From April 16 to 19, the St. Olaf theater department put on a production of “Almost, Maine,” written by John Cariani and directed by Ramesses Yeyao Zhou ’26. All five performances sold out within days of the tickets being released.
“As a student director, [Ramesses] knew very well what our experiences as student actors and crew were, which led to a very collaborative workspace for us all,” actor Ella Hansen ’26 said in an email interview with The Olaf Messenger. “It was interesting to not have much oversight from the professional staff, but it felt — and was — just as detailed as a show led by a professor.”
The play is composed of a series of interconnected scenes, all set in the same fictional town named Almost. It explores, as Assistant Director Antonio Preciado ’28 wrote it in the Assistant Director’s Note of the program, “the idea that love is complex and requires effort.” Underneath the northern lights, love is lost and found, broken and put back together; strangers meet and find a spark, best friends realize deeper feelings for the first time, and long-time relationships fall apart. Above all, people try to connect with each other.
“The main reason that I chose to do ‘Almost, Maine’ is because of the variety and diversity it offers,” Zhou said in an email interview with The Olaf Messenger. “I was able to work nine different pairs of characters, each providing a new exploration and discovery to both directing and acting perspectives.”
The production was performed in Haugen Theater. The audience sat facing a painted backdrop of shadowed trees and a bright teal and purple sky — the stage lights produced the illusion of a shifting aurora borealis and flared between each scene. Gauzy fabric hung overhead to create the same effect of the northern lights. To the right was a small, box-like house that could open up into a larger set piece; it was dressed as a bar for the scene “Sad and Glad” and a laundry room in “This Hurts.” For “Prologue,” “Interlogue,” and “Epilogue” — the only scenes that feature the same characters more than once — a two-person bench and cottony snow were brought on stage. Other scenes involved similarly simple sets and props.
As the play is set in winter, costumes largely consisted of thick coats, hats, and scarves. Notable costuming included that of “Seeing the Thing,” wherein the characters Rhonda and Dave — played by Hansen and Jonah Scott ’29 — take off their many layers of clothing one by one at the end of the scene, leaving them in long underwear with a pile of clothes nearby.
“Jonah and I hardly survived tech weekend in our costumes, but they let us wear fewer layers for that,” Hansen said in an email interview with The Olaf Messenger. “During the show, we didn’t get fully dressed until the last possible moment, and let our adrenaline carry us through the scene.”
The acting was superb. Nearly all of the 10 cast members played multiple roles across multiple scenes. They did an excellent job of embodying the personalities of their different characters, from more high-strung and hesitant to laid-back and confident. It was sometimes hard to tell if it was the same actor or not.
Hansen, who held the greatest number of roles of three characters, said in an email interview, “[T]he hardest part was trying to differentiate their mannerisms onstage so that I wasn’t always doing the same thing.”
Both Hansen and Zhou noted that the cast and crew formed close bonds, which helped bring the show to the next level.
“My favorite part of theater is always working with people,” Zhou said in an email interview with The Olaf Messenger. “My love for directing lies heavily in the art of communication, from sharing understanding to building the world together.” He added, “[I] want to shout out to my actor[s], designer[s], and most importantly my stage manager Meira [Flanagan ’29] for doing such an awesome job.”
Hansen agreed in the email interview.
“I want to give a huge shout out to Meira Flanagan, who was our stage manager — and a first year!” she said. “Also crucial to the efforts were Avie Carter-Wilder [’27] and Antonio Preciado [’28], our wonderful assistant stage manager and assistant director. I’m so grateful for the incredibly fortunate experiences I’ve had in theater, and so, to end out my time in St. Olaf with this production has been such a gift.”
“I always think the director is the chef and the show is the dish,” Zhou said in an email interview with The Olaf Messenger. “[H]aving the best ingredients made my life so much easier.”
“Almost, Maine” was St. Olaf theater’s final production of the 2025-26 season.
