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December 6 @ 11:30 am 11:30 pm

Playground

A Festival of Independent Student Work
DEC. 5–7, 2024

The School of Drama’s longstanding festival of independent student work encourages boundary-pushing creativity and produces eclectic and imaginative performances, installations, and interactive experiences.

Performances

Playground XXII Program

Best viewed in Full Screen (click the square icon at the bottom right.)

Purnell lobby full of people with colorful event lighting.

ABOUT PLAYGROUND

PLAYGROUND began as an annual event in the Fall 2003 as a means to create a concentrated opportunity for students to engage in creative exploration outside of their regular curriculum or beyond their current areas of study.  During a single week, classes within the School of Drama are set aside, and students are allowed the time, space, and resources to create their own works. Participation is completely voluntary, and grades are not given.

HOW PLAYGROUND WORKS

Students submit proposals to a committee comprised of students and faculty. Proposals range from live performances, short films, light shows, art installations, murals, and more. Students often collaborate with other CMU departments such as the School of Music, the Entertainment and Technology Center (ETC), and even students from other universities. Selected pieces rehearse and prepare over a period of four days, followed by the festival of showings that runs from Thursday through Saturday in and around the Purnell Center for the Arts. 

PLAYGROUND’S CREATIVE BENEFITS

Students who participate in PLAYGROUND reap a number of rewards. It supports risk-taking, community engagement and belonging, and empowerment. The School of Drama supports and encourages the students’ diverse artistic interests and creative expansion. Student participation in PLAYGROUND continues to grow with between 65-80 proposals submitted each year. Countless students over the past 20 years have used their experiences in PLAYGROUND as seeds for future professional artistic endeavors. 

Poster for "By Myself" with a photo of Jon-Michael Reese singing into a microphone.

PLAYGROUND SUCCESS STORIES

Many pieces that began at Playground have had continued lives beyond the School of Drama:

  • Jon-Michael Reese’s solo show “By Myself,” created for Playground in 2009, has had a continued life as a cabaret in NYC at club cumming and Green Room 42. 
  • Lee Harrington’s piece “Jellybean” received numerous productions between 2015 and 2018 including FringeNYC and an Off-Off-Broadway run.
  • Samora la Perdida’s piece “pato, pato, maricón!” was produced by Ars Nova’s ANT Fest in 2018.
  • Will Reynolds wrote a musical for Playground as a music theater student,  and since then has gone on to win the ​​Fred Ebb Award for Musical Theatre Writing, the Kurt Weill Foundation’s Lotte Lenya Award, and the Dramatists Guild Fellowship for his compositions for new musicals.
  • Matthew Gardiner, a directing alum, used Playground to explore new works, and is now Artistic Director of Signature Theatre – a company specializing in new works. 
  • SFBATCO just celebrated 10 years as a company, whose founding members first started working together as students in Playground.
  • PigPen Theatre Co. formed as a band their freshman year at the School of Drama, creating and performing their unique brand of musical storytelling in Playground pieces, and now they are Broadway composers and lyricists (“Water for Elephants”).
Photo of the seven members of PigPen Theatre Co. playing instruments, with a large mask in the center of the group.

PigPen’s Playground

PigPen Theatre Co. – the seven-member band of storytellers who met and formed at CMU School of Drama – remembers the “frienzied highs and lows of Playground week.”

“Working on our sophomore show as a company was an amazing experience that cemented our commitment to each other,” said bandmate Dan Weschler. “I’ll never forget hanging up a huge strip of canvas across one of our living rooms for a shadow screen, bathing the room in amber light and making shadow landscapes.”

2022 marked the 20th annual Playground Festival. Take a look back at its storied history.

Read More
20 Years of Playground