Emily Węgrzynowicz
Minister | Director | Actor | Designer
Acting II
Love's Labor's Lost, Act I, Scene II
The first unit we had in Acting II was comedic monologues, and I was assigned this Don Armado monologue from the beginning of the play where he expresses his frustrations with being in love with Jaquenetta, a country wench.
Legally Blonde
Photo by @brave.lux
Legally Blonde was my first Mainstage musical here at Loyola. I learned a lot of valuable lessons from doing this show. I cannot say it was an easy time for me. In addition to playing Brooke in this show, I was also the scenic & props coordinator for Molly Livesay's Second Stage that was happening at the same time. Early on in the process, I got very ill with COVID and had to recover from that while jump-roping and singing at the same time.
However, despite all of that, playing Brooke Wyndham in Legally Blonde was truly an honor. Brooke taught me things I needed to learn. From an artistic standpoint, playing Brooke forced me to get whipped into shape. I am now a much stronger singer. Additionally, now I know I can sing and dance or do other physical activities at the same time, which is an extremely important skill for a theatre performer to have. She holds a special place in my heart that I will cherish as an actor and as a person for the rest of my career and life.
Poseidon's Priestess
Photo by @mollylivesay
Poseidon's Priestess was the first Second Stage show that I got to be a part of at Loyola. I was not originally onboarded onto the team as an actor, though. When Megan first approached me about this project, she asked me to compose some music for it, which I did. Though I have been writing music since I was a young teenager, this was the first time I had ever composed something for the stage. Megan gave me a set of lyrics for the funeral hymns in the musical, and I composed the parts and accompaniment. My role as a composer on this piece entailed much more than writing melodies. I also made sheet music, practice tracks, led warmups, and regularly coached vocals with the actors.
In addition to composing, I was cast as Alexei Theip, the main antagonist of the show. A friend of mine once joked that my cast type was either angry woman or confused man. With Alexei, I pushed my boundaries by stepping into the role of an angry man. In all seriousness, though, I really enjoyed the experience of playing this kind of role and working with this cast. I did not know what to expect going into this rehearsal process since I had never done a Second Stage before, but I found that I quite like the scrapiness of it. In order to put together a show on limited budget in two weeks time, you have to get creative with it and embrace the model, not fight against it. This performance was a sort of blended stage reading/full staging model where we had some blocking and choreography, but we were not fully memorized. This model of performance for the show worked well because memorization did not have to impede out ability to embrace the story and the characters given we had such a short time, but it was enough time to get off-book enough to perform some of the musical numbers without music stands. Overall, it was an insightful experience and would later inform my own Second Stage project.
RUN is the second web series at Loyola that I had the privilege of being a part of. The experience of playing Faye in this show was a new and challenging one but one I would not trade for the world. Faye is the first time I have ever played the lead in anything film-related and also the first time I was ever cast as a lead in a drama. This was all very new territory for me. I typically do comedies, and even in more dramatic films/plays, I often end up cast as comedic relief anyway. Faye is cunning, smart, manipulative and has a huge ego, but at the same time, she is sensitive and insecure and has a lot of feelings she is bottling up inside. Most of all, her ambition is what drives her to do anything to get to the top, regardless of how it will affect other people. Faye is a character who really pushed me to the boundaries of my abilities (or what I thought were those boundaries). It was honestly a bit nerve-racking at times. I am so lucky, though, that everyone on the staff of this show was kind and supportive the whole time.
Student Play Fest
Student Play Fest was the second mainstage production I got to be a part of. I played Melanie in The Familiar Perils Of A Vacation Bible School Education by Annika Halonen. This was my first time in my life doing new play development which was way different than anything I had done before and such wonderful experience to have! The character of Melanie was in a way more sacred to me than other characters in theatre that I have played in the past because I was the first to do it for a public audience. That and the fact that Melanie is so similar to me as a person made her one of my favorite roles of all time. When it comes to new play development, there is a lot more fluidity in the script, which was both fun and a challenge. We got script changes pretty often. The last script update we got was two weeks before opening night which was pretty stressful in the moment having to re-memorize new lines and blocking, but it all worked out alright in the end. It was fascinating getting to see and hear from Annika how the characters developed and changed over the course of the show based on how the writing and acting informed each other. It was like a feedback loop between the cast and Annika. Speaking of the cast, although the whole play fest itself was a cast of 15, VBS was only 5 people, which is the smallest play cast I have ever been a part of. Considering the majority of the rehearsals up until tech were just each play's individual cast working together, I got a lot of quality time with these four individuals. I am so glad it was them though. I am a firm believer in everything happens for a reason. Especially the people who are placed in your life. With a cast that small, too, it was a lot more clear to me why we were all placed together and how we all contributed to the group and what we needed from the group in return. What a beautiful show this is! On paper, onstage, backstage- what a stunning little thing we all made together.
The BLZ was my first time ever doing anything film-related in my life. Going into college, I had zero intention of ever doing anything in the film department. I saw the casting call for The BLZ posted on the theatre Sakai page about a week after SOMEWHERE closed, and I figured I might as well throw my hat in the ring. I did not expect much to come from it. If anything, it was just good audition experience. To my surprise, the directors loved my audition, and I made main cast. I played a peculiar man named Dimitri, the cameraman of a college news broadcast team called The BLZ.
At first, being on a film set was quite overwhelming. I didn't know a single person there, there was a ton of new terminology that I had never heard of, and I had to learn a style of acting very different from what I had been trained to do my whole life. Luckily, the cast and crew were great mentors and always helped me feel comfortable and in-the-know as possible while I was on set. The BLZ was a gateway into a whole new medium of art that I now consider an important part of my life and something I am interested in pursuing. It opened up a world opportunities and people who truly see my potential and push me to my limits.
SOMEWHERE
SOMEWHERE was the first mainstage show at Loyola my first semester freshman year. Going into this show, I was quite nervous. Essentially, I was diving head-first into a 24-hour-per-week show starting my first week of college, and I was the only freshman cast in this show. I ended up having a super educational and meaningful experience! As a member of the movement ensemble of this show, I learned more about movement and physical acting than I ever had before. I was introduced to the nine viewpoints, Japanese Butoh dance, and the Suzuki method for actors. I had never been a part of a theatrical movement ensemble before, so this experience was informative and also challenging. In fact, a few weeks into the rehearsal process, I got tendonitis in my left knee, making it significantly more difficult to do all the movement work. Thankfully, the directing team was understanding and accommodated me in spite of my injury so that by the time opening night came, I was recovered enough to perform. Not only did I take away a lot of theatrical knowledge and practical skills, but also my first friends at college. SOMEWHERE was a big step (or more like a plunge) into my college theatre career, but it taught me valuable lessons, and despite the bumps in the road, I ended up being able to be a part of a really beautiful production. It was worth it.