JustArts: So you're hoping to move to New York? Do you want to go into theater or film?Linnea Sage: I've sort of made the transition into film. Since I was 17 I've been working for it, and I'm SAG-eligible now to join the union. ... I'm going to move to New York. After the showcase, hopefully, we'll all find representation, and then they'll basically be in charge of sending us places and managing auditions, and hopefully it will all work out. There's a really good mix between people who want to do film and people who want to do theater, so hopefully the people who come will be satisfied with us.

JA: How have you been reaching out to those people?

LS: We bought what's called roster reports-it's a list of all the casting directors and talent agents in New York. It gives you all their contact information and whether or not they attend showcases or, like, they're just too good for you. First we got 500 postcards, and we labeled them and stamped them and sent them out, and we did the same thing again. Then we called all of them, and we also e-mailed all the ones who gave us e-mails, which was only like half of them. ... We've gotten some good responses so far, and we've still got two weeks, so hopefully it'll work out.

JA: What's the format of the showcase?

LS: Everyone can have four and a half minutes onstage doing whatever they want. Most people are going to want to do a three-minute scene with someone else and a monologue to show variation and change character and show that they can work with other people and command the stage alone. A bunch of people are doing that. We have one person doing one five-minute, one-man show-type thing, and he's awesome at that, which is great. We have three scenes now and a bunch of monologues. One person's doing a scene and she's singing also, and one person's doing standup comedy. Everyone's doing exactly what they want. Most places that are run by the department have more strict rules, but I just figured we should all just have fun. We're all spending our own money, so we should all get to do what we want.

JA: What's the venue for this?

LS: It's this great little theater. We ended up getting the nonprofit price.

JA: Are you all going down together?

LS: We rented a 15-person van. One of our members' boyfriends had to rent it for us because you have to be 27 or 25 or something like that. The only place we could rent a 15-person van was at Logan. Since we need to be there by 11, we have to pick it up at 5 in the morning. We're going to start driving down there at 6. It's going to be a really hectic day.

JA: And you have multiple shows in that day, right?

LS: We started with three shows, at 1, 5 and 7, but then we found out that Juilliard is also doing their showcase that day. They have 20 kids-their showcase is like an hour and a half or something. Ours is only 30 minutes because there are only eight of us-short and sweet. And their showcase is almost the same times that ours is. So we were like, "We can't change the date, even though we should, but we're just going to add more shows." So we're doing five shows now.

JA: What are you performing at the showcase?

LS: I am doing a monologue from the movie Wet Hot American Summer and then a scene with Eric Engelstein from the show Community: It's a new show this year with Joel McHale. I'm really hardcore pursuing film and television, so I'm choosing to do that even though it's not as deep or meaningful as some of the theater pieces we have.

JA: Have you guys been critiquing each other?

LS: Yeah, we've sort of been our own directors. We've had some students come in and guest direct, and that's been really helpful. ... We have such a crazy diverse group of people. None of us are even close to being like anybody else. ... I think we have something that no one's seen before. We produced it ourselves all out of pocket, and I think we deserve to have a really good showcase.