Editor’s Note: Jason Narvy is a sophomore from Los Angeles. He has appeared extensively on the stage and in film and television.

Dispatch: What do you want to gain from the F&M theatre experience?
Narvy: I want to be able to practice theatre for the art of the fucking thing, not because I’m being forced to. To inspire those around me and be inspired by them. Really, I want to create a core of artists — actors, writers, directors, painters, musicians — a core of people that for the rest of our lives we can always go back to work with and make either money or art with each other.

Dispatch: What book are you reading now?
Narvy: I’m reading three: Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn, and The Essential Lenny Bruce.

Dispatch: With your acting background, why did you choose F&M for your undergraduate education?
Narvy: Because it was about as far away geographically, as well as mentally, from Hollywood as I could get.

Dispatch: What are your favorite roles to play?
Narvy: That’s a wide question. For pure enjoyment I enjoy playing ‘assholes’ — someone who’s real abrasive, insulting to the audience and other members on the stage, someone that you can’t take your eyes off, like a train wreck. On the other hand, I like to play really short, cameo character roles who come in for two or three minutes — you have that limited amount of time to achieve a goal, and that’s a challenge. More than anything I enjoy being handed a role with limited time to rehearse, like filling in for somebody. It has sort of a purist feeling about it. You don’t have time to make conscious decisions, you work harder and faster than you think you’re capable of, you’re wrought with panic, and it isn’t until the performance when you’re actually performing in front of a live audience when you start to make discoveries about the character, the situation. These roles are somehow more real sometimes, probably because the audience gets to watch you make those discoveries as opposed to watching you emulate or rediscover those things that you have already discovered in rehearsals.

Dispatch: Where would you rather perform — the Other Room Theatre or the set of an afternoon children’s TV show?
Narvy: Let’s see — an afternoon surrounded by uptight corporate types bent on deadlines, and studio executives breathing down their necks screaming for results, the FCC keeping a foot on all of us for twelve hours a day, reciting stupid, fucking scripts written by some hack on a deadline, a half hour for a bad lunch, an ulcer in your chest, and a morality clause in your contract ... OR ... an afternoon surrounded by people who want to create something beautiful or provoking. Gee, that’s a tough one.