Written by Sabre Morris
Alec Sarché’s call to theater began in eighth grade when he received a lead role after auditioning on a whim with his best friend. It was a comedic role and in one unforgettable scene he put tennis balls inside of a sports bra and walked across stage. The room filled with laughter from the audience.
“Oh my god that’s what I love,” said Sarché. “Being in front of people and making them laugh or cry. I wanted the audience to be with me emotionally.” The Denver native had an epiphany while on stage. He has been hooked ever since.
At Colorado College, Sarché thrives off the energy of the CC community. He truly believes the audiences are incredible and dynamic. “The culture here is so receptive to upcoming artists where everyone is just willing to see something, and you don’t have to tell them what it is—they’ll like it either way.”
Sarché’s testimony speaks to when he and his colleague, James Dinneen, wrote and staged an entire play, Masturbating While Lonely, in their Slocum dorm room. Despite the small, 20-person audience knowing nothing about the play, students still showed up.
“That’s what CC does as a community, it fosters this incredible receptiveness to the arts,” says Sarché. “The people love the weird stuff here. That’s the biggest privilege any artist could ask for.”
Sarché compared CC’s environment with the greater theater community at large. “It’s very difficult to get your voice heard and let people know that you’re doing work, even if it’s good,” explains Sarché. “Not that many people are going to see it. A lot more people see it here at CC.”
A remarkable performer in TWIT, Sarché admits that the members of the improv group are his favorite people to collaborate with. “I’m my happiest when I’m with them, and we do all of our best work together,” Sarché shares this with a huge grin across his face.
His exploration with a new medium called audio theater has also allowed him to work with artists that he is unfamiliar with or never worked with before such as Soeren Walls and Sam Dahnert, a technician. Sarché stands by the fact that “theater people love each other and are able to find common ground no matter where they are.”
The natural performer currently splits his time between two major projects right now. Rabbit Hole, a theater production that opens Friday, March 25 and continues until March 27, is one project that he has invested countless hours in.
Soon after, Sarché will unveil his fourth audio drama, a piece called A New Season. Sarché works with one or two voice actors per audio drama. They rehearse and perform in the same week, so the turnaround is very quick. Audio theater at its best is analog virtual reality where audience members receive headphones and a blindfold, and listen to a vocal track. You enter a theater space without seeing anything, and interact with the space by following the instructions given to you from the vocal track. This audio piece will go up March 31 and runs through April 2.
In the interest of not revealing too much about the audio drama, Sarché explains that the next one will be about a seed. He describes the writing process as something “so close to the subconscious both in product and in process that you can just put your second idea on paper and polish it and it’s done.”
“I don’t even like calling the people who come to audio dramas audience members, that doesn’t feel right to me,” says Sarché. “I call them ‘witnesses’.”
Sarché’s explanation is that they are responsible in a way for the action that occurs during the story. Unlike other forms of theater, “witnesses” live and experience while they are instructed. There is an unwritten contract that they sign with Sarché as they enter his audio dramas.
His tremendous success in CC’s theater program and in the Denver theater community has contributed greatly to the overall theater program. His greatest quality for success is: “I say yes. I say this is what I need, I am going to do it, will you do it with me?”
As his career at CC comes to a close, Sarché plans for a bright future. “Next year is career year for me,” he says.
Although Broadway is still a few years away, in the mean time, Sarché will start auditioning for graduate school and this summer will participate in an internship with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.