Julia Weber
Staff Writer
As Chautauqua Theater Company nears the end of its 2025 season, there are just a handful of chances left to attend its third and final mainstage production. C.A. Johnson’s The Witnesses continues its world-premiere run of performances at 2 p.m. today in Bratton Theater.
The Witnesses follows a peer support group for sick individuals amid an apocalyptic plague that has overtaken the community. As death confronts each of the individuals more imminently with every passing day, the characters must learn how to adapt to the ever-changing world around them.
In her first appearance with Chautauqua Theater Company as a guest actor, Nedra Marie Taylor plays the role of Millicent in The Witnesses. When she first auditioned for the role, Taylor was in the tech rehearsal process for a different production, but she said she knew she couldn’t miss the opportunity to work with both playwright Johnson and CTC Producing Artistic Director Jade King Carroll.
“I absolutely love Jade — who I’ve known for over a decade — and same for C.A. I’ve workshopped a lot of C.A.’s plays … but I had never done a full production, so I thought ‘I have to go to this audition, even if I’m in the middle of tech,’ ” she said.
Taylor said the role of Millicent is “wonderfully challenging” for her to explore as an actor, and she feels very fortunate to be in a supportive and open environment where she can take creative risks and experiment with her acting.
“They gave me all the space and time that I needed to work on lines, to try out new things in rehearsal,” she said. “Jade and C.A. are really open to that kind of thing and there’s a lot of trust in the room. They made it really easy for me.”
Taylor is a method-based actor, which means that her acting technique is grounded in immersion. Through using techniques like substitution — a technique that trains actors to explore characters by relating their experiences to similar ones in the actors’ lives — and sensory work — engaging the body’s different senses to imagine what a character might feel like in a setting — Taylor was able to immerse herself in her character’s life to understand her experiences and perspective as she navigates the pandemic that surrounds her.
Millicent is “dealing in a world we have not seen” so Taylor often finds herself seeking out universality to connect with the character across living situations.
“What would it feel like if I knew that the world was coming to an end and every single person that I know and love is sick or has already died? What would I care about?” Taylor asked.
In The Witnesses, Taylor said playwright Johnson is “really unapologetically putting the African American culture at the forefront,” and for Taylor, bringing the play to Chautauqua for its world premiere is a “really wonderful way to celebrate another culture that isn’t traditionally celebrated.” She sees Chautauqua as “a community that is really open and welcoming to that.”
She said she sees the play as being truly universal because she often finds herself asking the same questions in her own life that the play addresses about love, purpose
and community. She thinks it will resonate with audiences, too.
“Every single one of us is going to face death or has already faced death,” she said. “I think it’s a beautiful examination of when we know that it’s closer than we think, when we know that it is imminent, how do we choose to function and to see the world? What matters to us most and how do we put that at the forefront?”
