Breakout role for ‘Cage’ star

Sean Engard has kept fairly busy in Orange Coast College’s theater department during his four years as a member of the school’s Repertory Theater Company.

The 22-year-old Costa Mesa High School graduate has been an actor, a director, a playwright and even a sound-board operator during his time at OCC. But next weekend Engard will appear in the juiciest role of his young life.

Engard is cast as Cristiano, a young devotee of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, in OCC’s production of “The Cage,” a drama by Italian playwright Mario Fratti. The assignment requires him to be on stage continually ? before the show, during intermission and after the final curtain.

“I’m discovering that this is a very intense experience,” Engard says about his character, who refuses all contact with the outside world and takes refuge in a cage.

“So many things are going on in this character’s head and his outward appearance,” Engard explains. “As an actor, I find it challenging to be playing an outward role while, at the same time, communicating a complex array of interior emotions.”

First staged in New York in 1966, “The Cage” is set in Italy in the 1960s and focuses on an overly sensitive young intellectual who locks himself into a cage in his family’s small apartment in order to avoid the crude world in which everyone else lives.

“His entire life experience comes through his exposure to Chekhov,” Engard says. “He believes that the world is a sordid place and he’s waiting for it to change before he’ll come out of his cage to face it. He constantly quotes Chekhov, not realizing that most of Chekhov’s work is comedy and is written tongue-in-cheek.”

The play, Engard admits, can be categorized as dark drama, but “it’s very important. I know people don’t like going out to see depressing things, but this show is worth seeing. It talks about people who isolate themselves emotionally. Cristiano does this physically.”

Director Arash Karami ? a UCLA graduate with a degree in economics ? is in the midst of an abrupt career change. He staged OCC’s productions of “Speed the Plow” and “The Bald Soprano” and hopes to pursue a career in theater.

Engard also has his sights set on the big time. He recently auditioned for the Julliard School in New York, but he expects to transfer next fall either to UC Irvine, Cal State Long Beach or San Francisco State.

Although he comes from a family of teachers ? his parents and two older sisters all are involved in education ? Engard is hoping to launch a career in the theater. He has visions of starting his own company, as other former OCC theater students ? including South Coast Repertory’s David Emmes ? have done.

“I’d like to do things in my company that aren’t done anywhere else,” Engard says.