Whether directing, acting, hanging lights, or just hanging out, Emilia Teasdale '97 is rarely far from Yulman Theater.
Teasdale is a Mountebank, thriving on the student productions that allow for informal theater and student direction. But she is also a theater major and devotes much time to Performing Arts Department productions, which are usually significantly larger than the Mountebanks' smaller shows.
As an aspiring director, Teasdale thrives on the chance to become involved in so much theater-and such diverse theater.
Last fall, she had the chance to enjoy two very different perspectives on theater-at the same time.
As assistant director to guest director Helena Binder in Paul Shaffer's Equus, she helped to manage “big” theater. Just two days after Equus closed, Teasdale was on stage in a Mountebank night of scenes, A Night of All That Stuff, playing the character of Roberta in a scene from John Patrick Shanley's Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, which Deborah Lief '99 directed.
Teasdale chose to be part of both productions because she wanted to be involved in theater as much as possible. Equus gave her with the opportunity to work with a woman director, something she had never done before, and A Night of All
That Stuff allowed her to work with her friends and support Mountebanks.
In preparing for the Mountebanks night of scenes, she solidified
her character-a lonely, divorced woman-when she settled on her Long Island accent. “With acting, I think the accent does it for me,”
she says. “As soon as I got a grasp of what this woman sounded like it, it flowed for me.”
Directing, not acting, though, is what Teasdale says she enjoys most. “I'm a control freak,” she says. “When you're an actor, you have to give up a lot of control.” Directing allows her to control the actors and the production-and take responsibility for its success or failure.
This term, she's taking great responsibility, directing a staged reading of Part I of Angels in America. Fittingly, this is a Mountebanks production-student directed and produced.