e Magic Flute<\/em><\/p>\nIn his years at QC, Max Roll \u201910 has appeared in more than a dozen plays and operas, including Our Town,<\/i> The Playboy of the Western World,<\/i> and The Marriage of Figaro<\/i>. Now he\u2019s taking his act to New Haven, Connecticut. After a series of auditions in which nearly 1000 people competed for 16 slots, he won admission to the Yale School of Drama with a full, three-year scholarship. \u201cI owe everything to Claudia Feldstein,\u201d says Roll, speaking of the Drama, Theatre, and Dance professor\u2014and Yale alumna\u2014who coached him. \u201cI couldn\u2019t have done it without her support and preparation. I\u2019m also very grateful to Charles Repole and Susan Einhorn for their support and guidance over the years.\u201d<\/p>\n
The English-born drama major had a different performing career in mind when he arrived at QC in 2004. \u201cI initially came here to study with a fabulous American clarinetist, Charles Neidich,\u201d says Roll, the son of two concert pianists. \u201cI\u2019d done a couple of small school shows in the United Kingdom, but up until a few years ago, it was clear I was going to be a musician.\u201d He reconsidered that plan after Drama, Theatre and Dance chair Charles Repole urged him to explore the stage. \u201cMax was in the hallway, talking in his British accent,\u201d recalls Repole. \u201cHe was tall, good-looking, and spoke beautifully\u2014he was a leading man. So I grabbed him and asked if he was interested in acting. It\u2019s been a joy to watch him grow and to support him.\u201d<\/p>\n
A small role as an American salesman in Pajama Game<\/i> led Roll to bigger theatrical challenges and ultimately, a new career goal. \u201cI derived a different kind of pleasure from acting,\u201d he explains. \u201cI became more involved and found myself taking auditions. Even being in a tech rehearsal for 10 hours was not tedious.\u201d His musical background has not been wasted: Because singing skills are invaluable to an actor, he took voice lessons with Bruce Norris, co-director of QC\u2019s Opera Studio, for two years. Roll still plays clarinet for fun and profit, accepting the occasional gig. \u201cA lot of training went into it and I don\u2019t want to lose it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Favorite music:<\/strong> Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert<\/p>\nFavorite books:<\/strong> Rainer Maria Rilke\u2019s Letters to a Young Poet,<\/i> and Kahlil Gibran\u2019s The Prophet, <\/i>\u201cwhich gave me grounding when a lot of practical things were not going swimmingly.\u201d<\/p>\nSurprising fact:<\/strong> \u201cI\u2019m rather shy, which goes in complete contrast to the risks I want to take on stage.\u201d<\/p>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Name: Max RollMajor: TheatreGraduation Year: 2010 “I\u2019m rather shy, which goes in complete contrast to the risks I want to take on stage.”- Max Roll Student Profiles Alumni Profiles Faculty Profiles Staff ProfilesMax Roll singing in the QC production of Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute In his years at QC, Max Roll \u201910 has appeared […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"page_category":[],"wf_page_folders":[164,137],"class_list":["post-909","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1776,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/909\/revisions\/1776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"page_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/page_category?post=909"},{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_page_folders?post=909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}