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With only 1 day left until our first preview, we would like to introduce you to two phenomenal actors playing disciples in WAPAJ, Charlotte Pines and Courtney McClellan!
TSR: What’s your role in our production of WAPAJ?
Charlotte: I'm playing a disciple of St. Angela's local mystic. Mining all of my adolescent weirdness and insecurity to maximum comedic effect, hopefully!
Courtney: In our production of WAPAJ, I play a disciple and witness.
TSR: Tell us the story of how you first got involved in the theatre.
Charlotte: I was involved in theatre from a very young age. My parents are both artists - my mother is an opera singer and voice teacher, and my father is poet and author, Paul Pines. They like to reference an apparently not apocryphal story of the time I came downstairs at a family friend's house at 2 years old and recited Maleficent's "I too have a gift for the new born babe..." speech in its entirety as the moment they knew I would have theatrical inclinations. They put me in ballet classes, and youth theatre programs early on, and at 5, I secured the lead in my kindergarten production of Snow White (arguably my best work to date, available on YouTube.) It all just kind of snowballed from there.
Courtney: Watching a Nashville performance of a Broadway tour's production of Ain't Misbehavin' with my mother when I was 8 was where it first hit me. The lights, the music, the costumes, the bigger-than-life characters and their free emotions outpoured for everyone to see and feel had me hooked. Aside from reenacting "Stone Soup" in front of my reading class as a book report when I was 6 with my then-crush and classmate Duncan Jones, my first real theatrical experience was ironically a production that I rehearsed for, but never actually got to perform. My freshman year of high school, I was cast, also equally ironically, as a nun in the Sound of Music. Two weeks before opening night, I came down with a bad case of appendicitis that damn near killed me. Subsequently, I was in recovery during all of the performance dates. Even though I was too sick to perform in the show, an unexpected experience solidified theatre as a permanent fixture in my life. For the first time, I felt as though I was a part of a community...like I belonged. My theatre family showered me with love while I was in the hospital and in recovery. I realized during "the process," I'd come to build relationships with my peers both onstage and off that gave me purpose and a place to call my own: theatre. Though the work, time, dedication, and love I diligently put into rehearsals for my first real part in a play were never actualized on stage, I was able to hobble to a seat in the audience for the closing show. And you needn't worry; I, like any good theatre junkie of this century, have had the opportunity to perform The Sound of Music three times since the appendix incident. Trust me, I've had enough raindrops on roses to last me a lifetime.
TSR: What’s your funniest memory from High School?
Charlotte: I don't... even know how to answer that... I can tell you there was a gin-cident after my first breakup, which is why I've never been to prom?
Courtney: My funniest memory from High School was having a blackout party after a dance...by complete happenstance. Having gone to an all-girls private Catholic school, bringing a date to a dance was particularly challenging, because unless you were Lauren Peterson, the popular blonde blue-eyed bombshell that had guys lining up with marriage proposals to go with her corsage to beg her to let them take her to school dances that weren't even theirs, you had to do what the rest of us did: Grab your balls and ask a guy to take you. One year, for what I believe was a Winter Formal dance (which subistitued what would normally be homecoming for any other normal school - it's hard to have homecoming with no football team), me and my entire group of friends were successfully able to procure (or dupe) dates for the dance. We had convincingly made the evening enticing with plans for a limo escort both to and from the event and a promise of a blast of a party at our friend Amanda's house (who obviosly had the "coolest" parents of us all...so cool in fact that they left town for the weekend and put her 17 year-old brother in charge of the house) after the dance, complete with hot hors d'oeuvres, x-box, and a late night movie sleepover...very Catholic-school-girl of us. Everything was going as expected as we left the questionably decorated school gym and the exceptionally mediocre dance to head back to Amanda's for what was sure to be the best part of the evening with our dates. During our limo ride back, however, it started to storm. Badly. And the walk from her driveway left us all in puddles of running glittery makeup, ill-fitting formal wear, and unwalkable shoes in her front foyer. We were just getting used to the idea of changing out of our beautiful clothes to enjoy the rest of the evening when boom. Lightning and thunder cracked the silence and the house went dark. We lost power. With no food, no x-box and no movies in sight, two of our six dates abandoned ship and left for cooler post-dance parties they'd been receiving texts about all evening. We however made vodka lemonade with the lemon of a night we'd been handed and popped corn over a fire, and told stories that has us in stitches until the sun poured into Amanda's windows and restored light to the house. Our worst dance ended up perhaps being our best but certainly our funniest memory.
TSR: What would you be a Patron Saint of?
Charlotte: This is the best question. I'd like to be the Patron Saint of Star-gazers, Bird-watchers, Whimsy and Great Jokes.
Courtney: I would be the Patron Saint of brunch...the protector of all those who love to combine their Saturday and Sunday morning breakfast foods with their Friday and Saturday evening drinking habits in the most respectable way. Blessed be the drunk, no matter the time of day.
TSR: Why should we see this play?
Charlotte: You should see this play because it's original, sincere, funny, poignant, and feminist AF.
