Samantha as Ms. Ratched

As with Kristina, upon meeting Samantha, I knew immediately that I wanted her to play Ms. Ratched. Her name a reference to the infamously sinister Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I needed an actor to inhabit the character with both a commanding diction and a lack of experience. In the hands of a more comfortable actor, the part could have been rendered un-funny by over-acting by a typecast. In contrast, the intensive work I did with Samantha to ultimately make her comfortable groping herself while uttering “Swept into a blaze of lusty compulsions, it is easy to mistake the gift of life for a debauched escapade of the flesh” like a gyrating bat out of hell, with a Masters in education.

In the early rehearsal stages, she was terrified of being so provocative… to the point that, at one group rehearsal, I was forced to abandon work with her as she was clearly uncomfortable. It subsequently took hours of one-on-one rehearsal to elevate her to a level of comfort (and volume—I congratulate both her and myself for finally developing her stage voice) necessary for the role. But it was not until she stepped into her costume, makeup, and high-rise pumps that she became the deliciously cruel teacher that inhabited the stage in the final production—whipping her yardstick into oblivion in an act of exquisite, unrehearsed and pitch-perfect in-character improvisation.