Curtain Call

Last weekend, like many weekends over the past four years, a handful of acting majors rehearsed in a room on the third floor of the College of Fine Arts. They read lines, memorized staging and funneled their emotions into their performances.

This is more than a high school play or musical. It is living without a job guarantee.

It is certainly not schmoozing with Julianne Moore and Jason Alexander (both attended Boston University, though Alexander never graduated). It is spending four years selling yourself only to spend the rest of your life selling yourself more.

But BU’s 18 graduating acting majors, in one of their last rehearsals for real life, will tell anyone they love it.

The acting program at BU is one of the most renowned undergraduate programs in the country, CFA professors and students say.

“There is a wonderful emphasis placed on the humanity of each student,” says acting professor Jim Petosa, director of “Romeo and Juliet,” one of CFA’s final plays. “[The program] has a very human base that makes it unique and makes it excel.”

Each year, thousands of eager students come to the ivy-covered building at the BU West T stop to audition for one of about 60 spots in the freshman class. In 2000, CFA selected 58 students.

At the end of their freshman year, about 22 students were selected from that class to complete CFA’s rigorous acting program. Most of the others are finishing the more general theater studies major, and everyone else either transferred to other BU schools or left BU altogether. Eighteen will graduate on May 16.

MORE THAN JUST

“DRAMA CLUB”

Since their class was whittled down, some of the 18 remaining say their fellow acting majors have become like family – and CFA like their second home because a busy schedule prevents them from meeting many people beyond the college (or even outside the theater program). The group is either rehearsing or in class from 9:30 a.m. until 11 p.m. every day except Sundays.

“We don’t know anyone else,” says senior Jessie Hain, a leggy blonde with an elegance reminiscent of the silver screen era of the early 20th century. “I don’t think I could find my way around [the College of Arts and Sciences].”

Many of the senior acting majors say the closeness of their class is both the best and worst aspect of the program.

“We fall in love with each other,” senior Amber Gray says. “You can’t help it. We watch each other on stage and just fall in love.”

During a rehearsal for “Cloud 9” last Saturday – one of three plays the seniors are working on – lead actor Bennett Leak wore a yellow t-shirt with “drama club” declared across his slim chest. He read his lines about a fling his character just had on a train. Toward the end of his monologue, he delivered the line “mumbling around a bit” with an English accent, dropped the hand holding his script to his side and let out a “dammit.”

The five or six actors watching from the edge of the practice room broke into a chorus of “Why’d you stop?” and “It was going so well.”

“It’s cheesy to say, but it’s a family,” senior Brendan Scoggin says of the supportive atmosphere.

The seniors also admit to inter-group dating, knowing that everyone – including professors – knows practically everything about each others’ lives.

“Your personal life is out the window,” says Hain, who dated Scoggin freshman year before realizing they “couldn’t be more wrong for each other.

“It becomes your life,” she adds. “But you learn to deal with it and make it a part of who you are.”

However, the 18 actors, who now profess their (platonic and romantic) love for each other, weren’t filled with as much camaraderie at the beginning of their first year.

“At home with my friends, I’m the actor,” says CFA senior Risher Reddick. “But here, we’re all such strong personalities. Everyone wants their spotlight.”

Some compare the program to a fraternity or sorority, but “there’s no need to rush,” Hain says. “You have to learn to love each other because you’re with each other all the time. Now it’s not about competition. It’s about helping.”

Gray counters, “Freshmen year was rush.”

A “COOKIE-CUTTER

PROGRAM” WITH BENEFITS

Another advantage of the theater program is the care the faculty shows for its students, says theater studies professor Sidney Friedman, who has taught at BU for 27 years.

“There is a degree of collaboration among faculty and between faculty and students,” Friedman says. “There are a lot of places where the professor shows up, teaches class and then disappears into the subway stations.”

But CFA faculty members get to know the students, Friedman says. He also differentiates BU students from others in the depth of their understanding of characters and scripts.

Rehearsals are like spoken English papers that last for hours. The actors do not merely read their lines, but stop to ask the director why their character would say them and to ponder the significance of the words they perform.

“With BU students, you know there’s someone home,” Friedman says. “There is a personal investment of the actor in a role.”

One mandatory freshman acting class, in which students have to perform scenes from their own lives to access different types of emotions, stands out in the minds of many graduates.

“It’s life therapy. It lets you get all that [expletive deleted] out,” Scoggin says. “It should be a life requirement.”

The students do bring up a few complaints with the curriculum – BU looks for “people they can train” when they are deciding who to accept into the exclusive program, Reddick says. Other members of the class describe the program as “coddling” and too safe with its guaranteed casting and mandatory semester abroad.

“It’s a cookie-cutter program,” Gray says. “If you try to go against it, they give you a really hard time.”

CASTING CALL

As members of the Class of 2004 prepare for their final BU performances in “Romeo and Juliet,” “A Dream Play” or “Cloud 9,” they are also thinking about the future.

Hain says senior year is a time for the actors to define what type of performers they really are and to start marketing themselves like a business.

“I became hyper-aware of my ethnicity,” Gray says of several auditions where casting directors told her they liked her because her bi-racial background would allow them to cast her as black, white or Hispanic.

Gray, with rusty-colored crimps framing her delicate cocoa face and freckles dotting the bridge of her nose, says she realizes the way others stereotype her is “not necessarily the way I see myself.”

Others, like Hain and Scoggin, have found a typecast at BU. Scoggin, with his black-rimmed glasses and chin hair, says he looks old for his age. Agents have told him that when he ages a bit, he will be able to take older roles. Hain’s looks have also gotten her roles as older women.

“I get the mother roles, the older women parts,” she says. “They’ve become the parts that I love. They’re meaty and mature.”

The seniors have plenty of practice auditioning. Last month, the seniors traveled to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities as a group, exhibiting their talent for casting directors and agents in an hour-long performance of monologues known as the Showcase.

Some were signed to agencies while others were offered roles in television pilots (though they noted that most TV pilots rarely make it on the air).

Nevertheless, “it’s an invaluable opportunity to hand headshots to a group of casting directors from FOX,” Hain says.

The Class of 2004 will leave Boston with an extensive toolbox of training in movement, voice, a variety of acting methods and understanding of their own emotions. After graduation, the first few years will be spent networking in the entertainment industry, even if no jobs are offered.

Most of this year’s graduates are planning to move to New York or Los Angeles, and many are going to live with each other.

“Only a small number will be employed, and they will be employed briefly,” Friedman says. “There’s more hiring done for regional theater than for New York theater. If you’re lucky enough to get a job, that’s good for a while. Then you’re back on the pavement looking.”

While the actors confess a looming five-page paper is overwhelming them – they say they have little experience with tangible homework – they do not feel they will leave BU without a rigorous education.

“I don’t feel less educated,” Hain says. “We have gotten life education.”

“A Dream Play” is running April 21-25 at CFA. “Romeo and Juliet” and “Cloud 9” are running April 28-May 2 at the Boston University Theatre on Huntington Avenue. Call (617) 353-3350 for times and ticket prices. Students get in free with a BU ID.

Illustration by DFP Illustrator Lauren Saul.