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Frederick Teasdale
Gwendolyn is the theatre professor who teaches the students movement and performance. An eccentric dresser and intense personality, Gwendolyn makes it clear from the first day of her class that she has high expectations. Oliver and James are sure that her favorite student is Richard. She tends to favor intimate, long, and sometimes humiliating classroom exercises that target the students’ private feelings and memories.
Gwendolyn Quotes in If We Were Villains
The If We Were Villains quotes below are all either spoken by Gwendolyn or refer to Gwendolyn. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Act 3, Scene 3 Quotes
That little prick of sadness burrowed deeper, touched me at the quick. How well I’d been trained to mistrust her. And by whom? Richard? Gwendolyn? I glanced over my shoulder at James again. All I could see was a shock of his hair sticking up behind the arm of the couch. It didn’t really matter where I slept, I decided. Nothing mattered much after that morning. Our two souls—if not all six—were forfeit.
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Act 3, Scene 14 Quotes
“You know, everyone calls you ‘nice,’” she said slowly, expression drawn and thoughtful. “But that’s not the word. You’re good. So good you have no idea how good you are.” She laughed—once—a sad, resigned sort of sound. “And you’re real. You’re the only one of us who isn’t acting all the time, who isn’t just playing whatever part Gwendolyn gave you three years ago.”
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Act 4, Prologue Quotes
“A good Shakespearean actor—a good actor of any stripe, really—doesn’t just say words, he feels them. We felt all the passions of the characters we played as if they were our own. But a character’s emotions don’t cancel out the actor’s—instead you feel both at once. Imagine having all your own thoughts and feelings tangled up with all the thoughts and feelings of a whole other person. It can be hard, sometimes, to sort out which is which.”
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Gwendolyn Character Timeline in If We Were Villains
The timeline below shows where the character Gwendolyn appears in If We Were Villains. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Act 1, Scene 2
...V through the walls. When Richard is done, Oliver enters the room, greeting Frederick and Gwendolyn, the directors of the program. Then he prepares to perform his monologue. Richard stays to...
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Act 1, Scene 5
...next morning, the students sit in a circle in Studio Five for a class with Gwendolyn. She leads them through yoga exercises and then tells the group that their meetings will...
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Act 1, Scene 6
At the end of the class, Gwendolyn tells the group that they’ll all have their turn admitting their strengths and weaknesses aloud....
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Act 1, Scene 10
...the Tent Scene. James forgets a line and has to ask for a prompt from Gwendolyn, and then Alexander forgets, too—three times. Richard, waiting in the wings for his entrance, emerges...
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Act 1, Scene 11
September and October move quickly. The fourth-years admit their strengths and weaknesses in Gwendolyn’s class one by one: Alexander is convincingly scary but maybe too villainous, Wren is emotionally...
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Act 2, Prologue
...and Filippa mentions that she lives in Broadwater with Milo. She tells them that she, Gwendolyn, and Frederick are still deciding the plays for this year. She exits, leaving Oliver and...
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Act 2, Scene 2
...and frustrated with his inability to help James. He tries to convince him to tell Gwendolyn or Frederick, but James makes him promise not to tell anybody.
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Act 2, Scene 3
...onto the stairs, and Meredith interrupts the scene to ask him what he’s doing. Although Gwendolyn tries to stop them, they fight. When Richard grabs Meredith and threatens her, Oliver and...
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Gwendolyn scolds Richard and tells him that if he does something like that again, Oliver will...
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Act 3, Scene 2
...Oliver stands up to go in—everyone else has already gone, and it’s his turn now. Gwendolyn, Frederick, Dean Holinshed, and Colborne are inside. Colborne invites Oliver to sit, begins recording, and...
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Act 3, Scene 9
The next day, Oliver calls Frederick, Gwendolyn, and Dean Holinshed to try to figure out a plan for paying for Dellecher. They...
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Act 3, Scene 15
On Wednesday, Oliver and Wren are scheduled to perform their midterm speeches for Gwendolyn and Frederick. Oliver goes first, and Gwendolyn and Frederick praise his delivery. Oliver takes a...
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Act 4, Scene 2
...show is announced: it’s King Lear. The fourth-years frantically prep for their auditions, surprised that Gwendolyn and Frederick have chosen a play that generally requires an older actor for the lead...
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...a mood, and Alexander is suspected of being with Colin. Oliver worries that Frederick and Gwendolyn cast faculty in the play to keep an eye on the students.
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Act 4, Scene 9
...and James, so Wren takes another day off from class. James wants to attend, so Gwendolyn’s class consists of Oliver, James, Filippa, and Meredith. After interrogating Filippa and Meredith about their...
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Gwendolyn tells them that they need to approach the scene from a less logical and more...
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Act 5, Scene 2
...her chest, but he dismisses the idea. Then his mind turns to the day in Gwendolyn’s class when she and James kissed.
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Act 5, Scene 5
...calls out to her and tells her not to kiss James like she did in Gwendolyn’s class again. Angry, Meredith asks him, “Who is it that you’re jealous of? Him or...
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Act 5, Scene 6
...of the bridge, Oliver follows James’s gaze to see Colborne standing in the wings with Gwendolyn and Dean Holinshed. Oliver and James continue the scene, but Oliver glances back and sees...
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Epilogue
...ashamed and can’t look at her for a moment. He asks her about Frederick and Gwendolyn, and then about Camilo. He wonders aloud when Filippa and Camilo will get married. Filippa...
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...Oliver asks her if she and James ever got together outside of the kiss in Gwendolyn’s class, and she tells him that they kissed again right afterward. She needed to understand...
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