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Rooted in Ohio profiles interesting people who have grown up or lived in Ohio and have gone on to make a name for themselves around the country or around the globe. If you know of someone worthy of being highlighted, then send an e-mail to Life@Coxinc.com and include “Rooted in Ohio idea” in the message subject line.
New York-based actor Nate Faust, a 2003 University of Dayton theater arts graduate, has co-created and serves as artistic director of the film and theater production company One21 Collective, committed to creating prequels of shows with the intent to reach audiences long before the curtain goes up.
Conceived last year, One21 Collective gained notice over the summer with “Men to Be Feared,” a tale of a dystopian society written by Rebecca Jane Stokes and directed by Daniel Leigh. Before “Men to Be Feared” began performances in August at the famed New York International Fringe Festival, Faust, the aforementioned Leigh and Stokes and fellow collaborators (Sherri Eden Barber, Dana Mazzenga, Aidan O’Shea, Patrick Williams) created a short film, shot in the Poconos, that introduced the characters and laid the conceptual groundwork, ensuring the film’s closing monologue was the opening monologue of the play. The film, which wrapped the day before Fringe rehearsals began, was uploaded to the company’s website (www.One21Collective.com) and became a unique tool to generate word of mouth for the Fringe presentation. Although the film and stage production were separate entities and could be enjoyed independently, the parallel heightened the project and the company’s desire to bridge the worlds of film and theater.
“The genesis of One21 Collective came out of the feeling of why does it always have to be film or theater,” said Faust, 32. “Both can work together. One of the most exciting aspects we came up with was the idea of using the same story. We didn’t want to take a play and turn it into a movie. We wanted to make a movie that leads the audience into what happens on stage. It’s 2012. People have access to everything sitting at home in their living room or at their computer. We want to pull people into a story from their living room and grab them enough to make them want to leave their home and go out to the theater to see what the rest of the story is like. Sometimes it’s a challenge to get people to the theater, but if you want to do theater you’ve got to get them there.”
Born in Chicago and primarily raised in Cincinnati, Faust has fond memories of his formative years in UD’s theater program. He initially entered UD as a bio/pre-med major but toward the end of his freshman year his affection for medicine was replaced by the passion to become an actor.
“I absolutely loved UD,” he said. “I grew up as an artist there. The unique experiences, camaraderie and collaborations I had remain something I’ve been looking for repeatedly since I left. UD also gave its students a studio theater that encouraged us to be creative, make mistakes and see what works. The group that I had around me took advantage of it. We did shows for as many weekends as we could. It was a crash course in creativity.”
Faust particularly credits UD theater program chairman Darrell Anderson, director Tony Dallas and Human Race Theatre Company resident artists Kay Bosse and Bruce Cromer as influential, invaluable guides in his growth.
“Darrell Anderson is a true patriot of theater,” he said. “One of the things he does really well is introduce his students to the professionalism of what it means to do theater for a living. Seeing how he worked with Kay Bosse and Tony Dallas was like a sponge –you wanted to soak it all in. When I was an undergrad, I knew I wanted to get where they were so I knew I needed to learn all I could from them. When I was in ‘Antigone,’ directed by Tony, I knew I had to emulate the positive things Bruce was able to do. It really stuck with me. I really learned what it meant to be an actor.”
After graduation, Faust spent nearly a year tirelessly auditioning in Los Angeles, which he describes as “one of the hardest, most humbling” experiences of his life. He then moved to Chicago for nearly two years, auditioning whenever he could. He found work at a children’s theater, but knew there was more to discover.
“I was at the point that made me realize there were things I didn’t know,” he said. “I was auditioning but not landing roles. I really wanted to figure out what I felt I was doing wrong.”
Bosse had a solution. She encouraged Faust to attend graduate school, specifically New York’s New School for Drama. He used a scene from “The Grapes of Wrath” for his audition (Bosse was his audition partner) and was accepted, which reinvigorated his path over the course of three years and gave him the opportunity to delve into many roles including John Proctor in “The Crucible.” He received his Master of Fine Arts in acting in 2009.
“The New School was an intense, very difficult program,” he said. “But the faculty from top to bottom was professional and first class. Ron Leibman (Tony Award winner for ‘Angels in America: Millennium Approaches’) was the chair of the acting program when I was there. Just to have a chance to spend a year working on my craft with Ron was amazing. Our artist-in-residence my final year was John Turturro (‘Quiz Show,’ ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’). Because of the training I had up to that point at UD and the first two years at New School, I was able to have the confidence to sit down and talk with John about my scene from ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night.’”
Despite the competitiveness of the innovative online age, Faust, whose acting inspirations include Tom Hanks, Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Newman, remains confident in his company’s potential and its mission to create more new works.
“You never know which story will ring true, but if you tell great stories audiences take something away from it and the actors have an amazing experience inhabiting a character or moment. We’re using the experience of ‘Men to Be Feared’ to inform what we’re going to do next. The thought of filming something and putting on a play at the same time is a challenge. It’s hard enough to do one or the other. We have a lot of ideas, but as a work in progress we are assessing our limitations and figuring out how we overcome them and push straight pass them. That’s what I learned at UD.”
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