A play from two perspectives: Student-director & Playwright

Episode 185: A play from two perspectives: Student-director & Playwright At Theatrefolk we have a play by a playwright who for many years chose to be anonymous. When a student director (after winning his state festival!) asked to be put in touch with the playwright, it started the ball rolling to this podcast. We have the student director talking about the play Anonymous and what it’s like to be a student director. And the playwright, a teacher, revealing her identity. Listen in for these two different perspectives. Show Notes Anonymous Episode Transcript Welcome to the Drama Teacher Podcast brought to you by Theatrefolk – the Drama Teacher Resource Company. I’m Lindsay Price. Hello! I hope you're well. Thanks for listening! This is Episode 185 and you can find any links to this episode in the show notes which are at Theatrefolk.com/episode185. All right. Are you ready for this one? I am so ready to share this one with you. A little back story – here at Theatrefolk at the Theatrefolk Global Headquarters in the official catalogue of plays – why would we have an unofficial one? I don’t know. But, in our catalogue of plays, we have a play called Anonymous which we’ve had for a number of years. The play is about anonymity. To that end, the playwright decided that they wanted to be anonymous, too. So, it’s the play Anonymous by Anonymous. That was what the playwright wanted – to kind of go with the theme and just keep it all about that whole concept of a teenager trying to get out of that box of being a face in the crowd and being an individual. There’s a link to Anonymous in the show notes and I’m also going to talk about it a bit after the conversation. Of course, we respected that. There’s no problem with that whatsoever. Well, this year, a student decided he really wanted to do this play. His teacher didn’t want to do it, though. So, he chose this play and then he had to convince his teacher to let him direct the play. And then, he went on and did some pretty amazing things with it. I won’t share them all. I can’t tell everything upfront, right? Otherwise, why would you listen to the conversation? That experience, he contacted us and let us know, and then he said he wanted to speak to the playwright which this person had never done because… anonymous! But that conversation led the ball rolling to this podcast and this very moment and a couple of other things which you will hear about. Again, I can’t tell you everything! We’ve got to get to the conversation, man! So, we’re going to talk to the playwright first and then we’re going to talk to Kyle, the student director, and you’re going to get a play from two different perspectives – from the playwriting side and the playwright has also directed the piece so from that perspective and then from the student’s side and the student experience approaching a play. So, let’s get to it. LINDSAY: Hello, everybody! Usually, the first thing I do when I introduce a podcast is, first of all, I say their name and then I say, “Where are you in the world?” and this one’s just going to be a little bit different. We are going to say who the person I’m talking to is but just in a little bit. First of all, I’m going to just say hi. ALLISON: Hi! Hi Theatrefolk! LINDSAY: Hello! Second of all, tell people where you are in the world. ALLISON: I am in North Bay, Ontario, Canada. LINDSAY: Yes, Canada rocks. Canada rocks. Do you guys still have a lot of snow? You must have some.