Lynch is on the quest to find out "What's Next?"
Photo: Courtesy of Facebook
For seniors, spring marks the end of many chapters. They’re waiting anxiously, poised on the pre-graduation side of June, for what’s next.
Melissa Lynch, co-chair of this year’s Waa-Mu production, sits in the women’s dressing room underneath Cahn auditorium. Its counters are peppered with bags, shirts, and makeup. Dress rehearsals are this week—right in time for midterms. Lynch applies foundation as the room fills up around her; young women chat as they sit down before the mirrors, getting ready.
Waa-Mu’s 2011 show (this year’s theme: “What’s Next?”) will premiere this Friday. “It’s about all the things you encounter in college: wanting to know what’s next in relationships, in academic life, in your real life,” says Lynch. “It’s really a great theme because it’s something that everybody on campus can relate to…that feeling of not knowing what’s happening—the excitement, the terror at times.”
Relatable, yes—not to mention poignant for those whose time at Northwestern is winding down. “It feels like it’s the story—it hits very close to home to all of us seniors,” says Lynch.
The show follows a group of freshmen from their first twelve hours on campus at Northwestern to their last twelve before graduation. Tagging along with the characters reminded Lynch of her own time as an underclassman.
“Getting on campus, there are lots of different types of people, people that like — you know, friend everybody on Facebook right away, people that have already done all their homework, and people who are just like, trying to go to every single party,” she says. “You see all those different types of people [in the show] and you’re like, ‘Oh, I remember who that kid was, or like, I remember that time I was in my dorm.”
“It brings back your own individual memories,” she adds.
Flashback: Lynch’s own experience with Waa-Mu began three years ago. She was on run crew her sophomore year, and stuck with Waa in the years to come because she felt she belonged. “The theater community is a big community but it’s kind of divided into lots of different sects and cliques, and up until my sophomore year I hadn’t really felt like I’d belonged to any particular student group,” she says. “From the first day I started working on the show, seniors would talk to me and make me feel like I was just as important to the process as they were; so it was a very welcoming, special community to me.”
She decided she had to be a part of it.
It’s obvious here in the dressing room others felt similar to Lynch. When asked about the group dynamic, voices in the background laugh and joke loudly. “We hate each other,” they giggle. “We talk a lot of shit about each other.”
Lynch laughs, too. The environment, she says, “is so friendly.”
The ensemble rehearses together, sings together, parties together. The peanut gallery chimes in yet again—“Waa-Mu is about parties,” someone says. Lych confirms Waa does have a special events chair that “organizes different social gatherings for us.” (Aha, we see what you did there.)
Organized group activities—softball and kickball games, scavenger hunts—“include not just the cast but the crew, too, because they’re just as important to this process,” says Lynch.
A no-I-in-team attitude permeates each of Lynch’s responses; she explains. “It’s the most collaborative thing I’ve ever done in my life, and it reminds me why I love theatre,” she says. “When I was working on Waa-Mu I was so inspired by the fact that it was student-written… the scale of the show and the scale of what students could do was just so awesome to me.”
Northwestern as a community at large apparently shares in the love fest. Lynch recalls her “wildest” Waa-Mu moment: some Waa-Mu participants sang a number from the show at a Northwestern basketball game against Illinois. “When we started singing, the Illinois fans stood up and started booing us, and then the Northwestern students stood up and started cheering, ‘We love Waa-Mu!’”
“It became this battle of like, school spirit between Northwestern and Illinois,” she continues. “Northwestern won obviously—and it was cool moment because it was like Waa-Mu is bigger than just certain circuits, and people stood up for us, and hopefully those people will come and see the show now.”
Here at the end of it all, things look different. Lynch has never cried at the end of a Waa-Mu show, but this year, she predicts waterworks.
After the last show, “we’ll all probably be hugging each other and eating lots of food that David has purchased for us and kind of crying to each other,” she says. “Apparently this thing always dissolves in tears.”
Waa-Mu, she says, makes her feel warm. “Warm and fuzzy. And purple. I say purple because, that’s Northwestern color, and Waa-Mu is just synonymous with my Northwestern experience.”
An experience, now, that’s in its final acts.
See the show! Celebrating its 80th anniversary, Waa-Mu premieres this Friday at 8 p.m. The show runs until May 8th, with performances at 8 p.m. Thursday through Friday, at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Saturday, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday.
