identifying student were cast in each of the roles, and at each performance, a different pairing of the actors would take the stage. This ultimately meant there would be two straight versions of the show, as well as a gay and lesbian version. 

As a result, the company involved with Constellations grew close quite quickly and needed to rely on each other to learn their parts, which was noted to me by Phillips. “I couldn’t have done it without these people, including my professors. We worked together to figure things out, and I feel like we were emotionally there for each other because it’s a very hefty show,” Phillips said. 

Hinton, the stage manager, also felt this connection, and she made a point to highlight her assistant stage manager, Lauren, and UGA’s stage management head, Chelsea Taylor. Hinton’s duties tended to be much more managerial in comparison to my other three interviewees, but she elicited a very similar response in regards to her new opinion of the theatre industry outside of college. 

“I think this experience made professional theatre seem less scary,” shared Hinton. “The biggest thing about the switch was there were a lot of unknowns, so you need to be willing and able to be flexible.” 

McKnight, Arkin, and Phillips all echoed this advice, emphasizing the importance of preparedness at the beginning of the rehearsal process, allowing yourself to be proud of your successes, and fully absorbing your new environment by making an effort to meet the people around you. 

Constellations as a production incorporated themes of loss and hardship which often made audiences feel quite pensive, but these interviews left me feeling nothing but inspired, and I hope it does the same for anyone who is on the fence about pursuing theatre professionally.