CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, March 14, 2018

NBC’s Rise, reviewed.

slate.com/culture: Earlier this year, Jason Katims, the creator of Parenthood and the showrunner of Friday Night Lights, got in a smattering of trouble. Katims’ new show Rise, about a high school drama program in a down-at-the-heels Pennsylvania town, is based on the nonfiction book Drama High. The real-life hero of that book, Lou Volpe, was a closeted drama teacher who energized his students by putting on a production of the musical Spring Awakening. In Rise, Volpe has been reimagined as the straight family man Lou “Mr. Mazzu” Mazzuchelli (Josh Radnor) because Katims “felt like I needed to make it my own story,” though he promised that the show would otherwise be attentive to matters of sexuality and representation.

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