Thursday, March 25, 2010
Playground
Carnegie Mellon University: "For one week every year, classes and production work in Carnegie Mellon's School of Drama stop while student directors, designers, actors, technicians and playwrights collaborate on more than 40 productions of their own. It's called 'PLAYGROUND: A Festival of Independent Student Work.'"
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8 comments:
As far as I'm aware, this article is the only way SOD advertises Playground to the rest of the university. It would be really cool to get the word out to more of the university so that out-of-department students and faculty could see more SOD work besides the regular season. However, it's a bit of a double-ended sword, because it's hard enough to let everyone in the school see all the performances they want due to space limitations; if lots of out-of-department people started showing up to Playground performances, I'm sure there would be lots of complaints about how it's so much harder to get in to see a show.
I agree with Hannah, we don't advertise Playground enough to the outside world. Being one of the pride items of SOD, it would be nice to share the talent of everyone with those outside of SOD. Though as Hannah points out, it would be difficult for everyone to see all the shows. Perhaps, if everyone just waits in line for the shows they wish to see instead of waiting in a line for a packet of all the tickets.
However, on another note, this year's shows were a lot of fun to see. Last year I didn't see too many, and this year I strived to see as many as possible. It was amazing the amount of talent there was. I look forward to Playground 2010 2.0!
It would be great if we could get a wider audience to come see the work that happens in Playground, but as been mentioned, that means that it would be increasingly difficult for people to get into the performances, especially those in the Rauh and Wells. Playground could definitely also be a big draw for companies/agents/designers looking to hire for the summer or after college. Because there is so little time and material resources available, it pushes creativity to the limits. They would get an opportunity to see what amazing things can happen with so little, something that can be critical in the industry.
I couldnt agree more that we should advertise more for Playground, but I also realize that would make it even more complicated getting tickets for everything. But on another note, this being my first experience with Playground I absolutely loved it. I was glad that I had only committed myself to Central, because even though it was a lot of work, it still was a lot of fun. It was also nice because I was able to make it out to see a bunch of performances. Some of which I really liked a lot, while others were not quite my taste, others surprised me still. I cant wait for the fall and the next Playground, which I have already begun thinking of proposing a few different pieces
I agree with above comments. Playgound was awsome! But I felt playground is just about SOD's festival. Most of other department students were not about even playground's existence. I hope 2011 Playground would have more diverse audience.
It's funny for me to read all these comments now, because I just had this conversation with someone in my elective class... She asked me why we didn't advertise playground more. She said she would have been very interested in coming and seeing everyone from the SOD hard at work, but she didn't know about it till it was over. It is quite a conundrum about what to do, because I know I didn't even get to see all of the shows that I would've liked to with just the people who were there this year. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a solution to that problem.
I agree with everyone that Playground should be more widely advertised to the rest of the university, but I also think that that's up to us. I think that the best way for us to get other students to come, is to tell people, put up flyers, and other stuff.
On another note, I think Playground was an awesome experience. It was a great chance to work with people that we normally wouldn't work with. It was also a great way for all of us to experience working on different types of performance, that we wouldn't normally get to experience at CMU.
On the one hand, I think it's great that more people get to find out about Playground, and this isn't an SOD exclusive event. Then again, after standing in ticket lines for so long, and NOT getting tickets to shows, I also think it's good that other people aren't coming to take tickets that could go to SOD students. I wish we could resolve the ticketing issue so more people could get to see the shows. But, to flip back to the counter-point again, getting more awareness about this amazing event is also great. When I met the Dean of Student Affairs a few weeks back, he'd never even HEARD of Playground, and he said that he attends every mainstage production in the SOD. I think it's great that the school and the teachers do get credit for allowing us to do this every year.
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