NYTW Spotlight: Waverley Engelman

Don’t let April showers keep you down! We have another staff spotlight to give you your daily boost. Meet Waverley Engelman, the Executive Assistant to the Artistic and Managing Directors.

What was your first experience working with the Workshop?
I was hired as the Executive Assistant to the Artistic and Managing Directors in July of 2019. I had been a longtime fan of NYTW, so it was a dream for me to join the staff!

Most memorable show or experience you’ve worked on or seen at the Workshop?
Before working at NYTW, it was seeing and loving Rachel Chavkin’s production of Caryl Churchill’s Light Shining in Buckinghamshire and having Anthony Michael Lopez say “bless you” to me in the middle of his final monologue when I sneezed (though tried my hardest not to! I am sorry!). While working at NYTW, it is a combination of specific and beautiful moments—reading the script for Endlings for the first time and being in awe of the final scene, seeing Oona Curley’s magical lighting design and its storytelling power in Mfoniso Udofia’s runboyrun and In Old Age, eating and seeing my first first rehearsal spread of delicious food hand-made by our brilliant Producing Associate Yang-Yang Chen, and watching the first cut of the documentary portion of our RENT gala and feeling very grateful to be a part of this community.

What is your first memory of going to the theatre or how did you fall in love with theatre?  
This also has to be a combination of experiences since I fell further in love each time! I do love a list! Watching the taped original Broadway production of Into the Woods as a child, then acting in Shakespeare plays in high school, then seeing Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon and reading Caryl Churchill plays in college!

What or who inspires you?   
My sister and the majority of people interviewed on Fresh Air.

Without live theatre at the moment, what have you been watching, listening to, reading…?  
I’ve enjoyed reading some of the more “fun,” behind the scenes, contemporary political memoirs like Alyssa Mastromonaco’s, Reggie Love’s, David Litt’s, or Beck Dorey-Stein’s. I have somehow become obsessed with rock-climbing documentaries, even though I do not rock-climb myself! After watching and loving Free Solo, I also really recommend Meru (same filmmaking duo!) and The Dawn Wall. And I’ve also loved all the podcasts! To name just a few: Presidential, You’re Wrong About (thank you Aaron Malkin for this one!), Everyday Decisions with Jo Firestone, Floodlines, Tig and Cheryl: True Story, Las Culturistas with Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers, Song Exploder, and, of course, Fresh Air.

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Categories: NYTW Spotlight. Tags: NYTW Staff.