Urbanite Theatre explores ‘The Sound Inside’ to open 10th season

Actress Vicki Daignault didn’t hesitate a second when she was asked to play a college literature professor in the Urbanite Theatre production of “The Sound Inside” by Adam Rapp.

“I think I said ‘How fast can I say yes’,” Daignault recalled before a recent rehearsal at the downtown Sarasota theater with director Kristin Clippard and her co-star, Evan Stevens.

The three have been digging deep into a story about the connection that grows between Daignault’s Bella Baird, a Yale University creative writing professor, and her exceptionally intelligent and literary-minded student, Christopher, and a pivotal question she asks that will test their relationship and propel the story into unexpected territory.

Daignault, who previously appeared at Urbanite in “Women Laughing Alone with Salad” in 2018, said that after a period of creative output, Bella hasn’t written anything new for a while. “She is going through personal things that she finds disturbing and kind of hard to deal with that touch on things in her past. She has this unexpected connection with Christopher and doesn’t expect him to be as smart, as literate as he is. He’s brilliant.”

That connection grows out of a shared love of literature.

Clippard said that Rapp’s “writing is phenomenal. He has managed to weave a dark story in a way that feels comforting and relatable. He invites you into two people’s lives steeped in loneliness and deep despair. Yet you find a little bit of hope in the connection they have together.”

Daignault is taking on a role that was created by Mary-Louise Parker at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and later on Broadway. The New York Times described the play as “90 uninterrupted minutes of tension,” adding that it is “self-consciously a yarn, which makes sense because it’s about writers: the kind of people who in weaving stories are often in danger of unraveling themselves.”

Actors tackle challenging roles

Daignualt’s quick decision to seek out the role was, in part, the result of an online coaching program for actors she took during the COVID shutdown. Participants were encouraged to “hone in not only on how other people see you but also how you see yourself and the kinds of roles you envision yourself doing,” she said. “Age didn’t matter or when in your career it might be. I made a list of roles I wanted to play or had played and at the bottom of the list of 10 was Bella.”

Now that she’s working on the play, she has come to realize how hard a role it is, comparing it to Joan Didion’s one-person play “The  Year of Magical Thinking,” in which she starred several years ago.

“I thought that was the hardest thing I’ve done. This is harder,” Daignault said. “I think that’s because of some of the ambiguity and many ways it could be looked at and played and attacked, and some of it is subject matter. Bella goes deep, and considering some of the situations that come up in the play, it’s difficult all around. The language is unlike most plays.”

Stevens, who graduated last spring from the FSU/Asolo Conservatory and starred as D’Artagnan in Asolo Repertory Theatre’s production of “The Three Musketeers,” agreed about the acting challenges of the play.

“But what the show does so beautifully is it leaves the audience to interpret what could have happened. In that way, it’s very much like a novel. It allows the audience to develop their own thoughts of what this character looks like. As an actor, I have to pick. You can’t really play ambiguous. I find myself looking for a structure, what route do I want to go down today.”

Clippard, the former associate artistic director at American Stage in St. Petersburg, said “this play haunts me. It’s typical for me to go to bed thinking about it and waking up thinking about it, but its implications are so big and so well told. I want to get it right.”

‘The Sound Inside’

By Adam Rapp. Directed by Kristin Clippard. Runs Oct. 20-Dec. 3 at Urbanite Theatre, 1487 Second St., Sarasota. $42, $28 for those under 40 and $5 for students. 941-321-1397; urbanitetheatre.com

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota’s Urbanite Theatre gets creative with 10th season opener