Video Transcript: Princeton Theater Minors Find Their Place Onstage and Off
Group:
We’re five Princeton students.
Wasif Sami:
Each earning a minor in theater.
Oriana Nelson:
And music theater.
Le’Naya Wilkerson:
We come from different backgrounds and majors.
Alex Slisher:
And each of us have taken our own unique-
Avi Chesler:
Path through the program.
Group:
This is our story.
Wasif Sami:
[Wasif is an Anthropology major and Theater & Music Theater minor]
Princeton’s theater program puts the season planning actually in its students’ hands, which is pretty radical for undergraduate theater programs. And so I was looking at different kinds of schools for college. I was looking at BFA, Bachelor of Fine Arts, conservatory directing programs, and by the end of it, I ultimately decided to go to Princeton. I was really interested in what other subjects and topics could teach me about how to live as a person and how to make as an artist. I ended up becoming an anthropology major, which I had no idea what that was when I was a seventeen-year-old. I feel like the anthropology thinking has helped me think critically about the worlds depicted in plays. Also, the environment of theater making itself, so ultimately a liberal arts education was the way to go for me.
Le’Naya Wilkerson:
[Le’Naya is an English major with minors in Theater & Music Theater and Chinese Language]
Coming in, I considered myself a writer, even though I had no experience with theater. The theater program pushed me to explore the other things about theater, and so I started with stage managing, then I jumped to acting, then I jumped to lighting design. Princeton, I would say now has made me feel like I’m more confident in my writing. I would consider myself a playwright and I would also consider myself a lighting designer, but also a theater maker overall, since I’ve had experience in all these aspects of crew, design and acting.
Alex Slisher:
[Alex is a Computer Science major and Theater & Music Theater minor]
I think similar to Le’Naya, I came in to Princeton with no theater experience, but then I happened to see a student theater show which really fascinated me in just this world and this immersion. I joined that theater group and then I also simultaneously enrolled in an LCA course, which was lighting design. We were in the same class.
Le’Naya Wilkerson:
Yes.
Alex Slisher:
So that’s how I met you as well. And then through the faculty of the LCA and through the students, I’ve been able to work on so many different shows, and I am now considering doing theater post-grad.
Wasif Sami:
I also think the no experience necessary approach of the theater program allows for a diversity and plurality in the rehearsal room which I think just makes for a better, more interesting process.
Ultimately, theater is about inviting an audience into this experience we create together, and if the people making that are all socialized and trained in one way, that creates for a very homogenous art piece. So I think that’s a perk of working in a minor program in the context of a liberal arts university.
Oriana Nelson:
[Oriana is a Spanish major and Theater & Music Theater minor]
I agree, and I think the one thing I really got out of what you said is the diversity in the space, and I think that’s one thing that’s so special about Princeton is that you could have went to a conservatory, but at the end of the day, when you have so many different people from different majors, different minors coming together, you have so many different opportunities to learn from. For example, I’m a Spanish major now, which is a huge shift and when I came in as a chemical and biological engineer, but I feel like it has allowed me to see the world in a different view. And now that my piece, I’m writing a play that is involved in Spanish culture.
Alex Slisher:
Kind of jumping on the boat of talking about majors and how they influenced theater making, I’m a computer science major and one of the things that I have found fascinating over the course of the time I’ve been making theater is the intersection of computer science and theater making is actually quite vast. And it was really cool to actually kind of break down the technology I would use every day when it came to theater making and then fully understand how it works and then be able to recreate it.
Avi Chesler:
[Avi is a Religion major and Theater & Music Theater minor]
It’s great that it’s not competitive here and I think that that lack of competition loosens everyone up to learn and really explore different approaches to acting in ways to be in this space that are really beneficial and help everyone. Sort of like Wasif was saying in his experience, people can learn from each other and support one another no matter what level they’re coming from.
Wasif Sami:
And it means that the theater season is so radically different than a very traditional, “Oh, we’re going to do our one Shakespeare and our one big musical.” And as a participant in the program, it has exposed me to just a breadth of theatrical possibility.
Avi Chesler:
And I think no one’s here to prove themselves. And so we’re all here to learn and collaborate and you also get to work with the writers and hear what the writer who originated the piece, how often do you get to do that where you’re like, “What were you thinking here? How do we bring this to life together?”
