Grace Bloomquist ’21 and Luke Hering ’21 interviewed Max Wojtanowicz ’06.
Max Wojtanowicz graduated from St. Olaf College with a degree in theater and a concentration in media studies. Since graduating, Max has worked and acted with several theaters throughout the Twin Cities and around Minnesota.
Check out more about Max on his website!
Question: How was diving into the Minneapolis/St. Paul theatre scene? It can be daunting for recent graduates!
Answer: It was really crazy. I graduated in 2006, and I left before graduation to start working at the Great River Shakespeare Festival down in Winona. That was my first job out of college. Then, I came back for graduation, then ran back to work, and then came up here (Minneapolis/St. Paul) and just started auditioning for everything. At the time Gary Gisselman was one of the professors at St. Olaf and was directing a lot at the Guthrie. So, he actually got my first gig in Minneapolis with an internship on a show he was directing, and then I was in A Christmas Carol that fall as an essential. Those St. Olaf connections are the thing; those are great! So, yeah, then I was just living in St. Paul and auditioning for everything I could and I kind of went on any audition that I thought I could possibly be any good for! Then I got the apprenticeship at the Children’s Theater Company which sort of then took me out for two years–then I was there full time. That was great and then ever since it’s just been kind of auditioning for everything I can find and then piecing my life together and trying to find other gigs and figuring out how to make a living!
I think college is the time to really figure out who you are and what makes you good to have in a rehearsal room–if you’re and actor or designer or director or stage manager or whatever–like, what makes you the best version of the stage manager you can be, or the actor you can be. It’s about figuring out what you’re really good at and capitalizing on that instead of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. That’s a super important lesson that I had to learn.
I think if I boiled down all the lessons I’ve learned as an actor it’s been, when I’ve auditioned for things, whether or not I get the job is about 10% having to do with my talent and about 90% –do they want me in the room? Do I seem like someone they want to spend some time with? Do they want to grab a drink with me after rehearsal? You know–like it’s a lot more of that than I really give it credit for. Those are long rehearsal days and they want to know that you’re not going to go nuts on them, or be weird, or you know–like they want you to be sort of weird, just not too weird.
Question: Do you have anything else to say about how it is–your like as a working actor?
Answer: It’s a lot of going on every audition and trying to walk out of the audition room door and saying “okay, that’s over, it’s done” and not think about it even though everything in your whole body wants to just think about it all day every day. It’s a lot of feast or famine and it’s a lot of up and down. It’s not for the faint of heart. I was just talking to another actor today and they were just saying how in college we all heard “if you can do anything else do that instead.” It sucks to hear it; I remember being so mad that they would say that to us. And now i understand. It’s not that they don’t want you to do it. It can be really emotionally draining on you to constantly put yourself up up for judgement in front of people–I’m speaking as and actor–but for actors it’s a lot of putting yourself up in front of people who are just there to decide whether you are good enough or not, and so it boils down to you knowing that you are good enough and just deciding to believe that first of all, and then also knowing like, whether I’m good enough or not is not the issue here, it’s whether I am right for this.
Question: What was your favorite theatre experience (professional and not) that you loved to be a part of–that meant the most to you?
Answer: The first show I got into at the Guthrie was Sunday in the Park with George. That is my favorite show of all time and when they announced they were doing it in the season, I was like “I am doing this, this is my gig.” So, I wrote to the casting director and I said “Listen, you’re doing a lot of good plays this year, the season looks great. Sunday in the Park with George means something to me,” and I just went there. I put it all out there (should I’ve? No, probably not): “I would do anything to be in that show, I love that show, I’m right for that show, any part you could possibly find for me, I’d do it; I’d do anything to be in that show.” That show is not only a very beautiful score that appeals to a musician like myself, but for actors and artists themselves to hear a story that is about how being an artist is really lonely, and how it can be really hard on you and hard on your relationships, but it’s still worth doing and it’s still worth telling your story…and doing what you love to do because that’s what you’re put here to do…and, so, to have that important story accessible to me as something that I could be a part of was more meaningful to me than I could ever say.
I also have gotten to write a bunch of my own work and I’ve written a couple musicals, one of which is about my experience with cancer and I’ve toured that since the Fringe Festival where it premiered. I’ve toured that all over the midwest, last fall (’18) I took it to an international solo theatre festival in New York City, and so that’s really meaningful too, for different reasons, I guess. You know you do a show; you don’t always interact with the audience; you don’t always know how they respond to it. But with that show I could have a post-show discussion every week and talk with them and hear their reactions and hear their responses and know that it affected people and that it helped people, like, get through a hard thing or helped them to look at things another way. So yeah, I really appreciated the opportunity to do that!
