‘It was awesome to get different perspectives and ideas’
Gathered in the Little Center, actor, improviser, and director Lauren Adams walked a group of students through a series of workshops to refine their skills — and just lean into joy.
“The big things I wanted the students to take away from the workshop were listening, building together, and really being present in the moment, but also having fun and not being self-conscious,” says Adams. “There’s no mistakes to make, so be a little fearless with the choices that you make.”
Adams is best known for playing Gretchen Chalker on the Netflix hit “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” and has other credits in “Greener Grass,” “Modern Family,” “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” and the latest season of “The Paper” on Peacock.
Students arrived at Adams’ Sept. 10 workshop with mixed levels of experience.
“We had people from the Peapod Squad, so more seasoned improvisers, and then we had people who had never tried it before,” she says. “That was actually nice and refreshing because playing with someone who doesn’t necessarily know the rules is sometimes helpful because you can shake off the dust and get back into really listening to your scene partner.”
Brady Kershaw ’27, a screen studies major and theater arts minor and member of the Peapod Squad, says it was exciting to learn from a professional actively working in the industry. The group practiced three-line scenes, a popular improv exercise in which players build a scene with just three lines of dialogue.
“That was something we were already kind of familiar with from the improv team, but then working with other students who had fresh and new ideas was cool,” he says. “It was awesome to get different perspectives and ideas.”
Adams last visited campus in 2017 for a similar workshop. During her visit last month, she also held a screening and talkback of her new short film, “In the Middle of Something,” which premiered at the LA Shorts International Film Festival. Adams co-created the film with Julian Velard, who also stars in it and wrote and edited it. They began working on the movie about three years ago.
“It is thrilling and scary to show it to audiences,” Adams says. “I get more scared for the performance of a film that I directed than one that I’m [acting] in because when I do the performance, I control the performance, and when I am the director, I’m like, ‘There’s your little baby that you’re kicking out in front of an audience.’”
Adams says the campus screening was the youngest demographic that has seen the film.
“They laughed at different things and enjoyed different things,” she says. “It was really cool for me to see that different demographics can appreciate different slices of the movie.”
Kershaw, who typically works on grip and electric for film projects, was impressed by the film’s lighting.
“It was really dark, and then there was some nice spotlight and color. There was this awesome transition from the parking lot to [Velard] back playing on the piano, where I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I don’t even know how they did this because it’s so seamless,’” he recalls. “That’s one shot that she told us about. It was just done so beautifully.”
Adams fielded student questions during her visit, sharing insights on working in show business and about improv and acting generally.
“The dawn of streaming and AI sort of lends itself to a more unknown time in the entertainment industry, I’m finding,” says Adams.
Kershaw was thankful to hear tricks and tips from a professional.
“Something that we learned a lot about was how to find representation in the artistic world, which is definitely a foggy area for a lot of us,” says Kershaw, who is considering what he wants to do post-graduation.
Adams reminded the students that making a name in this industry takes time.
“I hope everyone is lucky and gets their huge, big break right out of college,” she says. “I didn’t book my first big real TV job until I was 10 years out of college. It took me seven years to get a commercial agent, and then 10 years to get on a television show. You’ve just got to keep your head down and know that it’s not an ‘if,’ it’s a ‘when,’ and the ‘when’ may not be when you think it is, but that’s OK.”