Alex Slisher:
Being able to work with a playwright to me has been such a wonderful process that I feel like is just a lot more collaborative. I’ve taken Theater 400 two times now and the entire class is just these students focusing on the designs for the shows of the LCA season. And then just every class we would have the director, who was also the playwright, come in and we could just update him on the things that we’ve been doing and he could provide feedback. And as a designer, that was so incredibly helpful to get to work with the person who created the world that you would then have to recreate in the theater space.
Le’Naya Wilkerson:
I totally agree with the line between the playwright and the designers and the directors, and I think it’s important to what Wasif was saying about the diversity of perspective, where the actors were not just people who were just standing there acting. They actively contributed. One of the actors was like, “I don’t really feel this character made their jump to a different perspective correctly.” The actor was right. (All the students laugh) The actor was right. So it was like, I have to go back to the drawing board and think about this, this, and this. It made the play better because I had to write things, but it also made the process that much more fruitful.
Wasif Sami:
I think across the board, the faculty has an abiding commitment to your growth as an artist and as a human.
Avi Chesler:
I was recently applying for a program and writing out the classes I’ve taken and I realized I’ve gotten to work with three Tony Award winners here, which is super exciting in full classes with each of them. So Jane Cox, who is a Tony Award-winning lighting designer, John Doyle, who’s a Tony Award-winning director, and then Michael R. Jackson now, who also won a Pulitzer for A Strange Loop, which I get to be in a seven person class with him for the semester and get to devise musicals with him is super awesome.
Wasif Sami:
I took my first theater class with Professor Stacy Wolf. It was in this field called Performance Studies, which I’ve come to really love, and it was a way of thinking through how social analysis and a study and love of performance could coexist. Boom! That totally changed how I thought about my anthropology major.
Oriana Nelson:
Toward the end of my Princeton experience, I had the privilege to work with a professional director in the show Anonymous, and it was my first time being able to work with a professional director. It was really cool to have that insight and it was still connected to the school. It was technically a class.
Avi Chesler:
It was a professional stage that’s used for touring performances around the country. We had full costume team, full sound equipment with a 360-person theater, and obviously our director, Bi Jean Ngo was fantastic at taking time to work one-on-one. It’s really cool to get to graduate college and have done a professional-level work in many ways, and also been able to do it where there was all the space was there to learn.
Wasif Sami:
There’s this nice ecosystem of funding that allows you to learn how other people are doing it and then implement those theater making skills into your own practice. Through the summer funding of the Lewis Center, I was able to work and intern off Broadway at this company called Clubbed Thumb, which does new plays. Seeing how we’re going to put together this ninety-minute new play with all these ideas bubbling into it really informed my directing of Le’Naya’s play.
Alex Slisher:
One of the beautiful things about Princeton’s location is that we’re actually really close to New York City, and one of the things I really enjoy about theater classes that a lot of them provide opportunities to go see shows in the city.
Avi Chesler:
And a good chunk of the time you also get to talk to the creative team after because chances are your professor is somehow connected to someone who worked on the show.
Oriana Nelson:
Right next door, we are not too far from Trenton and they have this Trenton Arts Program where they have different divisions, so they have Trenton Youth Orchestra, Singers, Dancers, and Theater. And I had the opportunity to gain a fellowship for the theater one. We were working every single Saturdays. We have this program called SmArt. The students come in are very enthusiastic to learn, and it’s a really awesome opportunity just to really make a difference with your theater, and I think that’s one thing I really appreciate about having theater at this university.
Le’Naya Wilkerson:
Theater groups and the theater program are very much in conversation with one another.
Alex Slisher:
Student theater is just one of those things where you can take what you learn at the LCA and apply it to other opportunities that aren’t just through the LCA and vice versa.
Oriana Nelson:
I think one thing that’s really beautiful about the LCA is that they like working with student groups, particularly with the Princeton Black Theater Collective, which is relatively new. I think they try to put an effort into working with stories that have certain racial demographic preferences, I think is really important to have that on this campus.
Wasif Sami:
The fact that we have so many student groups and the theater program running shows means that there’s no dearth of plays, musicals to watch on campus. Every weekend there’s new work, new plays to see, which also really informs you as a maker.
Oriana Nelson:
The vibrant dance scene, theater, like a capella groups. I was really amazed with how many opportunities and so many people were interdisciplinary artists, like, “Oh, I can’t go to rehearsal, I’m going to a capella.” I was like, “Oh, okay.” And it’s so many opportunities to explore different parts of yourself which I think is really beautiful on this campus, and I appreciate that a lot.
