Debuting Artist: Katy White

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Katy takes the stage for the very first time with OpenStage in The 39 Steps!

 

Blonde White Woman, Green Blue Eyes, Katy White Headshot

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you got into theatre?

My dad and my mom were both theater lovers (read: nerds) and like all good nerds handed that creative passion over to me. My dad, Christopher Selbie, did a lot of work at Denver CIVIC, DCPA, and Compass Theater, so I always got to tag along and hang out in the back with the actors, or costumers or mad-faced crew members rushing to shove a prop into an actors face. I knew at about the age of 4 that this organized frenzy of people was how I wanted to spend the rest of my life. Despite what my creditors want.

How did you first hear about OpenStage, and what drew you to work with us for this show?

The gods of Google led me to OpenStage. I of course had heard about OST&C, their productions, performing at the Magnolia Theater, the awards, and figured there was no way this little unknown actor would be able to get into working with such an established organization. I figured I’d take a shot, send a tape, and hope they wanted to work with me, as much as I wanted to work with them. Of all the shows I had the privilege to audition for this season, The 39 Steps was the one I felt most alive, comfortable, and grounded in. I knew these people on the first read, and felt myself get really attached to them, and they weren’t even mine to give life to! That’s when I knew this was the play I really wanted to be a part of.

What is your role in this production, and what excited you most about working on this particular production?

I play the German Spy, Annabella. The tragic-housewife Margaret. And the seemingly prudish Pamela. It may sound banal, but the accents and having to give such distinction sounds, life, and movements to these three people. Having to find myself moving in three people, as opposed to just one, has been one of the most exciting parts of this production.

What has been the most enjoyable or unexpected part of the rehearsal process so far?

The clowning and the trust myself and the 3 other cast mates offered each other day one of the process. That every choice was safe. Every sound was wanted. And we were all throwing ourselves into this gumbo together. I felt a little nervous walking into a group of creatives who already had a short-hand and relationship, but I found the ease to which I was also able to enter that space, and feel like I was a part of the space, has been wonderful. Every choice we make together has been shared and always from a place of wanting to clown together.

What has been the most challenging part of bringing these characters to life?

Trying to give all three of these women distance places they live, move, feel, use their heads, hands, and sighs. Remembering that I am stealing the voices of three different cultures, so I need to honor those voices by being specific to them and their lifestyle. I didn’t want to be a “generic German” or “Scottish woman” or “English dame”. But three lived in, soul-tired and weary women. Finding their voices wasn’t hard, but finding how they move independent of each other has been, for me, one of the hardest parts.

Why do you think The 39 Steps is significant or relevant to audiences today?

“Vote for a good world. A better world.” said first in the novel, then the movie, then the play. I really can’t think of anything more needed, poignant, or timely than that.

What is your favorite moment or scene in the show, and why does it stand out to you?

One of my favorite moments of the show has to be when Pamela and Richard are stuck trudging through the moors together. I haven’t been able to do comedic physical comedy, only ever stage combat, so being able to clown while also have these incredibly high stakes for these two people adds such a wonderful amount of conflict, and getting to pull Jake across the floor in a handcuff is pretty awesome too.

Do you have a favorite character of the three you play? Or favorite dialect you do? Why is that one your favorite?

I love all my women. I think they are so heroic/tragic in their own ways. It’s kind of like trying to decide who my favorite BTS member is. I can’t! I’ve loved Annabella because she is full of right-angles, and I am not. I love Margaret because she is all bends and slopes, and I am not like that. And I love Pamela because she follows her heart, and I wish I was like that. If there was a favorite thing to be had, I suppose I would say learning/doing the German accent has been my “favorite” thing, as I’ve never gotten to do one before.

If you could swap roles with any other character in this play for a day, who would it be and why?

I would switch with Dave and make him be the women, and I would be his clown, and we would see how the dynamic of the show would shift with 2 women as the clowns!

What is your favorite play and/or musical?

This is just like the favorite BTS member question! Oh gosh! I have an MFA that specializes in Shakespeare, and I have at least 6 fave plays from him alone, and that’s just him, so I literally don’t know if I could ever get that answer to a singularity. Macbeth is probably my favorite Willy S. play. Favorite modern play, oh gosh, I’d right now answering this question say The Goat or Whose Sylvia by Edward Albee.

What is your favorite role you’ve played in the past? Why was that role special to you?

I was cast as Mark Antony in D.C at the Shakespeare Theater Company in 2021 and that will always be one of my most special roles. The pressure I felt to nail the “Friends, Romans, Countrymen line” was intense, trying not to “cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war” on my own mental space, and live in this very famous role and rhetorical study. It was special further because my two very good friends were Brutus and Cassius which made hating them by the end of the play actually really easy, because we had a language of love and friendship underneath. Which made it super easy for me to want them all dead by the end of it! Just the ability to be a part of an all female Julius Caesar production in D.C, getting to say those words, was a blessing. Playing Mark Antony also came at the end of a really weird time in my life, so getting to pour myself into this person, who was also coming to the end of a time in their life, made it really easy for me to see Mark and how they lived in this world and conflict. I still use those monologues to help warm me up. I’ll never forget them.

Is there a dream role or type of production you hope to work on in the future?

I love the play Medea and really, really want a director out here to do it so I can play her. I love Medea. I think she is so strong, willful, full of her senses, and Lady M before we got Lady M, and I love Lady M. I love the rhetoric of the play, and the (un)fortunate parallels it still reveals in our 21st century world. Tensions between men-women, husband-wife, other-same, immigrant-national, and all those lovely paradigms we are confronted with today.

What do you like to do in your free time, when you’re not working on theatre projects?

If I’m not stress baking, then I am usually playing a video game of some sort. Stardew Valley is my current stream of gaming drugs, but that’s not to say Final Fantasy 10 or Alan Wake 2 hasn’t crept up in there, and that’s not even a full “recently played” game list. There is always something on in the background, a movie or a show, so I am that weirdo who is consuming media/art on a very steady IV line. I really love hanging with my partner at home, singing to my cats like Jean Ralphio, and reading what other people say about the things that I have watched, so then I can tell other people what those other people have said.

 

The 39 Steps

Adapted by Patrick Barlow

From the novel by John Buchan
From the movie by Alfred Hitchcock
Licensed by IVT Global Entertainment Limited
And an original concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon
Directed by Jessica Jackson

January 11-February 8, 2025
Playing at The Lincoln Center Magnolia Theatre

 

Come see Katy take the stage in The 39 Steps
January 11-February 8!

A Hitchcock masterpiece. A juicy spy novel. A colossal dash of Monty Python. Shake it all up… It’s The 39 Steps! In 1930s London, the dashing Richard Hannay begins his evening at the theatre, and leaves a fugitive on the run. Caught in a maze of espionage, near-death escapes, and flirtatious entanglements, our hero careens from a London music hall to Scotland’s most remote highlands in search of a plausible alibi and the true identity of the killer. Will our debonair hero solve the mystery and save Britain from a den of devious spies?!? A cast of 4 actors plays over 150 characters in this Tony award winning, laugh out loud, lightning-paced whodunit!

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