{"id":9988,"date":"2020-06-17T14:13:04","date_gmt":"2020-06-17T18:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=9988"},"modified":"2024-05-07T13:35:00","modified_gmt":"2024-05-07T17:35:00","slug":"act-naturally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/act-naturally\/","title":{"rendered":"Act, Naturally"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Joe Marano \u201920 was in eighth grade when he didn\u2019t <\/em>audition for his school\u2019s production of the musical Seussical.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He certainly wanted to. But Marano was a devoted wrestler, and when his teammates heard about his song-and-dance aspirations, \u201cI don\u2019t want to say bullied, but they convinced me not to do it,\u201d he says. He still remembers going to see Seussical<\/em> and shuffling back to the car with his mom afterward, crushed that he hadn\u2019t been up on stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t until he reached college that Marano finally gave theater a try, and now he hasn\u2019t stopped performing since. After transforming himself from fledgling cast member to leading player at Monmouth, this fall he\u2019s heading to the prestigious Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University\u2014the program famous for its Inside the Actors Studio <\/em>seminar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was only four years ago that, as a freshman at Monmouth, Marano had his first-ever audition. He was cast in the ensemble of Sweeney Todd<\/em> and enjoyed the experience so much that he began scouting out local community theater auditions. Soon he was performing on Monmouth stages and nearby ones, too. He declared a minor in musical theater and got to work turning himself into a triple threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the beginning, it was very intimidating,\u201d he says of performing with peers who had been singing, dancing, and acting practically since birth. \u201cIt was tough to try to catch up, but once I started to get into the groove of things, I felt much more comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Company Man:<\/strong> Marano (center) played the lead role of Robert in Monmouth\u2019s production of Stephen Sondheim\u2019s Company<\/em> last November.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The fact that he\u2019d played the clarinet as a kid and could already read music helped. But \u201creally, it was just a lot of passion,\u201d he says. \u201cI knew this was what I wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marano credits Adjunct Professor Karen Huffstodt with helping him grow into a more confident singer. \u201cA lot of teachers teach you how to sing like everybody else,\u201d he says. \u201cShe digs into your individual talents and your true self comes out.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor David Tripold and Specialist Professor Sheri Anderson helped guide him along the way as well, he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marano began landing lead roles in Monmouth productions, including Company, The Drowsy Chaperone <\/em>and The 25th Annual<\/em> Putnam County Spelling Bee<\/em>. He even learned to tap dance for a community theater production of 42nd Street<\/em>. By the end of his junior year, Marano had decided to apply for MFA programs after finishing his BA in history. He was ecstatic to get into his top choice, Pace, which plans to reopen for classes this fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though COVID-19 has put all live performance on hold\u2014nixing Marano\u2019s senior recital and halting the summer shows he\u2019d hoped to appear in\u2014he\u2019s been making use of the downtime. After seeking out lists of the plays every actor should read and the movies every actor should watch, he pieced together his own syllabus and has been working his way through 91 classic plays and 40 films.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since his transformation from wrestler to performer, Marano hasn\u2019t talked much with his old teammates, though \u201cI heard through the grapevine they weren\u2019t pleased,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he believes that, at their core, wrestling and theater have a surprising amount of overlap. \u201cBoth are incredibly demanding physically, mentally, and emotionally, so a strong mindset is required,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe differences are mostly just the workout regimens,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monmouth kindled Class of 2020 grad Joe Marano\u2019s love for the theater. His next stop? New York City. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":9991,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\"x\":50,\"y\":29}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-currents","category-tides"],"thumbnail":"\"\"","catString":"Currents, Tides","issue":"Summer 2020","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9988"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16057,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9988\/revisions\/16057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}