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Student Blog: The Cult of LaDuca
It’s tough for a musical theatre-loving teenager who lives 2460 miles from the Great White Way. You try to connect to anything you can that reminds you of Broadway and the people who work there. That’s why I have been obsessed LaDuca dance shoes. Similar to a basketball player wearing their favorite professional shoes, whenever I put on a pair of my precious LaDucas, the same shoes that Broadway professionals wear, I feel, even in my high school outside of Los Angeles, like I am one of them.
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Student Blog: Honoring Specificity First
Hello y’all! For the next couple of months, I’m shining a light on one of the coolest parts of UC San Diego’s theatre department. Every spring quarter features a culmination of artistry that brings grads and undergrads together from all theatrical disciplines: the Wagner New Play Festival. The engine that revs the festival to life is the cohort of MFA playwrights. Each of them spends fall and winter quarters working on a piece ahead of its world premiere production in the spring. We have five playwrights this year, so this article is the third installment of a five-part series where I’ll be sitting down for a conversation with each of them. I hope reading these will be half as much fun as I had putting this together.
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Student Blog: Saying No and Saying Yes
I often hear people talk about the importance of saying no to the things that aren’t good for you. And while I agree wholeheartedly with the theory, I would propose a revision. When building a career or an understanding of theater (or anything really), you must try new things and find what, and how much, is right for you. It's not just about knowing when to say no or what opportunities to take.
