Guest Actors Nandita Shenoy, playing Alexander Graham Bell, and Geneva Carr, playing Elisha Gray, join CTC Conservatory actors Lydia Mushkatina, playing Cornelius, and Brendan Kyle Lowry, playing Wilbur, in a rehearsal of CTC’s New Play Workshop production of Ahoy-Hoy July 2 in Bratton Theater.
SOPHIA ROOKSBERRY
Staff Writer
Each summer, Chautauqua Theater Company invites nine emerging actors to participate in the Acting Conservatory. Spanning recently graduated master’s students to current BFA students, this summer’s cohort performed in everything from the world premiere of Best for Baby to the season’s New Play Workshops and Labs.
“It felt like a flight check for my professional career,” Brendan Kyle Lowry, a recent graduate of Case Western Reserve University’s MFA program, said. “There wasn’t a lot of time to write a full 80-page character journal and do all your special things you learned in movement class. It was just kind of like, ‘OK, I’m getting this an hour before or the day before. I read it. I’ve got to just go with my gut and see if that works,’ and for me, it did. That was a very gratifying feeling to be able to trust myself in that way.”
During the course of the summer, Lowry acted in Ahoy-Hoy, ERASERS: A Bloodthirsty Office Comedy and As You Like It. With two of these three scripts still early in their development processes, Lowry consistently faced fresh challenges throughout the season.
“I haven’t worked on new works at all, really, until this summer,” Lowry said. “It’s caught between two worlds of wanting to do as much as I would with a normal production, but then also trying to balance that with getting new pages or the time constraints.”
While navigating the challenges of new work development, Lowry said he grew closer to the cohort of fellow actors who experienced the season alongside him.
“I love them all,” Lowry said. “I think they’re one of my favorite cohort groups I’ve been a part of. We’re all linked forever now, and Jade [King Carroll] chose us in a way where we each had something unique to bring.”
Guest Actor Crystal Dickinson, in the role of Joyce, and CTC Conservatory Actor Mengwe Wapimewah, in the role of Maya, perform a scene from Chautauqua Theater Company’s Best For Baby July 17 in Bratton Theater.
Another member of the cohort was Mengwe Wapimewah, a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s MFA program. During her time in the Acting Conservatory, Wapimewah performed in As You Like It and Best for Baby. One of her co-stars in the latter, Brian Owen, even provided Wapimewah with her next project at Hippodrome Theatre in Gainesville, Florida.
While at Chautauqua, Wapimewah also presented her one-woman production of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf as part of the late-night programming at Roe Green Theater Center.
“It was a beautiful experience,” Wapimewah said. “It was an honor to be able to tell that story with someone who knew Ntozake personally; Jade had a personal relationship with her … It was an honor, and literally looking out and seeing my Conservatory buddies … I walked back after [and] they all jumped and gave me like this gigantic group hug. I was like, ‘Oh my God, I feel so loved,’ and it’s a very traumatic show, so being carried and held and feeling that ensemble nature post a solo show was really lovely.”
The camaraderie among the cohort was palpable not only to the Conservatory Actors themselves, but also to the audience of As You Like It, the summer’s only presentation that featured every member of the Conservatory.
“Every time someone would come up to us after the show, they’d be like, ‘Y’all are just so in love with each other,’” Wapimewah said. “They would watch us watching each other, and we were having the time of our lives. I played Rosalind in that show, and I would forget that I was in the show because I was just watching people slay, but I think that encapsulates our relationship perfectly. We all love each other and respect each other so much.”
