CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, April 29, 2015

1 Way to Stay Creative Between Gigs

Backstage: On April 21, Tony winners Anika Noni Rose (“Caroline, or Change”), LaChanze (“The Color Purple”), and Tonya Pinkins (“Jelly’s Last Jam”) joined David Zayas (“Dexter”), Ray Fisher, Michael Mastro, and others for a reading of “Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine” at New World Stages.

Written by Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage and directed by Tony winner Kenny Leon (“A Raisin in the Sun”), the social satire set in New York City tackled themes of poverty, race, health care, and womanhood in the name of nonprofit organization Opening Act and theater education. The charity event saw 19 students take the stage to perform an original work inspired by their lives and “Fabulation” prior to the play reading.

2 comments:

Jason Cohen said...

Ironically I am not concerned with staying creative while I am between jobs. What I am concerned is not becoming stressed out that I am going from being really busy to not that busy. I am one of those people that wants to constantly be doing some thing, and doing nothing is really hard for me. It would also really bother me if I did not have a job, because like how am I going to live. I feel like being in between jobs is going to be much easier when I don’t have to worry about school work while finding a job at the same time. My advice for staying creative would be to just continue look at other works. In other words, go to museums, scroll pintrest, go see other shows. Basically anything that could potentially become research in the future. I would also suggest to just play around with your favorite mediums because why not you have the time!

Kat Landry said...

As someone who never considered herself a creative person before entering this program, I have found myself becoming very frustrated when I go home on breaks and suddenly am not doing anything with my hands. Over winter break, this was a particular shock for me, and I found myself driving to A.C. Moore for materials to learn how to knit. I felt so bored after having been doing Susan projects all semester that I absolutely needed to get my hands on *something* creative. However, I understand where Jason is coming from too- that the majority of the discomfort comes from the difference in work levels. If I go from a lot of work to very little work quickly, I have a very difficult time managing my time and getting things I do have to do done well. I simply feel better when I'm busy. I think this is definitely a very relevant article to the CMU Drama community, given we often go from 60 to 0 and back to 60 very quickly.