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Student #1 has left a new comment on your post "How To Build a Life-Size Dragon":

First off, this dragon is beautiful, impressive and overall amazing. As someone who sculpts, I would love to be involved in a project like this some day. I think the process of making this dragon shows the importance of a thoughtful process when undertaking a project. They started in small scale, then made a digital version. By starting with a prototype out of similar material, or at least material that will be sculpted in a similar way, they were able to get an accurate idea of the aesthetic potentially better than they could have if they had used a computer to generate the original model. They then put serious thought into various materials, rather than just going with what people typically use. By working with cubes that could be removed and replaced, they increased their margin for error, which is vital for a project where mistakes are inevitable. I could go on about how detail oriented, careful, and calculated their process was, but I would be naming almost everything they did. When you approach a project, you need to plan thoroughly and be able to find and correct mistakes. When I look at this article, it is clear to me that this piece is as much a result of impressive organization and planning skills as sculpture. After all, when Ippolito talks about how he built the dragon, he talks about the planning, not the sculptural techniques. What these artists do can be applied to any task to improve the quality of the end product and often increase efficiency. 

Student #2 has left a new comment on your post "Tina Fey's Mean Girls Had The Most Women on a Crew...":

What I find interesting about this study is the fact that the root of this problem is gender stereo-typing. While society has progressed significantly, it is hard to un-train our minds into not associating certain jobs with certain people. Typically, it is assumed men like action movies more so then women. This assumption carries over into who gets hired to work these movies. The mentality is you want to hire someone who is interested and invested in the job they are doing. However, it is unfair to assume that a woman is uninterested in working these jobs because she is a woman.

On a broader spectrum, the same goes for all forms of entertainment. Women have been given an image that is hard to stray away from when media portrays it so often. Supposedly, all women like romantic comedies, they like dresses, they like wearing makeup, the list goes on. Just like supposedly all men like action movies, sports, and doing hands on jobs.

While changing the ideas of society is not something that will happen overnight, the change can occur. It can start in a field like the entertainment industry which has always been known to break boundaries. Showing this change can only be determined by starting a dialog and watching the awareness and growth that follows.

Student #3 has left a new comment on your post "5 Reasons Why Walt Disney World Represents the Fut...":

Disney and Broadway share a common goal: to entertain. It only makes sense that there are many theatrical elements in Disney theme parks because live performance is a way to entertain. Disney also uses short films, sculptures, and many other art forms throughout their theme parks. It is what works for their audience, and what gets their message across. That being said I just don’t agree that Disney is what American Theatre’s should be following. Mainly because the audience’s of plays and musicals are looking for a different experience. They want a comedy or drama they can invest themselves in, a show they can be engrossed in for 2 hours, not 20 minutes. They want humans they can identify with on a personal level, with no robots in the cast. They want a story that took time to construct, not something submitted by an audience member. While Disney is undisputedly successful in its ways of performance, their success came from recognition of what their audience wanted from them. And theatres across the country should do the same.

Student #4 has left a new comment on your post "Inspired by ‘Sleep No More,’ More New York Bars Of...":

I've personally never been a fan of proscenium theatre. In smaller spaces it gets a little better, but there's nothing I despise more than working in a giant auditorium where you have to squint to get a sense of anything going on onstage. I'm a firm believer in immersive theatrical experiences-- ditch the opera glasses! Get onstage with the actors! Don't just sit there in your box seat, do something!! "The audience is the sixth character in the play."

However, due to the fact that I do most of my work in a high school theater, I don't have much variance in the format of the shows I work on. And due to the fact that I'm a teenager living in the suburbs with a curfew of nightfall, I don't often get to experience any works of devised theatre. Thus, it's always a joy to read articles such as this one, just to get a sense of what I'm missing.

Play/Date sounds awesome. From what I can see, it sounds like a perfectly normal nightclub experience, except in this case, you're encouraged to eavesdrop. What a brilliant idea! It's a raw and natural human desire to know exactly what is going on in the lives of others. This show allows the audience to completely indulge themselves as they're given a perfectly ordinary scenario with the freedom to act on their guilty pleasures. Play/Date is an excellent study in voyeurism.

I was also happy to read about the new forms of presenting Shakespeare. I'm actually not that preoccupied with the fact that Shakespeare's plays were originally meant for the rowdy working class; art can adapt to the society it finds itself in, and I see no problem with Shakespeare becoming a thing of highbrow academics. But for reasons of my own personal enjoyment, Drunk Shakespeare sounds awesome. As an avid fan of the Bard, I definitely enjoy studying his works seriously in an academic setting, but most of my Shakespearean love stems from the interactions I get with my like-minded peers. There's nothing better than swapping theories and joking with kids who have also read Hamlet religiously. So to me, Drunk Shakespeare is exciting less because of returning to Shakespearean roots, and more because of my own relationship with Shakespeare's works.

Altogether, this article was a great read and I'm thrilled with all the changes theatre is going through.

Student #5 has left a new comment on your post "Kurt Cobain Musical Theater Production 'Very Likel...":

If you ask any given white girl, they will tell you that Kurt Cobain never dies in their hearts. But, in reality, Kurt Cobain is totally dead. So it should come as no surprise that people want to resurrect him, and why not resurrect him through a musical? Nirvana is a solid band that arguably kicked off an entire movement (punk in the mainstream), but the punk musical has already been done. American Idiot and Spring Awakening come to mind. So then why make a Cobain musical, one might be asking themselves at a time like this. Is a seminal artist's passing really a decent reason to immortalize them in a musical? At the moment, we don't have a definitive answer, but the closest thing to one we do is Holler if ya hear me, the ill-fated musical based around the life of Tupac Shakur. Now, this musical crashed and burned almost instantly. Fame and infamy are themes Broadway grapples with constantly, but another dead star might just not be the best vehicle to drive down that street this time. I bet this comment smells like teen spirit.