Brandi Wylie ’24, student intern
Evan Bergman, visiting assistant professor of theatre, has been working with a cast of 12 and crew of 14 to make the town of “Almost, Maine” come to life on a Wofford stage.
“Almost, Maine” is a magical realism production that plays on the complexity of relationships. There are eight separate scenes, each focusing on a different storyline and all dealing with relationships in the fictional town of Almost.
Bergman hopes that audience members can come and see themselves in the characters, believing that the magic that they see on stage could happen in their lives.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of laughs, but there’s also going to be moments of impact,” Bergman says. “I hope we can see ourselves in these characters and all the ridiculous things we do. I want the audience to feel seen.”
Wofford Theatre’s fall production will run Nov. 2-4 and 8-11 in the Jerome Johnson Richardson Theatre in the Rosalind Sallenger Richardson Center for the Arts. Showtime is 8 p.m. each night. Tickets are $5 for students, $10 for faculty and staff and $12 for general admission. Tickets can be purchased here.
Audience members will be seated on stage, all around the actors. For many of the actors, this will be their first time to interact with the audience in this way. The goal is to increase intimacy and allow the audience members to consider themselves a part of the show.
Emmy Monteverde ’24, a theatre and English double major with a film and digital media concentration from Easley, South Carolina, is cast as Lennie and Rhonda in different scenes and serves as the assistant set designer. Monteverde says that the experience working on this play has been vastly different from the work she has done on five previous five Wofford plays.
“It’s a gift to get to work on a show that wants to make people happy. Not that something like ‘EQUUS’ (spring semester 2023) isn’t important, but it can be inaccessible sometimes,” Monteverde says. “Working on a show like that is taxing and incredibly challenging.”
She also recognizes that, while the subject matter in “Almost, Maine” may be easier to handle, the challenge of acting in such a way to get an audience to laugh and feel something genuine can sometimes be more difficult than dramatic acting, in which emotions are already heightened.
The cast started rehearsals the second week of fall semester and has worked four to five days a week since, rehearsing for approximately three hours each time.
“There’s something fun about watching college students (play characters) who have more life experiences, perhaps in a marriage or having kids,” Bergman says. “And it’s fun watching them use their imaginations and life experiences based on their families and what they think long-term relationships are about to try to access that and take that on. It’s a really enjoyable thing to watch.”