The Clemson Players put on a production of Melissa Arctic by Craig Wright directed by Richard St Peter this past week. The play is a modern interpretation of Shakespeare’s, The Winter’s Tale, set in Minnesota.

I was able to interview Jeremy Weiss, who played Alec in the production about his experiences working on Melissa Arctic. Below is an account of our conversation.

How familiar were you with the play going into auditions?
A friend and I took a script, and we read it a little bit. We had the gist of it; we had read the full thing but really going in we didn’t know a whole lot about it.

The play had beautiful, original music in it. Were you aware of the critical role that singing would have in the play? 
Actually, no. We went into auditions, and all they said was bring a short little monologue, you’ll be good to go. So I went in with a monologue, and they called me back. They said, “Alright we liked you.” They ended up casting me for the show. We don’t do rehearsals until a month later, and so fast forward a month I’ve still never sung and they say, “Alright you see this part right here, yeah, you’re singing that.” So it was kind of a shock to me at least. I don’t know who else was prepared for it.

How does Melissa Arctic connect to Clemson students, and why should it be important to them? 
There’s a bunch of core values that are going on. Jealousy is a major player, at least in the first act, where you’ll see Leonard just absolutely lose his mind, and it gets scary pretty quickly. That’s sort of a commonality between everybody everywhere. It’s just something that I think any audience can connect to, and see the raw emotion and characters and see the relationships that you can find anywhere in the world and easily in Clemson. 

How were you able to balance classes and the play?
It got difficult. I normally do my work during the day, and nighttime is mine. Because we were rehearsing every single day from 6 to who knows whenever, it could be 9 it could be 10 easily, it was sort of a balance where you need to still get sleep. So you pretty much give up anything else that’s super extra. Aside from the weekends, you do your work, you cram your homework throughout the day, you go to 
rehearsal, you get back and finish up whatever you didn’t finish, and then go to bed. 

Were the actors strictly actors or did you help to flesh out concept, build the set, write music, etc.? 
Rick St Peter did a hands-off approach with us. He was like, “Hey, these are your characters I’m just here to do blocking and help you guys identify things or give you guidance, but these are your characters. I want you to identify them." So we’d get tips and pointers from Rick every now and again, but most of us developed our own characters as we went along. As far as the set goes, I think there were a few hands on things with the costumes. I think Kat [Watson who played Cindy] had something to do with the costumes, at least with the butterflies, but for the most part we were hands off for the set. 

Many of the characters were older than college-aged students. How did you embrace your character without “playing age”?
One of the things that worked in our favor were major plot elements, like for instance Cindy’s character, where her husband died. She could play off of that to change the way that her character played emotionally as she grew older. My character, same thing, where I had a huge life altering event and all of a sudden I have this little, new poop machine that I have no idea what to do with, and it makes me a happier character at the end of the show, which is a stark difference from the beginning. The way to get around focusing on age difference is just to not even think about it and focus more on how your character develops. 

Time played by Kathryn Hinton has an important role in leading characters to their destiny. What do you believe Craig Wright is trying to show with Time?
When we were working throughout the show, we referred to her as the stage manager within the show. There’s our stage manager, Gabrielle Norris, who’s an excellent person and worked really hard for us, and then there was stage manager Time, who was sort of this guiding hand at all times.

What was your favorite part about the play and working on it?
It really has to be the people. There’s something to going back there and working for several months on a daily basis with people. Normally when you’re working for that long with someone you’re going to have problems. You’re going to have little, “Why’d you do that” or, “Why’d you do this,” but everybody on the cast and crew were so amazing that, and sure, you’ll have tiny little moments, but they were so few and far between. They would get resolved so quickly, and you’re laughing and having fun the entire way through. So ultimately, it’s just the experience of being with those people for such a long period of time, and having a blast the entire time.