The Standard

Issue date: 9/29/09 Section: Features

Miss Julie, like a lot of different personalities, is not always easy to figure out. Lauren Sweetser, who portrays Miss Julie in Missouri State's production of "Miss Julie" that began Sept. 24 and will continue through Sunday, said Miss Julie is not particularly the easiest role to play.

"Miss Julie - she is quite a complicated woman," said Sweetser, a senior acting major. "A lot of things with her are things we've all been through. We've all had this person who's done us wrong."

The character development wasn't the only difficulty with playing a role in the show. The language of the play is also complicated.

"The language when Strindberg wrote it was when they were kind of coming out of melodrama and they were going into realism," Sweetser said. "So there's a bit of both in there. That was challenging and it's all about the dialogue. The play is all dialogue, there are huge monologues. That was one thing we worked on a lot, just getting the language down."

In addition to the language, getting used to working so closely to each other was difficult for the two main characters, Sweetser as Julie and Jean, played by senior theatre performance major, Andrew Venneman.

"I know Andy," Sweetser said. "We had to work on the sexual tension. We're friends and we've never done scene work or work like that together before. It was challenging, we're actors and this is our job. It just takes time to gel with your cast."

"Miss Julie" is a drama written by August Strindberg that is based in Sweden in the late 1800s on an evening holiday. The play is about moral and social issues and some of the problems between social classes. The relationship struggle between Julie, the count's daughter, and Jean, the count's valet, is the plot of this story as they desperately try to make a relationship work between them.

"It's a play that a lot of people stay away from, because it has kind of a misogynistic read to it," said Telory Davies, director of the show. "It's not one of those plays where people think, 'well that's a good message.' I think even in its time period, it was a bit brash."

Even though the show is about heavy issues and social struggles, Davies has made sure there is a range of emotions throughout.

"I tried very hard as a director to put enough lighter moments in it," Davies said. "Midsummer night's eve is supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be light hearted, it's the only night where it's mostly day. I think that's why Strindberg mostly decided to choose that. It's a major holiday in Sweden, but it's also a night where anything could happen."

One of the unique things about Strindberg's play is that, even though the show is mostly conversation between three main characters, Strindberg has introduced dancers throughout the entire play.

Choreographer for "Miss Julie," Ashley Hendrix, senior dance performance major, enjoyed planning out the dance moves for her first choreographed piece in a main stage show at Missouri State.

"For "Miss Julie" [Strindberg] mentioned a Shadish dance, which I had never heard of, so I went to the library and they actually had a video on the 19th century dancing," Hendrix said. "The Shadish was in there, so I learned the basic step for it and I just put my own little spin on it: just some showy stuff to add some more appealing effects."

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