Adam Gwon: Theater Dreamer and Carver Alumn

By Emma Sartwell



It’s a common Carver theatre student’s dream: move to New York City, study theater at TISCH, NYU, and write a musical entitled something along the lines of ‘Lulu’.

Adam Gwon, class of 1997, was one of the first of these theatre-dreamers at Carver Center, and he certainly did dream big. “I was one of those people who knew ever since I was young that I wanted to come to New York,” he proclaims, and even more specifically, “When I was in high school, I knew I wanted to write a musical.”

So after graduating high school, Adam attended TISCH School for the Arts as a theatre major. “It covered all aspects of theater from stage designing to acting; it covered a lot of bases, while giving you a lot of freedom to do whatever you wanted,” he explains, like a fish describing water. “After that program ended, I spent a year in the musical theatre program. My senior year, I did a study abroad [a Shakespeare intensive] in London, at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. We got to live and go to school in central London and really take advantage of all the things that they had in London right at our doorstep.” Immediately after graduating in 2001, Adam took another overseas trip, this time to Israel.

Adam has been in New York for about 6 years now, and really feels like he fit in ever since he got there.

These days, Adam is working in development (which is mainly philanthropy) at the Roundabout Theatre Company, one of the largest nonprofit theaters in the country, and “pursuing his interest in freelancing his musical theatre”. His musical, “Lulu,” newly finished, after a “couple of years” work, was inspired and “very loosely” based on Frank Wedekind, the German expressionist playwright. “I did all the writing, the music, the lyrics for the piece,” he explains. “It’s a good blend of creative instincts and thinking about it in an intellectual way.” But true to his extroverted actor-roots, Adam finds the collaboration and discussion part “particularly exciting” (which of course can only come after the “very lonely” writing process).

It seems that Carver would be but a hazy memory to the world-weary Gwon, but when the subject of Carver’s anniversary arises, he lights up. “Wow!” he exclaims, “Has it really been ten years?! That is sort of frightening, actually.”

Like most Carverites, Adam recalls considering Carver in middle school. “At the time I was involved in drama club,” he admits, “because it was the cool thing to do. I remember they had some magnet school fair and my parents took me and we got brochures. I remember auditioning; we all had to do a monologue.” Adam reminisces about being accepted and starting classes and how it was “really, really weird taking off your shoes and playing games.”

One of the main things that has stuck with Adam all this time is the idea of balance between academic and artistic success. He says Carver also encouraged him to know about the world and form his own opinions. “One time in English class we were doing “Sunday in the Park with George,” and I remember [Paul Dougherty, theatre teacher] driving into us that theatre can be intelligent and musicals can be smart and have a view. I hope that students there are still aware that that link exists.”

To this day, Gwon is proud of the work produced during his and Carver’s formative years. “Whenever I tell people about Carver,” he says, right on the cusp of bragging, “I mention the galleries on the walls. I’m not sure why that resonates so much with people; it’s like a museum.” But what really resonates with Adam were the more exuberant instances. “Everything was so new and we were pioneers when we started there,” Adam says, “I remember when the cafeteria was in the lobby and people would, in the middle of lunch, burst into some “FAME”.” Some things never change.

But are accomplishing these dreams of bright lights and big cities a symptom of being the type of person to go to Carver, or is it the other way around? Adam puts it this way: “I don’t think I could imagine not going to Carver. I really came to [New York] with a bag full of skills and knowledge that a lot of other people didn’t have.”

Adam seems to always be setting goals for himself. He is trying to entice potential producers to support his musical, which means researching festivals and regional theatres- “There are lots of different options,” he says, “it’s just a matter of researching what’s out there.” He also mentions that it would be “so exciting to come back and have something done at Carver.” But, “my goal ultimately,” he points out, “is to be able to sustain myself as a writer, which might not come to fruition for a while.” Gwon may be talking modestly about his goals, but it’s clear that even he knows that when he sets a goal, it will pan out eventually. “There are some days,” he says, “when I’m walking around the city and I can’t believe that I’m here and actually doing this.”