Current senior and California expat Nicola Vann has brought her Tinseltown talent to North Carolina. Since freshman year, Nicola has been deeply involved with the entirely student-run LAB! Theatre troupe, supported by the Department of Dramatic Arts. LAB! performs up to twelve shows a year, with students producing, directing, acting, designing, and crewing each admission-free production. Nicola stars in the upcoming two-person romantic drama, “Tender Napalm,” at Linda’s Bar and Grill on Franklin Street. You might want to catch her work (if you haven’t already) before she accepts her first Tony award.
HC: Why did you choose UNC?
NV: UNC has a great drama program. We’re known as a university for a lot of other things — athletics, for being a research university — and a lot of people don’t realize that we have a really great drama program. It’s a great program; it’s just a little overshadowed by other things going on on campus. So this was suggested to me by a college counselor at my high school and I got money to go here, and those things just sort of compounded into being a good fit for me as I didn’t really want to do conservatory, I wanted to do a liberal arts education.
HC: How many plays at UNC have you been a part of? Have they been predominantly with LAB!?
NV: That is a really hard question. Yes, I have worked almost exclusively with LAB since they were the first group I got involved in and they kind of got me hooked. I have worked on a LOT of shows in different capacities [….]. This is the fifth LAB! show I’ve been in on campus. Well, [fifth] fully-mounted production, not the 24-Hour Play Festival, one of our shorter term commitments. But I’ve directed, I’ve stage-managed, I’m a producer now…so I’m working on all of our shows at some capacity.
HC: That was actually going to be my next question! What is your role in this year at LAB!?
NV: I’m a producer as well as a general Labbie. I guess we’re called “producer-directors” but same schpiel.
HC: Haha. What is your favorite production on campus that you’ve been a part of?
NV: I’m pretty crazy about the play we’re doing now. Love the piece. I mean, I’ve really loved every show I’ve worked on for different reasons. I’ve made really good friends at all of them. I worked on a student-written show my freshman year called “The Collective” and that was really exciting because the playwright was a friend of mine [Catya McMullen, ‘11] and she was in the room with us and we were developing this work together and she’s now a working playwright in New York City and just got published. So it was really fun to have nurtured that, and it was a really unique thing to have been able to be a part of here.
HC: What are your goals for future, like post-graduation? I know you mentioned to me that you were thinking of moving to LA…What direction would you like to see the trajectory of your dramatic career go in?
NV: Ummm, I mean, I’ll say two things to that, and they are probably things that a lot of people who are hoping to do this with their lives will say and one is I would love to eventually work in film and theater. And TV. Do everything. Also, kind of just employment would be good, in general in this field. One of the things that is terrifying and exciting when you do this with your life is you can’t really map out a trajectory; there isn’t one. There is just a lot of trying and a lot of loving the work as much as you can and getting to know as many people as possible and seeing which projects and friends and experiences lead to more and lead to others and that’s all you can really do.
“Tender Napalm” runs at Linda’s from Thursday, September 19 at 8pm to Monday, September 23 at 11pm. Free admission.
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