Hometown: Raleigh, NC
Education: BA Dramatic Arts, UNC-CH
Favorite Credits: An immersive play about office life/culture (in development), The Splendid Adventurers Club (one-act, Everyday Inferno Theatre Company), Breathing Corpses (John Strasberg Studios)
Why theater?: I love the connection with/relationship to the audience and working on something that can never be perfect and it is never ‘done’. Through the rehearsal process, we get to create this work that is the sum of hundreds of decisions made both individually and collectively about the beats, characters, relationships, blocking, design. What comes out of it is both wholly unique to the group of artists and much deeper than anything our individual efforts could have created.
What inspired you to direct The Importance of Being Earnest?: First and foremost, it’s an absurdly fun play and a perfect farce. But also, in re-reading Earnest, I was struck between the similarities in the presentation of the younger generation in the play and our society’s obsession with the eccentricities and foolishness of millennials.
What kind of theater speaks to you? What or who inspires you as an artist?: Theatre that speaks to me: Immersive/interactive theatre. Stories I haven’t heard before. Theatre that digs into the complex, unsolvable things that weigh us down a little bit every day. Narratives that break away from realism and provide puzzles for the actors and director rather than answers. The artists I collaborate with continually inspire me as an artist with their talent, unrelenting kindness, and unstoppable hustle.
If you could work with anyone you’ve yet to work with, who would it be?: Rachel Chavkin
What show have you recommended to your friends?: Small Mouth Sounds at The Pershing Square Signature Center
If you could go back in time and see any play or musical you missed, what would it be?: Barrow Street Theatre’s Our Town
What’s your biggest guilty pleasure?: I like toasting cheese on bread on a daily basis, I feel no guilt ☺
If you weren’t working in theater, you would be _____?: Well, from 9-5pm I am a software developer for Fractured Atlas. So, realistically, if I wasn’t doing theatre, I would be a software developer with free time ☺
What’s up next?: The Instigators production of The Importance of Being Earnest at The Secret Theatre
For more on Christine, visit http://www.christinezagrobelny.com/