Climbing up the ladder after each show, I learned to take care not to precociously slip 10 feet off the metal steps to the black box floor below. The first walk up those steps had me shaking in my boots. Literally. Diagnosing me with a fear of heights? It’s just a normal kind of 10-feet-above-the-ground fear. But by the week of the show, I climbed those stairs like an eagle perched in her nest. It became one more happy step in the making of a live performance, one more happy step in the making of a window into another world, one more happy step in the making of live art.
The post-show stunt setup was our very own director Maren Taylor’s idea, not mine. Hauling thick green curtains to hang from the sky while on a ladder was certainly not on my mind when I auditioned for “Antigone” with my friends. But neither was it my idea to integrate an ancient Sophocles play — with its unfamiliar references and archetypes — into a modern war scene.
Last spring, Maren Taylor directed and adapted the play, “Antigone,” a classical ancient Greek tragedy, into a World War 2 setting — with journalists for chorus members, military commanders for kings, guns for swords and bikes for transportation. She adapted the script, built the cast from two days of auditions, built a military set with crew and cast’s help and organized an immersive, cohesive sound, prop, costume and lighting design. It became an emotional, brilliantly planned and question-evoking live story.
As a freshman in my first UU Mainstage play, I was largely oblivious to Taylor’s major until two weeks into rehearsals when she showed up dressed down in her red Union-embroidered scrubs.
“Maren’s a nursing major,” a fellow actor had knowingly commented.
“How?” I remember thinking.
That was last spring, when Maren Taylor was a junior in her second semester of nursing school here at Union University. She is currently a senior nursing student set to graduate in May 2026.
All I have heard about nursing school is that it can be overwhelming and life-consuming, and that my friends won’t see me once I’m a junior in nursing school (for I, too, am a nursing student).
And it will be all of that, in many ways. Taylor’s roommate, Amy De Groot, knows that from watching Maren these past two years.
“You can’t just quit nursing because you’re tired. In a way, it’s a little bit like military, where [the professors] tell you the worst that could happen, and you just have to keep going. You can’t just quit your shift,” De Groot said. “For Maren and everyone else, the schooling is not easy, and it’s not going to be easy in the field either. If you get a 70% on this test, that means you don’t know 30% of the stuff. And if you don’t know that information, you can’t help that patient.”
When shifts are difficult and patients in clinicals are mad at her for unexplainable reasons, Taylor has a compassionate approach.
“I try to empathize and understand, imagining how this person had a life that made them not want to try anymore,” Taylor said.
This takes courage, passion and confidence. It takes communication, emotional intelligence and decisiveness.
“I want to be the nurse who understands — who has a peace of mind,” Taylor said.
She wants to be a nurse who picks up a toy or a treat for a patient because it’s been a rough day for them. For Taylor, being a nurse needs to be emotional.
And so does doing theater. The audience needs to connect with the characters through felt emotion — real emotion. The audience needs to know that the characters are real and not just acted out in a charade. And, while props, set, lights and costumes create the environment for this, it’s only when the actor is feeling real emotions and doing real things on stage that this is possible.
Acting is the business of manufacturing an experience — making it real. Whispering quickly turning to shouting in “Machinal,” the first play that Taylor directed with MainStage, as she used sound design to move her audience from intimate to chaotic.
“’Machinal’ was a mirror to see what happens in a sinful world,” Taylor said.
The play made “sin a little more relatable for humility’s sake,” in its depiction of a wife murdering her husband and receiving due punishment — not something we would expect to ever happen at a place like Union University.
How are actors to depict something they have never experienced?
Think of something in your life that has caused you desperation, even just a little, Maren would tell you — something that has gripped you with fear, left you without options. Place yourself in that situation, then act as you would. Emote as you would. Because until the show is over, your character is who you are.
As Amy Degroot, Taylor’s roommate and president of UU Mainstage, said, “Anyone can do theater, whether it’s comedy or drama. But not one person can typically play all different characters.”
Amy followed up after a pause, “Well, maybe Maren could.”
Maren’s favorite character exercise is a pre-show warm-up.
“Take a minute; walk around this stage. Pay attention to the way you hold your head, your shoulders,” Taylor said. “Don’t speak with each other yet. Now start walking as your character. How do your shoulders feel? What is your gait like? Now start greeting each other without words. Okay, now you can talk quietly on set. Now there’s a rainstorm. What does your character do in relation to others?”
Live character work in the making.
Taylor has a final play with UU Mainstage coming up on Feb. 14 about a teenager receiving a heart transplant. It’s a short-form, ten-minute play, raw with the emotion of a boy realizing what the price to save his life was born from the melding of Taylor’s two passions. Acting and cardiac pediatric nursing, which Taylor has direct experience with on a weekly basis as a cardiac pediatrics nurse intern.
She is making the 10 minute play as real as she possibly can, with a stethoscope, an IV pump, and scrubs. Because that’s just like Maren Taylor to pay attention to the details, even including the smallest detail of a Bible verse engraved on the teenage boy’s hospital bracelet.
Taylor’s thick green curtains from “Antigone” also incorporated a Bible verse. Because that’s just like Maren Taylor to incorporate her faith into her work and passions, instilling courage and faith in those around her through her leadership. And Taylor is in the business right now of building a character that will be compassionate, courageous and decisive in the hospital. Because it’s just like Maren Taylor to bring her joyful, confident heart into her schoolwork, theatre and nursing.
