Episode 209: Page to Stage: What can you learn in 48 hours?

What can you learn when you put up a show from page to stage in 48 hours? Teacher and playwright Scott Giessler shares his experience. If you want your students to have an immediate lesson in problem solving this is the conversation for you!

Show Notes

• Life, Off Book


• Finishing Sentences


• Oddball

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the Drama Teacher Podcast brought to you by Theatrefolk – the Drama Teacher Resource Company.

I’m Lindsay Price.

Hello! I hope you’re well.

Thanks for listening!

Here is the question of the episode:

“What can you learn when you put up a play in 48 hours?”

I’m just going to let that resonate with you. Play to stage in just two days – not two months, not a year – two days!

So, this 48-hour play project, that’s what our guest did today with his students, and he’s going to share his experience with this great project, this great problem-solving project. Aha! Everything is a learning experience.

Now, I have to warn you, the sound may be a little wonky. When we recorded it, there was bad weather on my end, bad weather on his end, so that’s what I’m blaming it on – weather! But what Scott has to say is so lovely. Oh, I really love this conversation, so hang in there. I’m going to hang in there. You do it, too. All right? Let’s do it.

LINDSAY: Hello everybody!

I am here, talking to Scott Giessler.

Hello, Scott!

SCOTT: Hello!

LINDSAY: So, tell everybody where in the world you are.

SCOTT: I am calling from very cold, Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.

LINDSAY: I hear you. I feel you. I’m hoping that, when this goes up, maybe it won’t be so cold, but you never know!

SCOTT: Yeah.

LINDSAY: Scott, you are a teacher and playwright, so let’s just start with the teacher first. How long have you been a drama teacher?

SCOTT: I’ve been doing it for 17 years, and it’s been a pretty steady job at that. I started in 2001 and I’ve been just working at it ever since.

LINDSAY: What made you want to get into the teaching aspect?

SCOTT: Okay. Well, I had another life before this where I was working in the commercial sector because I went to college and I wanted to be a screenwriter. After I left college, I went through several different jobs in the commercial sector, just in the entertainment biz – both in Boston. Then, I moved to LA and did a little work there.

There was just a point where I started to realize that there was kind of that big, empty hole in my life of, you know, these jobs are interesting on some level, but I couldn’t care any less about them. And then, it all came to a head when I’d gotten laid off at a job and I just couldn’t imagine applying for any other jobs that were available.

My wife and I sat down and sort of talked about it. We developed a plan to move back east to New Hampshire where I’d spent a lot of my summers. When I got here, as it turned out, the local high school was looking for a theatre teacher.

So, things really kind of magically came together for me, all in the summer of 2001, and they hired me on a wing and a prayer because I had no credentials at the time. Eventually, you know, it started off as just sort of a stipend job when I was a study hall monitor, and I think I taught a theatre class in middle school while I was getting my certification. Eventually, they hired me on full-time at the high school.

LINDSAY: And now, it’s 17 years later.

SCOTT: It is!

LINDSAY: Okay.

SCOTT: Unbelievably, yeah!

LINDSAY: It’s very frightening how time just sort of magically melts, isn’t it?

SCOTT: Lindsay, you ain’t kidding.

LINDSAY: And, the older I get, the faster it melts.

SCOTT: Yes.

LINDSAY: So, that’s how you got into it. 17 years later, why is this the job that stuck? Why are you still in it all this time later?

SCOTT: Man, well, you know, I’ll tell you, I’m not really certain. I will tell you that, having done the job for so long now, I meet a lot of teachers that do it for a couple of years, then they do something else. I think I’ve been sort of asking myself the same question. I don’t know if I’m the exception to the rule, but certainly around me that seems to be the case.

I think it’s just that it’s never stopped being exciting and challenging, and it’s probably as simple as that. It’s still meaningful to me. I don’t ever dread doing the work. I don’t ever feel like, “Okay, here comes another show.” I’m always excited to get started and create, so that’s probably the sign that just says, “You know, stick with it.” I still feel like one of my biggest fears is someone might come in and tell me, “Hey, Scott. We don’t want you to do this job anymore.” Whenever that wears off, it might be time for me to get out, but it hasn’t.

LINDSAY: That’s a lovely feeling – well, to love what you do, right?

SCOTT: Exactly.

Beyond that, I couldn’t tell you what it is that keeps me fresh on it, but I think, you know, part of it is that every show brings on a whole new set of challenges. No two shows are ever exactly alike, so you never feel like you’re doing the same job over and over again.

LINDSAY: Yes, new kids, new shows, and you can’t repeat yourself, can you? What you did for Group A is just not going to work for Group B.

SCOTT: Exactly. You know, that was brought into me in Sharper Leap because I’m – finally, for the first time in my entire career – I’m repeating a show. I, up until this point, had made a very strong point of not doing that. And then, the students came to me and said, “You know, we really want to do this show.” I thought, “Well, I haven’t repeated one yet, so that ought to be an interesting experiment,” and it is. It’s a whole new set of variables.

Yeah, there’s a lot of things I can call on to sort of say, “Oh, yeah, this worked, and this didn’t,” but, you know, it’s a lot of years later and, you know, so much has changed with students – student life, the building we work in, technology and all that. It is still a very fresh project.

LINDSAY: Awesome.

Before we get into our topic of today, I also want to make sure everyone knows that Scott is a playwright – and a Theatrefolk playwright! We have one of his plays already in our catalog called Finishing Sentences. That’ll be in the show notes. By the time this goes out, there will be a second play by Mr. Giessler in our – what’s it called? – catalog. It’s called Life, Off Book.

What was it like? I’m really excited about getting Life, Off Book out there because it’s an animal, right?

SCOTT: Yeah.

LINDSAY: Just with the story and the use of movement.

Did you direct the first production?

SCOTT: I did, yes.

LINDSAY: And what was that? Where did the idea come for Life, Off Book and what was it like bringing it to your students?

SCOTT: Well, this is kind of an interesting situation because there were components of it that I had been sort of chewing on for years. The show heavily relies – I wouldn’t say relies on but makes use of analogy.

You know, they use, first of all, it uses the elements of the three-act structure in and of itself meaning