CMU School of Drama


Friday, April 19, 2013

Playground 2013

YouTube: Playground recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary! Playground showcases original productions across all disciplines. Devised works include theatre, dance, and musical performances, as well as mixed media projects, films, installations, puppetry, murals, song cycles, and light shows.

10 comments:

Nathan Bertone said...

Happy to see that this video was made! I think that it is a great way to capture what we were able to produce in one week. I think that it would be great to have showcased a wider variety of pieces that were performed in order to really showcase how broad the spectrum of our work is, but there is a great selection of this years pieces in it! Playground was such an unbelievable experience for me this year, and I cannot wait for next year.

jgutierrez said...

Being a freshman, I really didn't know what I was getting into when I signed up for Playground activities, but after having gone through the week and working with so many different people across all disciplines, I am truly glad I did sign up. I think the thing I liked best about Playground was that afterwards I better able to know people from all over the School of Drama by name, as opposed to "that guy from that one show." I really felt a sense of community throughout the whole school which was invigorating as well as comforting. It looks like everyone here has good time with each other and I can't wait for next year.

simone.zwaren said...

I really loved Playground, which is probably why I loved this video. I enjoyed watching people's creativity with Holy Moses, Conscious, as well as a ton of others I was able to see. I was fortunate (and a bit unfortunate) to be really hands on with Playground in the lighting department. Designing two shows was a lot of fun, especially because I was able to work in two different spaces. I will admit I was a little disappointed in the lighting riggs/focus for the spaces, but I do understand that time was a factor. Then again it is exciting what people can come up with when highly limited in fixtures and time. Also, next year I am working less and sleeping more.

Unknown said...

I love playground. I think it is when I had the most amount of fun all year. When I was at Rehearsals for and the tree was happy the director told us that working in theatre was broken down into two blocks one was two months to create magic and the other two days to capture magic. I really think that is what playground is about capturing the magic of Purnell. Even though I was working on the piece I submitted for most of playground I found more joy in the other piece I had agreed to work on. Even rehearsal I would enter in happy and exit like nothing could go wrong it was just simple like nothing could stop the joy of this piece. It was truly magic. As I have though more about playground and how it is about making choices learning to say no, and how to work together, it has really hit me that this business there are no winners or losers. We can create so much as a team and make people so much that we should not focus on the amount of work and the lack of time to do it in we should not focus on being better than another we should instead work to make something we are proud of and enjoy every minute of it. If we can't do that then there is really no point in creating. Even with the week done and over with I am still looking back on the work I did the pieces I saw and how individual passions can transform our works. Playground has been my favorite moment all year I can't wait for next year to watch as in a week we create our own magic kingdom and share what we love with each other. I have never gotten to know people of Purnell better than I have during that week and I think this will be an amazing moment to happen again and again. Cheers Purnell to another great creation!

seangroves71 said...

Playground is an amazing unique opportunity that makes CMU stand apart from any other theatre school. while some other theatre schools limit the students and what they are allowed to do be it what productions they put on or what they are allowed to use, here we shut down every thing for a week and create something absolutely unique. The best part of having such a well supported opportunity to create an original piece is that it opens the possibility of creating a great new show which in many case has allowed students to carry on what they created in playground to produce again in settings like new york and LA. I love playground and everything about it.

Anonymous said...

I didn't quite understand why Playground was as praised as it was until I had gone through it myself. As a director I don't actually spend that many hours a week directing. I take classes in acting, writing, movement, history, (all which help inform my directing), but I don't actually spend much time doing what I love to do. Playground was a time where everyone could do what they loved to do and more, all day everyday. I was able to see what I could incorporate from my classes into my work, and was able to see where my strengths and weaknesses were as well. In addition it gave me a plethora of actors, designs, managers that I am eager to work with in the future.

Akiva said...

Playground was a ton of fun and looking back at this video made me remember just how great it was. There were a couple of playground pieces in the video that I didn't get to see. The videos of them looked really interesting and I wish I was able to see them. This video was really well made and makes playground look great, I only wish it could have been a little longer. There were many other interesting pieces of art that could have been filmed. For example the installation art that was up on the third floor. Over all this video makes me wish that we were able to see the footage from all the playground pieces, but I understand that for many reasons we are not able to do this.

rmarkowi said...

That was a very nice tribute to playground, and really sums up how I feel about playground. It's amazing to me to see so many people just all the sudden come together for one week and put on performances that rival those that have been working and running for years. Retrospectively, I am very glad I signed up for what I did, to get my name as a designer out there, as well as to meet new people and have a little fun.

AlexxxGraceee said...

This was my very first playground and i honestly wasn't sure what to expect. I was expecting this really cool and calm and relaxed week where i would get to sleep in and catch up on all of my work. I was very very wrong. I only worked on 3 shows which compared to some people wasn't very much but it took up a majority of my time. I assistant stage managed the dick diaries,Recomposed, and Under the Covers. Woah man, it was a shit ton. Im glad this video was made because i will love to look back at this, however im not a fan of this video, its poorly shot and poorly edited and i wish there was a more offishial video.

Ariel Beach-Westmoreland said...

Maybe I'm biased, but there were a number of elements and features to the tenth year that weren't documented in this film. It would have been great to see some shots of the lobby, or other pieces. It's unfortunate that the film makers couldn't get in to see more pieces - as the spectrum and variety of the festival wasn't really captured in this video.