The best time to visit the CMU School of Drama

is during Playground, happening now. All School of Drama classes are cancelled for a week so that 50 student-initiated projects can be mounted. These shows, installations, and films are built and rehearsed between Monday and Thursday, and then performed, one after another, from Thursday evening through midnight Saturday. Shows take place in the elevators, in the stairwells, on the lawn, in the basement. It's like a fringe festival, if you can imagine a fringe festival that has access to (a) state-of-the-art lighting, sound, and video equipment, being operated by highly trained young people who actually know what they are doing, and (b) a population of actors who have already made it into one of the most competitive acting programs in the world. To say nothing of the directors, playwrights, designers, dramaturgs...