Through trial and error, directing
He has tried many roles.
He’s been a soccer star, a political satirist, an olfactory professional and a poet. It was all interesting, until it wasn’t anymore.
Nathan Romans | Rawr
Theater major Kadin McGreevy recently won the Stage Directing and Choreographers award for his scene from “Vigils” at the Region 7 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. He will travel to Washington D.C. for the national festival April 13 – 18.
“There’s a lot of things that I’m not very good at,” Kadin McGreevy said.
McGreevy, a University of Idaho junior in performance, said he didn’t realize what he wanted to be or who he wanted to be until he began attending UI. McGreevy didn’t even want to come to UI. It was the last school on his list, as a Moscow native.
During his senior year in high school, his godfather asked him to try it out, and McGreevy decided to enroll in theater. It was never something that he thought he would love to do, but he said he is glad he did.
“I realize I’m in the same town,” McGreevy said. “I’m surrounded by the same people, the same shops and things like that, and yet it feels like a completely new place and also exactly where I want to be.”
Directing stuck with McGreevy, who said it’s both terrifying and safe — an oxymoron McGreevy is aware of.
“They used to say that acting is the scariest thing in the world, because you have to go up and be yourself in front of people,” McGreevy said. “A director, I realized recently, is (actually) the scariest thing in the whole world.”
He said the difference between acting and directing is in the placement of “the heart.” Actors go on stage and get to show their own hearts, but as a director, the heart is the piece itself, McGreevy said. Directors trust their heart in the hands of their actors, who have to explain it to a group of strangers. In the end, it is the people in the audience who get to say whether they like it or not.
“You can’t do anything about it,” McGreevy said. “I’ve never been so nervous. It’s a whole other level of fear.”
McGreevy, the youngest of four, currently works at Bloom in downtown Moscow as a waiter. He said he always looked at his older siblings’ actions as learning experiences, which made it easy for him to skate through everything, much to his siblings’ chagrin.
McGreevy said he seems to be the most ordinary out of all his siblings, rather than extraordinary. Two of his siblings are currently living and working in New York City.
McGreevy has his own accomplishments though. He, along with UI graduate student Courtney Smith, will attend the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival April 13 – 18 in Washington, D.C. McGreevy participated in a directing competition called SDC (students, directors, choreographers) at the regional level and was invited to attend the national festival.
While he doesn’t have to compete again, McGreevy said he sees the festival as a learning experience.
“Pretty much everything at the Oscars in theater form is this,” McGreevy said.
McGreevy said he hopes to come away from the festival with new experiences and forms of networking. He said he wished the actors who brought his piece to life at regionals could come with him, but unfortunately the invitation was just for McGreevy.
“My hope is by going to this thing, there will be a bunch of us who have already achieved our goal,” McGreevy said. “(We’re) getting to just enjoy the fact that we’re all the same age and interested in the same thing.”
Claire Whitley can be reached at [email protected]