DramaLit Blog 1.0: BU School of Theatre

Today I participated in The Box Project. It was a project that is part of a University wide initiative to have students from other schools get to know each other and collaborate.

Last night we were split up into teams, given a box with a ton of stuff in it, a theme, and told to create a video using the things we were given as inspiration. Today we worked from 10am-4pm to create the project.

I was in a group with a painter/sculptor, a graphic designer, and a musician/singer. It was pretty amazing how we worked together in a medium none of us is familiar with, and actually created a fully formed film. It was a really fun day of collaboration and creativity.

After watching everyone’s final product we talked about how incredible the immediacy of film is. We spent less than 24 hours creating a piece of art that can be easily seen and distributed to millions of people via youtube, email, etc.

Jim Petosa came to the showing of the films and, of course, had some really interesting things to say. And since I think a good quote from Jim is always fun, I wanted to share this one with you.

I will paraphrase, as I could never be as eloquent as Jim via blog post.

He said that the universe sometimes gives us boxes and we have to figure out what to do with it. And that right now the universe is dealing with the box of Trayvon Martin, and how are we, as artists supposed to unpack this very delicate and complicated box? What is our responsibility as artists to this box?

I don’t really have an answer to this question. I just thought it was an interesting question, and a really interesting way to think about life and art.

But today made me think about how quickly a message can be sent out, and how if we have opinions and stories to share (as most of us do), we have to take advantage of this venue.