Courtney: You should see Whatchamacallit because, in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Jesus has revealed to me that He has a special blessing for those that love Him and come to see plays about Him.
TSR: What’s your role in our production of WAPAJ?
Charlotte: I'm playing a disciple of St. Angela's local mystic. Mining all of my adolescent weirdness and insecurity to maximum comedic effect, hopefully!
Courtney: In our production of WAPAJ, I play a disciple and witness.
TSR: Tell us the story of how you first got involved in the theatre.
Charlotte: I was involved in theatre from a very young age. My parents are both artists - my mother is an opera singer and voice teacher, and my father is poet and author, Paul Pines. They like to reference an apparently not apocryphal story of the time I came downstairs at a family friend's house at 2 years old and recited Maleficent's "I too have a gift for the new born babe..." speech in its entirety as the moment they knew I would have theatrical inclinations. They put me in ballet classes, and youth theatre programs early on, and at 5, I secured the lead in my kindergarten production of Snow White (arguably my best work to date, available on YouTube.) It all just kind of snowballed from there.
Courtney: Watching a Nashville performance of a Broadway tour's production of Ain't Misbehavin' with my mother when I was 8 was where it first hit me. The lights, the music, the costumes, the bigger-than-life characters and their free emotions outpoured for everyone to see and feel had me hooked. Aside from reenacting "Stone Soup" in front of my reading class as a book report when I was 6 with my then-crush and classmate Duncan Jones, my first real theatrical experience was ironically a production that I rehearsed for, but never actually got to perform. My freshman year of high school, I was cast, also equally ironically, as a nun in the Sound of Music. Two weeks before opening night, I came down with a bad case of appendicitis that damn near killed me. Subsequently, I was in recovery during all of the performance dates. Even though I was too sick to perform in the show, an unexpected experience solidified theatre as a permanent fixture in my life. For the first time, I felt as though I was a part of a community...like I belonged. My theatre family showered me with love while I was in the hospital and in recovery. I realized during "the process," I'd come to build relationships with my peers both onstage and off that gave me purpose and a place to call my own: theatre. Though the work, time, dedication, and love I diligently put into rehearsals for my first real part in a play were never actualized on stage, I was able to hobble to a seat in the audience for the closing show. And you needn't worry; I, like any good theatre junkie of this century, have had the opportunity to perform The Sound of Music three times since the appendix incident. Trust me, I've had enough raindrops on roses to last me a lifetime.
TSR: What’s your funniest memory from High School?
Charlotte: I don't... even know how to answer that... I can tell you there was a gin-cident after my first breakup, which is why I've never been to prom?
Courtney: My funniest memory from High School was having a blackout party after a dance...by complete happenstance. Having gone to an all-girls private Catholic school, bringing a date to a dance was particularly challenging, because unless you were Lauren Peterson, the popular blonde blue-eyed bombshell that had guys lining up with marriage proposals to go with her corsage to beg her to let them take her to school dances that weren't even theirs, you had to do what the rest of us did: Grab your balls and ask a guy to take you. One year, for what I believe was a Winter Formal dance (which subistitued what would normally be homecoming for any other normal school - it's hard to have homecoming with no football team), me and my entire group of friends were successfully able to procure (or dupe) dates for the dance. We had convincingly made the evening enticing with plans for a limo escort both to and from the event and a promise of a blast of a party at our friend Amanda's house (who obviosly had the "coolest" parents of us all...so cool in fact that they left town for the weekend and put her 17 year-old brother in charge of the house) after the dance, complete with hot hors d'oeuvres, x-box, and a late night movie sleepover...very Catholic-school-girl of us. Everything was going as expected as we left the questionably decorated school gym and the exceptionally mediocre dance to head back to Amanda's for what was sure to be the best part of the evening with our dates. During our limo ride back, however, it started to storm. Badly. And the walk from her driveway left us all in puddles of running glittery makeup, ill-fitting formal wear, and unwalkable shoes in her front foyer. We were just getting used to the idea of changing out of our beautiful clothes to enjoy the rest of the evening when boom. Lightning and thunder cracked the silence and the house went dark. We lost power. With no food, no x-box and no movies in sight, two of our six dates abandoned ship and left for cooler post-dance parties they'd been receiving texts about all evening. We however made vodka lemonade with the lemon of a night we'd been handed and popped corn over a fire, and told stories that has us in stitches until the sun poured into Amanda's windows and restored light to the house. Our worst dance ended up perhaps being our best but certainly our funniest memory.
TSR: What would you be a Patron Saint of?
Charlotte: This is the best question. I'd like to be the Patron Saint of Star-gazers, Bird-watchers, Whimsy and Great Jokes.
Courtney: I would be the Patron Saint of brunch...the protector of all those who love to combine their Saturday and Sunday morning breakfast foods with their Friday and Saturday evening drinking habits in the most respectable way. Blessed be the drunk, no matter the time of day.
TSR: Why should we see this play?
Charlotte: You should see this play because it's original, sincere, funny, poignant, and feminist AF.
Courtney: You should see Whatchamacallit because, in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Jesus has revealed to me that He has a special blessing for those that love Him and come to see plays about Him.
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