JustArts: How did you get interested in theater? Are you a theater major (or do you plan to become one)?Viktoria Lange: I've always enjoyed theatre and grew up going to see Broadway shows with family, but it never occurred to me that I could get up on stage and be in a show, too! I had a nanny when I was thirteen who really got me into it because she ran a children's theatre group in her hometown. I finally realized that kids could create theatre as well! I do intend on being a theatre major, but a huge reason for why I came to Brandeis was because I could do theatre AND other academics. I think learning as much as I can in other areas makes me a more well-rounded theatre artist.

Rebecca Miller: I first became exposed to theatre when as a child I was taken to Broadway shows by my grandparents. I began performing at a relatively young age and my interest and passion in theatre has only grown from there.

JA: As a freshman, have you directed many plays before, or is this a new experience for you?

VL: This is my first time directing! Some aspects of directing are new to me, and some aren't. At my theatre group at home as well as my high school theatre, we don't have stage managers, run crew, or designers. My directors did it all. Because of this, they entrusted their casts with a lot of responsibility. So running a review of show materials, exploring scenes, and talking about character with peers is not new to me. I also taught theatre at my home theatre group's summer program to very young actors, so the work I am doing now is similar, just with a different age group. What is new to me is the collaboration with a large production staff, but it has become one of my favorite aspects of this whole journey.

RM: My directorial experience is limited to what I had done in high school. I had student directed two shows in my senior year. However, I came to this process with a clear knowledge of what is expected of a director, and what my (our) vision was for this show. I cannot begin to explain how much I have learned from this process.

JA: How did you and the others decide to do this play in particular?

VL: Rebecca (my co-director) and I became friends during Orientation. Both of us are a little obsessive and picky about plays and musicals, and we discovered we both shared very specific views on how Children of Eden could be done. It started as a game ("if you had no limits to what you could do with this show, what would it look like?") but quickly turned into something we really wanted to do at some point in our college careers. The music (by Stephen Schwartz) is absolutely gorgeous, and the show humanizes the choices of some familiar characters as well as draws some amazing parallels between three familiar Biblical stories. We then heard that a student studying abroad (Rob Orzalli, now our set designer) also was in love with this show and interested in working on it. And the rest is history!

RM: Children of Eden is a show I happen to have some unfinished business with. Not only does it have beautiful music and a compelling story, but I once performed in an abridged version at a summer theatre program. I felt that there was so much more that could be done with this piece of storytelling and so when my co-director and I found that we were both equally excited and engaged by this piece, we knew that we had to direct it.

JA: How would you describe your particular staging of this play?

VL: Something Rebecca and I agreed upon from the start was that, if performed in a certain way, this show could turn into a cartoon, something too childish with not enough depth for the Brandeis community to think about and enjoy. The scenes and music are whimsical and energetic, but there are large parts of the show that are quite serious. We wanted to bring out the seriousness as well as let the show be fun and cute and whimsical at appropriate times. In short, we wanted to be sure it had levels of fun and levels of seriousness. For this reason our interpretation of the show is more on the abstract side. The ensemble is made up of Storytellers who create much of the scenarios before the audience's eyes, and comment on the action they are describing. We leave a lot up to the imagination of the audience, providing them with enough guidance to follow the story but also being careful not to bombard them with too much extra. The story is what is most important here, and our Storytellers and production staff are doing an amazing job with this concept.