Atley Loughridge hates auditions.
Although the Communication senior says does not know what she wants to do when she graduates, she does know she does not want to audition.
“I think I’d like to relax and write. It’d be nice to work with a consistent group of artists so I wouldn’t have to audition all the time,” Loughridge says.
She took this quarter off from classes to make her Chicago theater debut in Argonautika, currently playing at the Lookingglass Theatre Company.
Communication junior Tyler Beattie says, “She’s one of a kind as a performer. There’s Atley and then there’s everyone else.”
As of the 2006 Spring Quarter, Loughridge had made plans to study abroad in Senegal during the fall. She was then asked to audition for Northwestern professor Mary Zimmerman’s Argonautika. Once she landed the role of Medea, she says she knew she couldn’t pass up the great experience.
Loughridge says she loved the thrill of not knowing how the show was going to end up because Zimmerman would constantly adapt the script.
In her time at NU, Loughridge has been involved in various campus shows, including My House Was Collapsing Toward One Side, Our Hell House and Beyond the Clouds. She stands out as a performer because of her fluidity.
“As an actress, she’s so open to different emotions and expressions,” Beattie says.
Loughridge is living the life of a professional actress, performing seven shows a week. She admits it is exhausting and instead of relaxing on the days she does have off, she spends time in her Evanston apartment preparing for other projects.
Communication senior Anne McNamee, Loughridge’s roommate of two years, says Loughridge’s dedication shines.
“She’s always working on two to three projects at once … she throws herself into whatever grabs her at the moment,” McNamee says.
One such project is winter quarter’s Cymbeline, where Loughridge will again be working with Zimmerman. Cymbeline will be the first Shakespeare piece for Loughridge.
Loughridge embodies spontaneity. She recently wrote a play and decided she wanted to go to the Montreal Fringe Festival with it.
“We just got in the car and drove 16 hours to Montreal to perform the show,” McNamee says, for whom Loughridge wrote in a part.
Somewhere in between being a star on-stage and a fun roommate, Loughridge says she is humbled by her experiences at NU. Having transferred in the winter quarter of her sophomore year from Carleton College, Loughridge says she is infinitely happy with how everything has turned out for her.
She has an existential sense of her acting and the greater cause for which she is acting. She says Zimmerman has taught her that when she’s on-stage she should not be thinking about herself but only about the other actors’ eyes.
Loughridge says the key to success is “trusting yourself but knowing it’s not about you being onstage. It’s about what you are trying to do. You got to be grounded.”
Medill sophomore Jenny Fukumoto is a PLAY writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
