Rosebud Theatre student presents one-woman show: I, Claudia

Times Contributor

 

Natalie Gauthier, fourth-year student at Rosebud School of the Arts, will perform the one-woman play, I, Claudia in Rosebud’s Community Hall, April 6-8.

I, Claudia is Gauthier’s Final Project, the culmination of all she’s learned at Rosebud. Her final year has focused on preparing this project, but, in a way, she’s been preparing for it since high school.

Gauthier saw I, Claudia for the first time when she was 17. Her mother remembers her daughter saying afterward, “I’m going to do that play one day.” 

Two years later, during her first Rosebud year, Gauthier saw I, Claudia again – and again, she made a declaration: “If I make it til fourth year, I’m doing I, Claudia (for my Final Project).”

But I, Claudia seemed illogical, impractical. As a one-woman show, it requires memorizing 37 entire pages of dialogue. Being the only actor on stage also means, “If I forget my lines, there’s no one to cue me.”

She read other plays, explored writing her own, and considered doing a musical. In the end, “I just had to do (I, Claudia),” she says. “I had no other option. It would have been a cop-out not to….It says everything I want to say.”

Doing I, Claudia has been “a gift at the end of my time in Rosebud,” Gauthier says. She’s played diverse roles at Rosebud, ranging from young children to an 80-year-old woman, including Willy in Gifts of the Magi, Josie Pye in Anne of Green Gables, and Rebecca Nurse in The Crucible.

In I, Claudia, she plays someone much closer to herself. Claudia is “12 and ¾ – and hilarious,” struggling to grow up while her parents divorce. Her life story doesn’t parallel Claudia’s, but, Gauthier says, “I feel like, getting to play Claudia… this is me. I don’t have to hide it….I don’t have to keep it in check.”

“It’s not that you’ll see the same Natalie as you see walking down the street,” she says, “and that’s the person you’re going to see on the stage. But there’s something at my core. There’s an essence of who I am.”

Preparation and rehearsal have been intense, drawing on all the lessons of the Rosebud years. In addition to acting, marketing, set construction, wardrobe – all the practical aspects of theatre — Gauthier says, “Theatre school is not unlike therapy…. You have to look at yourself honestly and be willing to face the (emotional) stuff that you’d rather maybe just keep tucked away.”

That emotional work continues into the rehearsal process. During one recent session, Gauthier says, “I was crying, and I said, ‘I just want to be able to do the work!’” Her director, Paul Muir, Rosebud’s Director of Education, responded, “Natalie, this is part of the work.”

Amidst all the pressures, Gauthier’s glad she chose this path. “It’s overwhelming…and I’m really thankful for all the support,” she says. “But I’m doing what I want to do.”

After I, Claudia, Natalie Gauthier will act in Shakespeare’s Winter Tale at Full Circle Theatre in May. Also in May, she’ll record her first CD of original music. This fall, after graduation, she’ll stay around the village to act in Rosebud Theatre’s Our Town.

For tickets to I, Claudia call Trish at 403-823-0215.