Artistic Vision

My artistic vision for our play, “Going Nowhere Apace,” is focused on the analysis of my character. I played Cecilia, a young woman who is most simply defined as Swedish. Besides the fact that she is married and likes to go to the gym, the playwright gives me no information about Cecilia. So it became my job to develop an interesting, three-dimensional person with only limited background knowledge and a short dialogue with Judd to go on.

I needed to create a little bit of a past for Cecilia, because even though the audience never learns these imagined details, they can be helpful to me as an actor. When I “know” about her past experiences and present circumstances, I have a better idea of how she would act in this crazy situation at the gym. So Cecilia is Swedish: not just of Swedish ancestry, but she is a Swedish citizen. She was born and raised in a small town outside of Stockholm, and lived in Sweden until she got married two years before this scene occurs. Her husband is an American businessman who was working in Stockholm, but they moved to the states after their wedding. So although she speaks English well (probably because she studied it in school), she still has a heavy accent. She’s also still adjusting to American lifestyles and social customs. When she meets Judd in the gym, she naively thinks he is merely being friendly. Her thought process is simply that American people must be really chatty when they’re working out! That’s why when Judd asks her out she is flabbergasted. She didn’t see it coming at all because she thought he was just being friendly. However, Cecilia isn’t stupid, and I tried to make sure she didn’t come across that way. She’s smart enough to get out of the uncomfortable situation she has found herself in once she realizes Judd’s real intentions.

The truth that I had to come to terms with is that Cecilia is not really a comedic character. Just because she is Swedish doesn't mean she is supposed to be over the top. During our first rehearsals I played her as larger than life, giving her an outrageous accent – one that any Swede would be offended to hear – and treating her like a cartoon instead of a real person. As we dug deeper into the script, it became clear that Judd is the comic, and the three girls are kind of like his sounding board. We’re not really cracking the jokes; we just act normal so that he looks funny in comparison to us. It makes me think of Abbott and Costello: there has to be a straight man for Costello to be funny. So I tamed Cecilia a little bit. I tried to play her as an average person who just goes to the gym for an afternoon, only to find herself talking to the strangest American man she has ever encountered!