Sean McCain ’09
Hometown: Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Major: Theatre

When I was a senior in high school, I came to the Augustana campus to see a production of “Honk,” and I really liked it. I have older cousins who attended Augie, and when I was really little, they’d coach me by saying, “Where are you gonna go to college when you grow up, Sean?” And I’d yell, “Augie!” But really, attending that play ended up being the deciding factor for me, because I’d known I would major in theatre since my junior year in high school.

The facilities here are awesome. (I pretty much live in the theatre!) There aren’t many performance spaces like ours—acting in a thrust is different because you have to be conscious of the audience being on three sides of you.

I also like doing improv, and my friends and I started a group that does long-form improvised musicals, mostly at the Back Alley of the student center where coffeehouse events are held. It’s a great stress reliever because you don’t have to worry about preparing ahead of time—you just go and have fun. And improv is great skill, anyway, because it makes you more spontaneous in your everyday life.

Academically, my emphasis is stage management, and I plan on doing that for a career. I worked for a year as the stage manager for the Children’s Theater Company of Sioux Falls, and that led to my summer job at the Black Hills Playhouse in Custer State Park as senior stage manager for three productions, including the world premiere of a play about the sculpting of the Crazy Horse monument. And next year, I’ll do an internship with the South Dakota Symphony Youth Orchestra as its operations manager.

You definitely have more opportunities to get involved in theatre at Augustana because it’s a smaller department. My first year, I stage-managed a main-stage musical, which at a larger university would really be unheard of. If you want to do something, the Augustana theatre faculty will find a way for you do what you’re interested in. Whenever anyone says they want to major in theatre, I tell them, “You need to go to Augie.”