Spotlight on... Evan Dumouchel

Author: Astri von Arbin Ahlander

There is something of the fairy-tale prince in Evan Dumouchel's face, a genuine sweetness that his scruffy cheeks, bad-boy swagger and love for action flicks can do nothing to subvert. His enchanting blue eyes are probably already familiar to you. As a double major in Theatre and Film, he appears frequently on stage and screen around campus. Dumouchel, who will be graduating this February, has left a distinguishable mark on the Middlebury art scene through his talented work onstage and behind the scenes. The Campus met with Evan Dumouchel, Middlebury actor and director extraordinaire.


The Middlebury Campus: Do you consider yourself an actor primarily?

Evan Dumouchel: For a long time, I saw myself only as an actor. I didn't get into production until much later on when I realized there were a lot of other things I could do as well. I found that I got more respect from the theatre faculty as a director than I ever did as an actor.

TC: What's the difference between acting for the screen and the stage?

ED: Film acting isn't easier, you can just make use of your skills in a different way. Like theatre acting, it should be a continuous piece inside of you, even if you don't perform it in a continuous way.

TC: Do you feel as though there is a conflict between your two majors?

ED: The theatre department is like a tribe, a tribe of theatre people that really support each other. The film people are like nomads. Making movies on the Middlebury campus is a one-man show. Or, at most, a one-man-and-five-of-his-closest-friends-who-are-willing-to-die-for-him show. The theatre department tells you early on that in order to survive, you have to work together. The film department doesn't reinforce that. At Middlebury, the attitude is like this: you make movies for fun, but you live and breathe theatre. I think that's ridiculous.

TC: Are you trying to combine your two interests in your 700 Theatre project that is going up this J-term?

ED: My 700 project is a play called, "On the Open Road," written by Steve Tesich. Last year, I took a class where we had to write a manifesto on what we think theatre should be. My manifesto, "The New Climax," was about how theatre would benefit from a full integration with film. Originally, I was going to realize this for my 700. I wanted to use multiple television screens, each projecting a different person's body part so that, when the screens were piled on top of each other in a certain way, it created the illusion of a whole human-like an entirely filmed character. I also wanted to integrate the screens as a visual component in the set. But just last night, I decided I wasn't going to be doing it after all. Too complicated. Too little time. And I'm a perfectionist, so I didn't want to do something that wasn't exactly as I wanted it.

TC: Your 500 project in film, a short entitled "Portraiture," which you both directed and starred in (together with friend Macleod Andrews), was screened on January 14th in Dana Auditorium. What was your vision?

ED: On the page, it was an impossible screenplay. There was too much visual description without enough dialogue to back it up. The screenplay would never have been sellable. But I'm proud that I was able to tell the story despite that. Personally, I like to both watch and make testosterone-infused movies. They have so much masculine vs. feminine energy, so many polar emotional values that work well on film. It's not because of the blood and guns that I like them, it's because they lend themselves to extreme emotion.

TC: What about the future?

ED: I would love to move to LA and work on an HBO miniseries. I don't want to be a celebrity. Then again, I want to be respected, like Matt Damon or Dustin Hoffman - quality actors. But I don't want to be a celebrity just for the sake of it. That is a scary thought.