In May 2026, I played Bernadette in Theater West End's production of POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, directed by Tara Kromer. It was the first time I'd auditioned for a traditional acting role in eleven years.
The last time was in 2014, when I played Beverly in Adam Bock's The Receptionist with DiDonna Productions and Empty Spaces Theatre Co. in Orlando. In the years since, I've performed plenty, but always in pieces I'd written, co-created, or co-directed. I earned my MFA. I came back to Orlando to focus on directing, devising, puppetry direction, and teaching. Returning to the stage in someone else's script, directed by someone else, was a different kind of return. It was a huge honor. It was scary. It was thrilling.
At the callback, the room was full of some of the best female performers in Orlando. I was honored to be in it.
The first thing I noticed in rehearsal is that the skills I teach my students every semester live in me too. I teach presence. I teach text analysis. I teach physical characterization. I teach how to combine those tools with breath. I use them in my devised work, my directing, and my classroom. But I had not used them as a traditional actor inside someone else's structure in a long time. They worked. They lived in my impulses. There is real pleasure in using tools you love.
The most useful thing I'm carrying back from this run into my classroom is the confirmation that pedagogy and practice live in the same body. I tell my students this often. This production showed me what it feels like from the inside.
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Bernadette is a fun character to play. She is smart. She takes up space because she isn't trying to live inside the professional physicality the other women in the ensemble are navigating. She isn't worried about being small or sexy in the traditional way. She already lives outside the system. Playing her gave me permission to use my body the way it wants to move.
Albert Gutierrez at BroadwayWorld wrote that Bernadette was his favorite of the seven characters because she's "most aware of how ridiculous everything is around her," and that I had a strong "awareness for the space" that enhanced the choreography. That space-awareness is something I teach my students through Viewpoints.
The piece of ensemble work I love most, and that I try to give my students, is the practice of focus. Taking it cleanly when the playwright sets you up to take it. Easing out of it through physicality, eye contact, and energy when the playwright sets someone else up to take it. I got to do that work with this group of women, and it was generous. Jodi Renee Thomas at Orlando Weekly described the ensemble as working "with the grace of a group of real-life friends in crisis." That is what it felt like from the inside.
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I would be lying if I didn't mention the stage combat. Bernadette grapples. She throws a punch. She takes a bite. She holds a gun. It's rare that women get to do all of these things in one show. It was fun and empowering. My one regret is that I haven't yet earned my stage combat certification, at minimum for hand-to-hand work. This run reminded me that I want to.
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Here is what I am carrying back from POTUS. My pedagogy is alive. The tools I teach are tools I love. I want to keep finding ways to perform in other people's structures, not just the ones I build for myself. The women in this ensemble are people I'll carry with me. I want to add stage combat to my own toolkit.
Eleven years is a long pause. I'm glad I came back.
— Rebekah Lane
