Name: Matt Weingarten
Hometown: San Jose, CA
Extracurricular Activities: School. Just kidding, I teach Sunday School at Temple De-Hirsch Sinai and I watch a lot of movies. I play pickup basketball as well on occasion.
What inspired your show?
This summer, as I was starting to structure my show, I was following the many violent news stories that were happening around the world (The Israel-Palestine conflict, the Russia-Ukraine standoff, and the Ferguson protests) and I thought that doing a show that focused on those themes would be powerful and relevant for today. As I was picking the scenes that would make up my show, many of the war plays had family themes ingrained in them, which turned out to be a happy accident because a lot of the work I am drawn to has to do with familial relations.
What drew you to theater?
In freshman year I took an acting class and I really enjoyed it. I auditioned for the winter play, and I was lucky enough to get cast in the Hamlet that winter (I was lucky to get cast because at that point I had 0 theater experience, so I was pretty terrible). That show gave me the theater bug and I haven’t stopped being involved since.
What is your most treasured moment from college?
It’s tough to say. I still feel like I am fully in the experience so I don’t know if I have the perspective to answer quite yet. Gun to my head though, I would say that it may be at the very beginning of freshman year, before school even started, during an immersion trip to the Cascades, I was outside of the cabin we were staying in with my friend Gordon. We shared a cigarette and the whole time I was thinking “I am FINALLY free!” Little did I know what that really meant.
Do you have anything you would want to tell your high school self?
I would tell him to be more courageous. When I look back, I think about what might have been if I had been a little more courageous in pursuing things that I wanted to pursue, but was too afraid of losing what I had.
What are your plans post graduation?
Pay the rent. Stay sane. Make some art. Repeat.