Like many of you, I taught my drama improvisation classes on zoom this spring. One of the things we recognized is that we had to lean into the restriction of the screen-creating scenes where characters were restricted as well. We made the negative a positive to great effect. In my last class, there was a fabulous scene between two students who were on spaceships, and they used their screens, shaking them around, a la Star Trek, which looked great!

This got me thinking ---anyone have a really well written play set in space? I know of David Mamet's Revenge of the Space Pandas, but that one would not be appropriate for my school. I saw that Solaris has a play version, but that one might be too sad, if I remember the film correctly. What I would love is a rousing, Apollo 13-like with a dash of comedy, some beautiful writing, and nothing too "high school" or silly, but with a wonderful theme. Any thoughts? Any playwrights out there have something like this, with a flexible cast? I can have anywhere from 12 to 25 kids come out for the fall production, and we're looking for something adaptable. We just don't know if we will have to livestream, film it and edit it, or actually have an audience.

Happy hunting!

Like many of you, I taught my drama improvisation classes on zoom this spring. One of the things we recognized is that we had to lean into the restriction of the screen-creating scenes where characters were restricted as well. We made the negative a positive to great effect. In my last class, there was a fabulous scene between two students who were on spaceships, and they used their screens, shaking them around, a la Star Trek, which looked great!

This got me thinking ---anyone have a really well written play set in space? I know of David Mamet's Revenge of the Space Pandas, but that one would not be appropriate for my school. I saw that Solaris has a play version, but that one might be too sad, if I remember the film correctly. What I would love is a rousing, Apollo 13-like with a dash of comedy, some beautiful writing, and nothing too "high school" or silly, but with a wonderful theme. Any thoughts? Any playwrights out there have something like this, with a flexible cast? I can have anywhere from 12 to 25 kids come out for the fall production, and we're looking for something adaptable. We just don't know if we will have to livestream, film it and edit it, or actually have an audience. 

Happy hunting!