Next Generation: Madeline Fremarek

Theatre is often about transformation — but embodying a character is more than a performance. The tangible factors influenced by outside forces play a defining role. And for University of Sioux Falls (USF) senior Madeline Fremarek, an interest in the organizational and aesthetic aspects of theatre have led her to desire a key role in this ever-changing journey.

Madeline Fremarek

“I love the organizational part of stage managing — it’s one of my favorite things to do,” the Columbus, Neb. native said of her time at USF, which has included behind-the-scenes work, as well as on-stage performance. “I also think there's just a thrill of being under the lights and performing and you get just so much energy back from the audience. It feels kind of magical, which is really cliché, but it feels really great.”

Fremarek’s most recent behind-the-scenes endeavor was stage-managing the university’s spring musical, Big Fish, but her work offstage has also included a great deal of hair and makeup design, from the undead members of The Addams Family to the fantastical characters of the aforementioned Big Fish. 

“I learned how to do stage makeup when I was 10, and I just kept going with it,” she said. “I've done it throughout my high school career and then college career. And I do hair and makeup on the side in general. So any kind of artistry and getting to play with my tools is always fun. Making people look the way their character is supposed to look and crafting that.”

The theatre student’s small-town upbringing led her to children’s theatre at a young age, where she began to cultivate what would become one of her area of studies in adulthood.

“I was born here in Sioux Falls, but I grew up in Columbus, and neither of my parents are big theater people,” she said. “My dad was an art minor, so we grew up with a lot of art in the house, but I was just very loud as a child and very expressive. And they were like, ‘I have a feeling she's going to enjoy the stage’ and enjoy the stage, I did.

“I started doing theater with Missoula Children's Theatre in my hometown, and I got started at the age of five and then kept doing that. I went to a really small school, so we would do a lot of smaller shows and then I directed a lot of things through my church and through high school.”

USF’s reputation for a strong, supportive theatre program drew Fremarek back to Sioux Falls post-high-school, where she’s been able to hone her skills as an actor and technician.

“I think this theatre department is just incredible,” she said. “A lot of departments at the collegiate level can get competitive and sometimes not very uplifting. Here, I've found that we all are supporting each other. Everything is really focused on building it as a team, building it together. And I am very grateful for having been directed under Joseph Obermueller and Alecia Juelfs and a bunch of my peers for their senior shows. That part’s been cool — seeing peers’ different directing styles and then getting to act alongside them in other shows is really cool.”

(From left) Sam Martin & Madeline Fremarek perform The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at University of Sioux Falls in spring 2022.

Performing at USF has presented some unique challenges for Fremarek as an actor, including taking on roles older than her real-life age, accent work and depicting difficult themes.

“Playing Siobhan was interesting,” Fremarek said of her role in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time her sophomore year. “It was strange in the sense that I was playing an adult who had all this life experience and also had a British accent, which was fun. I love doing a good accent. I also got to explore her grace throughout the show and her love and care for this young boy that's a student of hers.”

This past season, Fremarek had the opportunity to play a woman struggling with infertility and experiencing the adoption of a hydrocephalic infant in Emma’s Child, a role that the theatre student felt amply supported in by her director Juelfs.

“I'm really grateful that Alecia was able to walk me and (fellow performer) Elliot (Dallman) through that story very slowly and carefully,” Fremarek said. “And we got to talk to different people who have gone through adoption and lost children through adoption and who have struggled with infertility. I think getting to explore that was just a really cool experience. The show itself definitely took an emotional toll, because it was so much and we performed it eight times that week, but I am so grateful and it was such a great experience to have.”

When she’s not gracing the stage, though, Fremarek has an enduring love for the behind-the-scenes efforts that make a production truly sing. The theatre and business administration double-major finds her skills in both fields are fairly complementary, in fact.

“I've made many a joke to my professors that I feel like some of my theater classes are even more practical than my business ones,” she said. “Directing is just management on a stage. I’m learning the how-to in my management classes or reading about management styles and different techniques and how to manage people. And then in theatre directing you're managing people with a goal of getting them through a scene. So you have to effectively communicate and take all the same steps as in business management. I feel like it's quite useful.”

As she prepares for her final weeks at USF, Fremarek has her sights set on keeping both of these interests a part of her life on an ongoing basis, including potentially pursuing a master’s in business and experiencing theatre abroad.

“I'm hoping to go abroad for graduate school some day,” she said. “And some of the places that I've looked at have theatre departments that I could also partake in. That would be something that I would really enjoy — to see the differences, if there are any. Getting involved in the tech side, I think, would be my first instinct.”