By Liggera Edmonds-Allen

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Playground time, of course!

PLAYGROUND: A Festival of Independent Student Work is one of my favorite things we do at the School of Drama. For a week, classes are cancelled, and students sprint around Purnell like headless chickens for rehearsal spaces, last minute props, and costumes cobbled together from the closets of various friends throughout campus. It’s always overwhelming, intense, and electric, and something you don’t want to miss!

Faculty Champions

This year, I reached out to Catherine Moore and Dick Block to learn a bit more about how this Festival came to be. Moore and Block have been with the Festival since the very beginning – an idea brought to a staff meeting in 2003 by former Head of School Elizabeth Bradley. Having noticed how the students were trying to juggle classes, productions, and independent projects, Bradley had the idea to cancel classes for a week to encourage student-led projects. 

“Dick was already onboard,” Moore said, “And when Liz asked for a volunteer from the faculty, I jumped right in.” 

Moore and Block are Faculty Coordinators for the Festival, offering advice and mentorship to the student committee, as well as taking part in the selection and curation of performances and installations. But what keeps them coming back some 20 years later?

“Playground is one of the most exciting weeks of the year in part because it is one of the only activities in the School of Drama that is wholly ‘owned’ by students.” Block said. “[It is] not graded, not assessed; discussed, perhaps, but there is no penalty for a piece that doesn’t go as planned…And it is some of the best work that we see all year.”

“The reason I’ve been involved with Playground since its inception is because it offers our students the opportunity to explore and create their own work.” Moore said. “It is a time of intense collaboration that results in a joyful expression of our students’ many gifts. I am continually inspired by the commitment and risk taking that every student participating in Playground exhibits, the support that students show for each other, and the sense of community that exists in Purnell during this special week.”

But just to set the record straight, Moore reminded me about the work we might not see: “There are a number of staff and faculty who are supporting Playground from behind the scenes. We couldn’t have this week and the festival without their assistance.” 

We are so grateful to everyone who works so hard to make this Festival a success! I’ve participated in the Festival a few times now, and I am so excited to see what this year brings. 

Stepping Outside Comfort Zones

The reason I love Playground is part of the learning philosophy behind it: everyone should try something new, and stretch themselves outside their comfort zone. Nothing illustrates this better than this year’s Tech Workshops, ideated by Alexander Farrell and implemented by Delaney Price. 

“The tech workshops were introduced this year to help foster the explorative and curious energy of Playground,” Price said, when I asked about the idea and implementation. “We wanted to empower those outside declared design and production majors to design and create. We sent out a Google form to gauge interest and our incredible student department heads – Iris Chiu, Gemma Tait, and Cyril Neff – organized their curriculums around the responses.” 

This resulted in a day full of rotating drop-in lectures on lighting, sound, and media. A student who may have never touched a soundboard was able to learn the basics of sound design, Cue Lab, and how to connect their designs to the theatrical spaces they were working with. 

“It was great to feel as though individuals were empowered to create, and looking at program info for this year’s festival, we see lots of cross-departmental engagement,” Price said.

What to Expect This Year

In every piece I hear about, I see more and more cross-departmental engagement, and folks ready to make new friends. I can say from word of mouth that the first year Masters students are especially excited to make new friends in the School of Drama, and learn more about the spaces we work with. First year Dramatic Writing MFA Candidate Kate Foley is the director for Route 66(6). She is most excited to “work with people I wouldn’t normally collaborate with otherwise.” In putting on a director hat, she also said that the festival is “a great low-stakes chance [to] push myself out of my comfort zone.” Route 66(6)’s playwright, MFA Dramatic Writing candidate Hannah Honey Shepard, feels similarly, and is excited to work with a team of new friends. Acting as the scenographer for the piece, she is most excited about making a dead rabbit!

Playground runs from Thursday to Saturday, with performances in the Chosky, Wells, and Rauh Theaters in the Purnell Center for the Arts. There will also be nine installation pieces available to view throughout the festival: on the third floor, in the lobby, and even in the basement dressing rooms! Be sure to go beyond the first floor of Purnell in order to see all the fabulous work. 

One installation that caught my eye was The Spine: A Banned Book Library. Proposed and ideated by Reigh Wilson, the installation encourages the CMU community to interact with the book bans enacted throughout the United States, an issue that ‘seems more distant to us’ at our University. The installation displays some of the most frequently banned books in the country, inviting readers to consider ‘…stories that go untold or are silenced elsewhere in our society.’ You can find this installation on the 3rd floor seating nook, across from the main elevator. 

I’m always so happy to see ‘extension’ or ‘legacy pieces’ at Playground, as well – projects that continue through multiple years and classes, even after the originators may have graduated! You may remember the choreopoem Black Renaissance from 2022, ideated by Chloe Kaitlyn Brown and Steven Taylor Jr. This incredible piece touched and inspired so many – including Siggy Bijou, who proposed Black Resurgence. This 45-minute piece is described as a ‘manifestation of the universe in black bodies,’ ‘inspired by the teachings of our black faculty members (elemental movement, African yoga, Dunham and Jack Cole choreo/warmups).’ You can see this piece in the Rauh Theatre at 2:45 on Friday. 

But this is just a tiny slice of the breadth of this amazing Festival! With nine installations and 40 productions, you’re sure to find something amazing this week. The opening event will be held in the Purnell Lobby at 7:00 on Thursday, December 5th. I’ll see you there! 

New Plays

Students in rehearsal for “Real English” – a new play by first-year acting student Von Nishan Markarian.

New Musicals

A new musical version of “The Little Match Girl” by junior music theater student Hudson Orfe will make its debut at Playground this year.

Film Projects

Students film at Phipps Conservatory & Botanical Gardens for the Playground project “When We Begin Again,” led by junior acting student Olivia Ruhnke.

Liggera Edmonds-Allen (they/them) is a first year Master’s student in the School of Drama’s Dramatic Writing program. You can catch their sound design in Route 66(6) or their drag performance in House of Phobic: she wants revenge!