INTRODUCING THE CAST OF "SEMINAR"

MEET LAINE WAGNER

URI Theatre | By Diana Savino

Laine Wagner
Photo by Randy Osga

We interviewed Laine Wagner who is a senior here at URI and will be playing one of the lead roles in our upcoming production Seminar, to open on October 9th. Seminar is a play written by Theresa Rebeck and takes place in New York City. The play follows 4 young writers who are struggling to make livings. In order to help boost their careers, they decide to hire a professional writer to critique their work. The four of them meet with the professor once a week for 10 weeks, and it costs them $5,000 per student to do so.

Wagner will be playing Izzy, a flirtatious student who is very outgoing. Laine explains that this role is different from her previous roles because “although the character is wild and sexual and fantastic - the language and the style of the play require her to be a real person as well. So as an actor you really have to build the character from the ground up.” Being an actor requires a lot of strength and courage, which Wagner explains when she discussed her topless scene, which “takes a lot of fearlessness that no other character in the play offers. Izzy is daring. That’s always scary.”

Laine came into the department as a freshman in 2011 “doe-eyed and ready to work” and has kept that intensity throughout her career. She explains the importance of the different roles she has faced by saying “You just have to pull from your life experiences and bring the text to life,” something that Laine has done for 4 years now. The life experiences she has gone through both on and off stage have helped her become the actress she is today.

Wagner’s most treasured experiences at URI include the people. “The friends I have made I will have for life and the faculty is so loving… well love is sometimes tough. But they genuinely care about their students.”