UNO Creatives: Fame’s in the Name for Shemar Toussaint

Eddie Okosi STAFF WRITER

One thing I can’t bother to sugar coat is the fact that college life is a busy life. After a couple adjustments and potential meetups, I finally had the pleasure of talking to Shemar Toussaint. Toussaint, who also goes by Mar and uses he/they pronouns, was a cast member of UNO Theatre’s production of “Into the Woods.”

In the acclaimed musical, Toussaint played the character of The Mysterious Man, who is the Baker’s father.

“The Mysterious Man was such a character,” Toussaint said.Toussaint said he didn’t have an ideal character they wanted to audition for.

“I met a lot of great, talented people during the audition process,” Toussaint said.

They knew getting a callback was imminent, but didn’t know which part they were going to play. Eventually, Toussaint was casted as the Mysterious Man.

“Everything worked out in the end, the universe had my back,” Toussaint said. “The Mysterious Man was a very demanding character; a lot of time was put into it, and I loved every single minute of it”

Eddie: How are you right now? You must be tired from the show run you just had.

Ma r : I’m just tired, my body is doing this thing where it wants to get sick, but it’s not letting me get sick, maybe because I got some things to do so I gotta keep going. I’m really excited for this break, a time to just unwind and just focus on work. Nonetheless, “Into the Woods” was such a fun journey. I feel like a lot of time was needed there but the love and the people I did the show with made the whole experience feel worthwhile. The whole thing went so fast, though.

Eddie: So, the production was sold out, I couldn’t even get in, so embarrassing for me. What is it like knowing that each date you did the show, the audience was at full capacity?

Mar : It was really scary. Coming from high school, we literally had to bribe people to get them to the theater seats. Now I am at a place where the production had such a big community outreach where we are selling out every single show. That was exciting. We made sure each show was top tier, it needed to be the show of the show! We made sure the show was worth the money. I was speechless when I heard the news that the play sold out for the entire run.

Eddie: The whole ordeal is just astonishing! Many congrats. What was the preparation like for your specific character? Did you rewatch the movie looking for inspiration? I’m curious to know your specific process.

Mar : It’s crazy that in the movie, the Mysterious Man didn’t have a big existence, he was just known as the baker’s father. So, as I was trying to find the core of the Mysterious Man, I watched online videos of the “Into the Woods” Broadway productions. Also, this may be weird, but I also observed older people and how they moved and that’s something that really inspired my own movement. Like watching my grandma around the house; preparing for the character was not as hard as I thought it was going to be.

Eddie: You know in relation to character study, you hear all these stories of actors trying the practice of method acting. It’s a very controversial technique. Would you ever resort to method acting, or do you find it easier to switch on and off?

Mar : That’s a good question. I feel like with method acting obviously I am so young, I’m 21 now, I got casted at 20. I can’t just feel like an old man because I