Question: What is some advice that you were given that you would like to pass on to other aspiring theatre artists?
Answer: One of them is “if you can do anything else, do it,” which I hated it at the time, but now I think it’s useful. One that Gary said is that “theatre isn’t about theatre, it’s about everything else’ and “if you don’t know anything about everything else, then you’re not going to be a good theatre artist.” Really, at the time I remember thinking that’s really intense, but it’s so true. That’s what I love about the St. Olaf experience, actually, is that they work so hard to make sure that all of the theater department productions are interdisciplinary efforts. That they’re not just theatre for theatre’s sake. They’re like: no, because theatre can say something. You can do a play about mathematics and involve the math department. You can do a play about history and involve… you know those things that made us all think: Oh it’s not just a play, it has some relevance to people, and it can do a lot for people.
When I was in directing, Gary was directing A Christmas Carol with an actor named Charles Keating play Scrooge. And Charles was a British actor and he was very irascible and very intense, and he came and spoke to our directing class and Gary said “so tell us about a life in the theatre; all of the students here are aspiring theatre artists, you know, they want to know what the deal is.” Pardon my language, but it feels important for me to speak these words aloud. As he did, Mr. Keating said “there’s nothing romantic about a life in the theatre, you better get that shit out of your goddamn head right now.” And we’re all–we’re college juniors, all thinking, like, you know, we are at St. Olaf, the leaves are falling, it’s beautiful, everything is lovely, and he’s a guy in his early 70s, and he had just had it. I was glad for that actually, ultimately, because I remember thinking: yeah, it’s not just going to be all sunshine and rainbows is it? There are going to be hard things. It was great for someone to come in who didn’t know us to just say: no, it’s gonna be hard. He didn’t owe us anything, so I remember really appreciating that.
Also, I was in Acting 130 (Intro to Acting Course) and we were warming up on day and Dona Werner Freeman, who just retired, said to all of us: “people will think you’re in theatre because you don’t know how to do anything else.” And we were all like, *gasp*, and I remember being so upset. I remember going back to my dorm with my friend who was in the class and we were like “we graduated top of our class, we’re smart, we’re smart…theatre, were gonna show them!” And that was exactly the intended effect of what Dona had said, of course; she meant for it to motivate us to work hard. Theatre takes intelligence: emotional and creative and, you know, mental intelligence. And it takes stamina, and it takes courage, and it takes discipline. So I always think that it’s totally false that it doesn’t take all of those things to be in theatre, because it absolutely does.
Question: How do you find out about auditions–through an agent, in the paper?
Answer: My experience in Minneapolis and Saint Paul is that talent agents for actors are not part of this ecosystem, that actors just set up their own auditions, negotiate their own contracts, do all of that work on their own. Where I find all my auditions is Minnesota Playlist. They have good reviews on there, good podcasts, theater makes, and occasional articles. So that’s where I find all my auditions. Now I’ve gotten to a place in my career, too, where…the Guthrie doesn’t post a lot of their auditions, like, for this (As You Like it), they just called people up, because they are also the Guthrie, that’s the position they’re in. The Children’s Theater is the same, a couple others, I’d say, but all of those places are required to have general auditions every year, so you can get on their radar if you’re not already, and those would be posted on Minnesota Playlist. The Actors Equity Website also has some auditions, but very rarely do they have something that’s not also posted on Minnesota Playlist, so I just usually check both, probably just a couple of times, just to be sure.
Question: If you could tell your college self one thing, what would it be?
Answer: What would I tell my college self? I would tell myself be brave and believe in yourself. When you’re at St. Olaf, or you’re at any other college, your tuition is helping to pay your professors’ salaries. So you’re paying them to do their work, which is to inspire you and to make you better. When I taught there for a semester for Dona, I would tell those students “You are paying me to be here, so, like, make me work for you! Tell me what you need from me!”, and some of them took me up on that, and some of them didn’t. And now I think, once you’re out of college, there are still people who believe in you, but you’re not paying them! They don’t have an incentive beyond being your friend or loving you or being your family or whatever, so you really have to build up a capacity to believe in your talent and your art. And not everyone can do that. It’s much easier said than done, but I believe everybody has the capacity to do it. That’s what I’d say. That’s my answer.