Greenwich<\/a>, said it was a difficult industry to be in.\u00a0<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s the worry of going from job to job and waiting and looking for the next thing, and also having to be competitive against your peers,\u201d Guy Barresi said. \u201cIt’s a struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n
The parents’ worry turned into full support, though, Olivia Barresi, who graduated from Greenwich High School in 2009, went to college for theater and was later admitted to the master’s program at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Barresi now has a lead role in the play, “Initiative” at The Public Theater in New York City, the same theater where Hamilton was first shown. “Initiative” has received Broadway interest and on Nov. 24, its playwright Else Went, was nominated for the Susan Smith\u00a0Blackburn Prize, the oldest playwriting prize for women writers in English-speaking theater.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The winner will be announced at the Royal Court Theatre in London in February.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt is exciting to think of the possibilities that there are people who are as touched by this play as we are who might want to give it some more time at a place further Uptown in Manhattan,\u201d Olivia Barresi said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Initiative” is a \u201cbittersweet reflection on adolescence\u201d that follows the lives of seven teens from 2000 to 2004, according to The Public Theater\u2019s website. The show runs until Dec. 7.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Before the Olivia Barresi\u00a0performed in the same space as Lin-Manuel Miranda, she got her start in acting in a fifth-grade production of William Shakespeare\u2019s Comedy of Errors playing\u00a0Luciana.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNot a play one would do with fifth graders,\u201d she joked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The eventual actress had tried a lot of different artistic pursuits, such as poetry and music. She said she landed on acting because it let her \u201cwear a lot of hats and express myself in a lot of different colors.”<\/p>\n
\u201cI just realized quite quickly that acting was a way that I could share stories and reach people, but do so in a variety of different ways,\u201d Olivia Barresi said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She went on to get her Bachelor of Fine\u00a0Arts degree from Boston University and her Masters of Fine Arts\u00a0from London Academy of the Dramatic Arts, where she studied Shakespeare.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Olivia Barresi met Went on a previous audition for one of Went’s shows. The pair became best friends and so when Went started working on “Initiative” with their wife about nine years ago, when it was then known as “Saving Throw,” Olivia Barresi became one of the original performers.<\/p>\n
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Olivia Barresi plays Clara, who she said is an overachiever and \u201cat first seems like the goody two shoes.\u201d She also played the character in the show\u2019s earlier iterations and said she had a chance to \u201clet my impulses affect the role.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c(Clara is) the person who is so open hearted that what is going on in her life, but also in the world around her, really affects her, and is the person that wants to do good and believe in good, even when it seems like the world around her is falling apart,” Olivia Barresi said.<\/p>\n
The character is unashamed to tell others exactly what she thought, which presented a challenge for Olivia Barresi to depict the character since she was \u201cmuch more embarrassed to share of myself” at that age.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe beautiful thing about Clara is that she shows up in the play not knowing that she should be embarrassed about anything yet,\u201d she\u00a0said. \u201cThat practice has been a really amazing one and a really beautiful one to show up in this play as a young person, as a young girl, entirely open and entirely standing in herself.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Olivia Barresi said she hoped the play can inspire people to look back on their teenage years and reexamine them, both the \u201cgood things and the ugly things about them.\u201d She said those years are more important than people give them credit for.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her mother, a retired high school teacher, said the play was \u201cso believable.\u201d<\/p>\n
“It’s gritty, it’s innocent, it’s hard, it’s happy and silly, and it’s heartbreaking, and it’s everything,” Mary Barresi said.\u00a0\u201cYou’ll relive high school and some of the stuff we’ve been through.”<\/p>\n
One of the \u201cbig tasks\u201d of performing as Clara, Olivia Barresi said, was \u201cgoing through a journey where the light of hope flickers out a little bit, but then gets born again.\u201d She said she has sometimes thought back to some of the things Clara says in the play \u201cthat are reflective of her need to keep going.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Those words and a support system of family, friends and her fianc\u00e9 have helped her through rough spots in her career when she might be doubting herself. They would tell her they know it’s tough but encouraged her to believe in herself and to keep acting for those who supported her for so long.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been really important to remember, even in times when I don’t know what my next job is going to be, that it is worth it to put yourself on the line for your art and for yourself and for the people around you,\u201d Olivia Barresi said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Olivia Rose Barresi and Greg Cuellar in the world premiere production of\u00a0INITIATIVE\u00a0by Else Went\u00a0and directed by Emma Rosa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[12487,9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-52746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-greenwich-time","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}