When we met actress and director Autumn Reeser at Wharton Center for THIS INTERVIEW, she was wearing a protective mask. Remarkably the face covering did not conceal her smile and excitement.
Known for her roles in television series Hawaii Five-O, The O.C. and Entourage, and movies Love on the Menu, Christmas Under the Stars, and The 27-Hour Day, Reeser was beaming about directing coming-of-age esports musical Particle. It’s a new theater production chosen by ĭmáGen, a collaboration between Wharton Center Institute for Arts & Creativity and MSU College of Arts and Letters.
We got to watch an early performance of Particle, which was excellent. It made us laugh, cry, and curious about its further creative development.
Here Autumn talks to us about what she sees as its director, developing its main character Cora, and what theater and pro gaming have in common. THIS is for YOU!
Autumn, as the director of Particle, what do you see?
That’s a good question. What I see is still in progress because I’m also a co-creator on this.
When did you start working on it?
So, Selda, Derreck, and I started working on this project about a year ago. It was, like, our pandemic project. I’m so grateful for this program because it’s allowed us to see what doesn’t work and it’s allowed us to see where we still need new songs.
It’s allowed us to remove a character entirely. It allowed us to add a new character that then opened up a ton of possibilities for us musically.
The production is a work in progress, but can you tell us how you envision it in your head?
It’s such a big production in my mind. It’s a big-budget production. We have the opportunity to do some really fun technical things and a lot of really fun stuff with mixed media and digital elements because it’s set in the world of esports.
And this world you’re creating, from what we’ve seen, has a lot of cast members!
We have a huge cast! [Laughs] We have like 19 people in this cast! So, to try and workshop that on your own by calling all your friends over to your house to do a reading is pretty impossible. We’re given an incredible two-week opportunity to develop our story. And it’s a great opportunity for the students too, to learn how to work in a professional setting to be flexible, to be brave.
It takes a lot of bravery to have new songs thrown at you and have your solo taken away, or now you’re singing this entire song – which happened to one of our girls! She didn’t have a song then it was like, oh, now you have an entire song that’s all to yourself.
Where did you get the foundation for your main character Cora?
We knew we wanted to write a musical in the world of elite gaming, and I know I wanted it to be a coming-of-age story. I thought it would be interesting for it to be a young girl because there’s less girls in the world of elite esports. We wanted someone to have higher stakes to fight against.
Cora is a girl who learning to step into her sense of self in the world and she’s going through a major threshold transition in her life. That’s what the story of Particle is about. It’s about someone going from being a sidekick to being whole on their own.
This reminds me of our interview with champion pro gamer Cuddle Core. It was an eye-opening education to hear what’s she gone through, the highs and lows of what she’s experienced just as a woman in gaming. During your research did you encounter any of that?
We haven’t. There’s so much more about the specifics of that we still have to integrate into this. Not only do we have to write a cohesive musical, we have to create an entire game world complete with avatars. What are the mechanics of this game? In this two-week production we don’t have access to digital technology or production designers to help us create that world. That’s obviously the end goal.
We know we can get way more specific with the game we’re creating and Cora’s journey as a female within the world of esports. In musical theater there tend to be more female-identifying actors. In this production we only have four male-identifying actors, which means we can’t really address that aspect of esports in this particular production. In future productions we definitely want to address that.
What we’ve learned by talking to gamers is that, for many of them, gaming was an escape from their real lives very real challenges, especially self-esteem and self-awareness. Cora is twin, her twin brother gets sick. How much of this story is centered on identity?
The story very much centers on identity. One of the things I love about doing a musical about esports is that, on the surface, they seem like two disparate things. Everything you just said about finding identity in an alternate world, that’s theater kids too.
I grew up in theater since I was 7. That’s, often times, the only place where you can access your true self, as it is for gamers. I think it’s really a natural fit, and we found that there’s quite a few musical theater people who are also gamers … which was really nice to find!
And I love the idea of creating a musical that can be licensed to high schools because sometime you can see students doing musicals that they can’t relate with or they’re inappropriate or it’s outside of their realm of experience. It can be great as an actor to stretch yourself but I prefer actors playing roles that they can have an immediate connection to. This is a musical that will eventually provide that for younger actors.
You have a lot of experience, Autumn – acting, directing, producing, and writing. With a production like Particle, which element of your experience is challenged the most?
Hmmm… I’ve never directed in a theater this big before! [Laughs] I definitely had a moment of, “Are they sure?!” But it’s become such a fun playground for me. I’ve never directed on a thrust stage like this which has been a challenge with the blocking and staging. It’s challenged me to use the space in a new way.
My priority with this particle production was to develop the story further, to get the emotional stakes right, and to provide an experience for all of these students they will remember that will challenge them and that will build their self-confidence.
What are you hoping to take away from this for you for own benefits?
What I’m gaining from this is confidence in my own storytelling ability. I haven’t always been confident as a creator. I’ve told other people’s stories, which is beautiful and which I love. I love embodying other people’s stories. It’s only been in the last five years that I have started to open to that aspect of myself and release the imposter syndrome. This has been my call my whole life. I’ve never not been a storyteller. Giving myself permission to lean into that further, to trust myself and to trust my collaborators, to trust that I am held. Every day as I expend into this world, I feel more and more that this is my purpose for the second half of my life … because I’m getting such joy out of it! If we follow where the joy is that usually shows us what comes next in our life. |THIS.
[By Mr. Joe Walker]
