DramaLit Blog 1.0: BU School of Theatre

Tonight was my final advanced playwriting class, and while I’ve been sad that Lydia has been in New York for a lot of the semester getting Stick Fly on its feet, we’ve had a FABULOUS co-/assistant/step-in teacher, Jaclyn Villano, an MFA candidate for Playwriting at the BPT. Jaclyn has her own theatre company, Theatre Daedalus, in Columbus, Ohio. Tonight, for our final class, we had a potluck. Tasty treats were passed around while we all gave progress reports on our plays that are due NEXT Monday. Jaclyn soothed us with her signature soft words of encouragement and level-headed, down-to-earth advice. Then came the surprise guest speakers: her partners, Jeremy Sonny and Michael Parsons from Theatre Daedalus. They came in to talk about their own experiences as actors/playwrights/directors/managers/theatre artists in “the real world.” It was one of the most inspiring classes I’ve had all year. I feel as though a lot of my classes this year have been a little discouraging in terms of the reality of creating art outside of school. I.E. financing is too hard, competition is too fierce, boards of trustees are too closed-minded, etc. However, hearing Jaclyn, Michael, and Jeremy talk about their trip to Alaska to the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, their reasons for founding Daedalus, (Jaclyn laid it out on the line for us saying something along the lines of, “now we have this great theatre company with a mission statement we really believe in, but to start, let’s be honest, we wanted to see our work produced and on stage.”) and their artistic experiences as people working (hard) in the field was amazing. The two things that stuck with me were the importance of making a good first impression in the community and the value of our friends and classmates here at B.U. To speak to the first point, they reiterated a lot of the things we’re taught here: be on time, be of use, leave your ego at the door, and be yourself. It was so encouraging to hear them tell us to just be ourselves and not try to be anything else. Secondly, the bit about looking around and realizing that the people I’m in voice and speech and dramaturgy and playwriting with are the people I’ll be working with in 5-10-20 years. I never really stop to think about how much my peers inspire me and make me excited to do this work. What an excellent way to re-enter this world after Thanksgiving break…