A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E - Colby-Sawyer College

PHOTO: Anthony Marrone ’10
Jaycee’s favorite and most challenging role was that of Pozzo in “Waiting for Godot,” which was performed
in February 2010, the final production directed by Professor Jerry Bliss. Jaycee as Pozzo stands at the far left,
tugging on a rope, with the two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, played by Nic Richard ’10 and
Noah Richard ’10, at center, and Megan Ruggiero ’10 as Lucky.
Have you had opportunities to teach in
these leadership positions?
Yes. At last night’s meeting of the CSC Players the leadership
positions were filled for next year. At
the beginning of the semester I was
worried about where the club would
stand after this year. My friend Suzie
(Suzanna Brown ’11) and I are the last
of the founding group and now we’re
leaving. But yesterday I looked around
and I was like…they really have this
under control. Suzie and I gave a little
speech about how we feel we can let
the club go and it will proceed with
the same momentum and spirit. One
of the students stood up and said, “We
look at you like an uncle or a dad.”
And then someone else said, “Or a
grandfather.” He laughs.
You studied in Poland
your junior year. Did you
always want to study
abroad?
From the beginning I planned all my
classes so that I could graduate in
four years, double minor and study
abroad. My grandmother was Polish;
she passed away when I was 16 and
I never got to ask her about a lot of
things. So that’s when it clicked that
I should go to Poland to study. I lived
16 COLBY-SAWYER ALUMNI MAGAZINE
For the stage adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic novel,
“Pride and Prejudice,” Jaycee took on the role of Mr.
Fitzwilliam Darcy opposite Suzanna Brown ’11 as Miss
Elizabeth Bennet. Directed by Deborah Barton and performed
in fall 2009, it was a collaborative performance
between the college and Sunapee-Kearsarge Intercommunity
Theatre (S.K.I.T.).
in Krakow, just outside the city center.
Krakow is big enough to feel like a city in
a fast-paced environment. Only people in
the city center speak English, so if you’re
struggling you can find someone, but if
you want to get into the culture, just go
five seconds out and you’re there.
What did you take away
from your study abroad
experience?
That I really like to travel and I like being
in a city. I liked learning about the culture,
meeting new people and living on my own.
You go out on your own to college, but
there I was thousands of miles from anyone
I knew. There were only five Americans in
the program, and I lived in the same flat as
two Americans and a guy from Germany.
I took four classes: two film courses related directly to my
major, a Holocaust course and a Polish language course. The
language course helped a lot, and we got to do a lot of outside
work for the Holocaust class. We met
with Jewish groups that go to Krakow
to visit the ‘hell’ the prisoners went
through, then they go to Israel, which
is like ‘heaven.’ We went to Auschwitz
with them and got to have lunch and
ask questions.
PHOTO: Amanda Rossi ’11
Did that experience
inform your decision to
direct the play “Our Class?
(The play, written by Polish playwright
Tadeusz Slobodzianek, is based on the
slaughter of 1,600 Jews in Jedwabne,
Poland, in 1941.)
Before I went I knew almost nothing
about my Polish heritage; I knew
we had Polish Easter and Polish
Christmas. I had a few Polish sayings
from my grandmother stuck in my
head, and so when I went there I realized
this means this, and oh, that’s
why she would say that. I was able to
pull together pieces of my grandmother’s
personality, what we still do as a
family, and appreciate what it means
to be Polish.
I came across the Polish play “Our
Class” while I was taking a directing