Max: Theater (& Edge as Performance)

Max has spent much of his Edge time interviewing - and reflecting upon the words of - Broadway producers Stewart F. Lane, Bonnie Comley, and Sharon Carr as well as Playbill.com founder and editor Robert Viagas.  For his thoughts on the experience, please read below.

---

Max, pictured at right, interviews Broadway producer Sharon Carr.
Image taken by Max.

"A play is like a corporation.  It's got a lot of different people all doing different jobs.  When people see a Broadway show, they think it is just one larger thing.  But it's not.  It's got a lot of moving parts.  You've got people picking the venue, picking the costumes, the director, the actors.  It's all that coming together to put the show on.  I mean, I didn't know all of that before the interviews.  I had to learn there are people they like to work with and teams that they like to pick.  Like, when they do a show, is there a certain person that they like to be with before they pick everyone else?

"Directors have people that they mesh well with.  If they need help, they can give them suggestions.  If they need help, they give suggestions on how to do things in a different, better way.  You know, how to make clearer a scene or the understanding of what is happening at that moment in the play.  Producers are like the CEO.  They help everyone do their part.  Directors ask, 'Are you doing your part?' The producers are kind of like what the Edge team does every week.  They say, 'Have you worked on this? Work on this more.  Go into more depth into your character.  Have you found this costume yet? Are you almost done?'

"The thing is - at the end of the school year - we do a performance of what we have learned.  We show what we've learned and show how Edge has helped us to pursue that and go more in-depth.  I think the depth of it is what helps everyone get as much as they want out of their searching and their project.  They're thinking about what they want to do.  It's kind of like them not having a schedule, but they can make their schedule in the structure that they're doing it.  They're making their own school in a way that works for them.

Posters of Broadway shows The Elephant Man and The Scottsboro Boys.
Image taken by Max.

"I [did] a show recently.  We listed things that are important to us.  We saw what could connect:  social art and music, social media (because you can share it), etc.  We whittled it down to three things that connected with each other, and then we made three different plays.  I'm in the first play, which is showing how social media enhances my life.  I am an actor.  I am the boyfriend in the play.

"In college, you create your own schedule:  what classes you want to take and when they are.  Edge helps kids with that because you're not going to have a schedule that someone hands you at the beginning of the year.  You have to make that.  You have to see when the classes are, what the classes are.  You have to build that schedule toward what you want to do.  That approach makes it set in the people.  It makes us more susceptible to what is going to happen in the future.  It helps us know what is going to happen.

"Edge makes me get more in-depth with what I want to do.  So I understand more about where my life is going and how I can make that happen, or how it will affect my life.  When I choose what I want to do and what I want to study, I can automatically have a sense of where my life is going to go if I choose it.  I think it's just easier to know how you're going to function in a setting like that.  Some of the Edge setting is like that.  It's better to know how to act in a setting than to get in the setting and not know how to respond to it."

---

Have a thought on Max's work? Please post in the comments section below! (If you do not see that section, please click on this post's title to be brought to its individual page.  Once there, scroll all the way down to see the comments feature).