This week, we sat down with Deya Pajarillo to talk about her involvement in acting at Rhodes, Playhouse on the Square, and her townhouse theme of “popping the Rhodes bubble.”
HerCampus: What is Playhouse on the Square, and how did you get involved?
Deya Pajarillo: Well, Playhouse on the Square is actually Memphis’s premier professional theater company. I was in theater classes here at Rhodes, and one of the professors, Cookie Ewing, who is absoulutely amazing, contacted me and said that the director of “Kiss Me Kate” at Playhouses needed someone to be in the production. I got to be there and dance, and sing my little heart out! I got paid as well, which is really cool, because it was like a true, professional experience in the theater.
HC: So why do you love acting and singing?
DP: I’ve been a performer ever since I could walk. I started out in dance, and was a competitive dancer for a very long time, and then once I got into high school I began theater and singing. When I chose Rhodes, since we don’t have a dance program, I chose to do theater here and continue on from my high school route. We’ve had a lot of really cool productions that I’ve been a part of. I’ve served as a choreographer for one of them. I was the star of “Good Woman of Satchewan” last year, where I played both a man and a woman, and that was really fun because it was such a challenge! I love it because it’s just so much fun to become something else, and be at McCoy with that wonderful group of people who invest so much.
HC: Are you in the current production at McCoy?
DP: I am! The show is “Admissions,” and it’s a really awesome play. I love it because it talks about the issues that are happening on campus right now. It’s not written by students here or even in our time period, but it is still so relevant to what is happening right now. It could literally be happening any place on Rhodes campus.
HC: Could you explain a little more about townhouse themes, and yours in particular?
DP: So basically, we have four townhouses at Rhodes which not everybody knows about. It’s like a fun little secret as far as housing goes. We have six girls living with us, and we have all our rooms, kitchens, and bathrooms. We’re pretty much like a West Village room, but stacked up. Each of the townhouses has a specific theme that their group will explore throughout the year and write reports on. For example, my townhouse theme is “Popping the Rhodes Bubble,” and that’s to say we’re trying to get students who stay exclusively on campus to go out and explore the city. We try to figure out where the good deals are, where the cool concerts are, and just what’s happening around Memphis!
HC: Why do you think it’s important to “Pop the Rhodes Bubble,” so to speak?
DP: I think it’s very important because there’s a huge disconnect between the Rhodes community and the Memphis community. I don’t think that one is necessarily better than the other by any means, but both realities need to face each other. Out in Memphis, there’s this huge stigma that Rhodes students are stuck-up, and we really want to prove that we’re not like that. Also, here at Rhodes, I’ve met a lot of people who think that Memphis is just nothing but a ghetto, but you go out there and meet some absoulutely amazing people. It’s really important to us that we try to break all of these stigmas.