“On their last day of class, students in Drama 210 meet the playwright for whom they’ve been designing a set — for the second time. But the School of Drama didn’t have to pay the playwright’s airfare and hotel bills; her visits came via Skype.
It’s all part of the major assignment students have in the Theater Technical Practice class, which introduces undergraduate students to the art of designing sets. They’re asked to read a play, talk to the playwright about it and then — with another student as a partner — design a set for it. At the end of the quarter, the playwright looks at and comments on models of the sets students have created….
“The subject this quarter is Caridad Svich, author of a play called Magnificent Waste that recently had its premiere at a small theater in Washington, D.C. Svich was smiling and relaxed, and seemed happy to answer as many questions as the students could throw at her. It even turned out that though the play is set in the New York art world, it has a local connection. She did the major writing on it while she was a writer-in-residence at Hedgbrook on Whidbey Island.
For many of the students, talking to the playwright makes a difference…
Read the whole thing here.