Lauren Ray graduated from our program in 2009 with a B.A. Theatre Arts and French, and she's now a teacher and speech and debate coach at Northwest Rankin High School in Flowood, MS. She also serves on the board of the Mississippi Theatre Association as the Youth Co-Vice Chair for Individual Events.
Lauren Ray graduated from our program in 2009 with a B.A. Theatre Arts and French, and she's now a teacher and speech and debate coach at Northwest Rankin High School in Flowood, MS. She also serves on the board of the Mississippi Theater Association as the Youth Co-Vice Chair for Individual Events.
Lauren and I had a lot to talk about, so our conversation will be spread across two episodes. In this episode, we'll discuss, of course, her time at UM, as well as her thoughts on the importance of community theatre (in particular in Mississippi) and a special play-reading project she set up for herself.
For more information about the Mississippi Theater Association, please visit http://www.mta-online.org/
You can learn more about Lauren's play-reading project and read her reviews of the plays she's read (and enjoy bonus cat photos!) here: https://www.facebook.com/FiftyTwoByTwelve/
For more about Lauren Ray, visit her website here: https://www.anotherlaurenray.com/
The Department of Theatre & Film is grateful for its patrons and corporate sponsors. As a department we are committed to the high quality instruction that our students receive. Investing in the students’ education and these quality productions helps us move toward our common goal of graduating successful, creative adults who are lifelong learners. If you are interested in contributing to these efforts, please visit https://umfoundation.givingfuel.com/theatreandfilm
From the Department of Theater and Film at the University of Mississippi, this is Stage & Screen.
Katherine Stewart
Hello, hello and welcome back to stage and screen. I'm your host Catherine Stewart and my guest today is Lauren Ray.
Katherine Stewart
Lauren graduated from our program in 2009 and is currently a teacher and speech and debate coach at Northwest Rankin High School in Flowood, MS. She also serves on the board of the Mississippi Theatre Association as the Youth Co-Vice Chair for Individual Events
Katherine Stewart
Lauren and I had a lot to talk about, so this interview will be spread across two episodes.
Katherine Stewart
In this first episode we talked of course about her time at Umm. We also talked about the many and varied applications of theater training, the importance of community theater, and a very special play reading challenge that Lauren set up for herself. Without further ado, here's Lauren Ray.
Katherine Stewart
Hi Lauren, how are you doing today?
Lauren Ray
Hello I am doing quite well. It's good to get to talk to you and I appreciate your inviting me to come here today.
Katherine Stewart
Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited to visit with you, so if you wouldn't mind just to kick us off kind of give us your background. Introduce us to who you are and where you're from and how you got into theater.
Lauren Ray
Yeah, so I'm Lauren Ray. I am 34 years old. I was in Ole Miss Theater from 2005 to 2009 and I'm originally from Jackson. I I grew up in Northeast Jackson doing sort of the normal kid stuff I was.
Lauren Ray
In, there's too many activities. I was hyper over scheduled and and and I got into theater really through dance I I always did like my family was a we go to church on Sundays family and I was at the kids stuff there and really enjoyed getting to be the one with the solo.
Lauren Ray
In the in.
Lauren Ray
The play and and and then when I was very young like like four or five.
Lauren Ray
Maybe I can remember some flashed at this memory of sitting in the local library where a, uh, a dance.
Lauren Ray
Teacher Lisa Howell, who I actually think still teaches around here, was doing a showcase with some of her big kids, probably 4th or 5th grade ballet students, and.
Lauren Ray
It was a spark and I was like, oh, that that that performance. I want to be doing that I want to be doing what they're doing even very very young. I wanted to be.
Lauren Ray
Be performing with my body. My parents touched base with Lisa Howell. I danced with her throughout elementary and all the way up through my senior year in high school and.
Lauren Ray
Sort of a natural segue from that into wanting to be on the stage around the stage in the stage doing the things that.
Lauren Ray
That that that are that make up this creative art that we that we call theater and that really is the collection this this creation of all of the different art forms that we we bring together and put into other people opportunities for for live performance consumption.
Katherine Stewart
Yeah, so did you always know? Were you always planning to study theater when you went to college or did you have a plan in mind when you came to Ole Miss?
Lauren Ray
I think so. So coming to Ole Miss was not my initial plan. I'm from central Mississippi. My whole family like all the way up the tree in all the directions have degrees from Ole Miss and when I was a junior senior in high school I was like I'm going away.
Lauren Ray
I'm going to go to New York. I'm gonna go to let me go outside to go to Chicago.
Lauren Ray
You're gonna go to California. I'm gonna go away.
Lauren Ray
And and my my parents, who are incredibly were and are just incredibly supportive and also incredibly pragmatic, sort of even smiled and nodded and said like hey, but we're we are going to have to be able to pay for it and and a lot of.
Lauren Ray
The big schools in the big places don't have scholarships for people like me, which is well enough off to be able to support myself.
Lauren Ray
We we, hadn't we. We don't have financial struggles but also.
Lauren Ray
$60,000 a year for an Ivy League education is is a little bit outside of our range, so uhm, so I think my mom actually applied Me 2 Ole Miss without me.
Lauren Ray
She like came in when they were saying, hey, I digital miss application. I was like mom wonder right? OK fine I'm not doing it.
Lauren Ray
And and and then, as as I started working through the audition process my senior year, I did auditioned several schools in Alabama and and a couple of them I thought like I, I thought really hard that maybe Samford was gonna be for me and.
Lauren Ray
The scholarship money didn't come through and and as I was going through the the Ole Miss audition process, I kind of started to think, yeah, there's some people here who I could make art with and there are some things that are outside of the though what you see on the news about.
Lauren Ray
Number two party school in the country that we get, and I mean I'm not opposed to a party, but they're like I I want to come to school to learn cool stuff.
Lauren Ray
Uhm, so a lot of those preconceptions that I had about, like what is Ole Miss? As I really got into that late fall early spring of my senior year and and got to come up a couple of times and got to get to know a couple of the the people who were already in the program.
Lauren Ray
The year 2 years ahead of me. Uhm, sort of started to see that there were some really incredible artists making some really good art and and I wanted to be with that. The other thing that pulled me in no uncertain terms. Tordsson this was honored.
Lauren Ray
And and meeting with Douglas Sullivan-Gonzalez is the I don't know if he's still there, but he was the Dean of the Honors College or the Associate Dean. Wouldn't let him and he was highly involved and and he is just very positive about that program.
Lauren Ray
And it appealed to.
Lauren Ray
The critical thinking and small class size. The sort of the the way that my high school education had looked.
Lauren Ray
It looked similar to that, so it's not so much this huge leap into 200 people survey classes, and I'm just going to be sitting listening to a a professor from Poland who I can't understand.
Lauren Ray
Teaching me about astronomy.
Lauren Ray
Yeah, but but really there are homes on this campus and there are places where there are people like me doing the things I want to do and that really pulled me.
Lauren Ray
Very very clearly too. Yeah, this is. This is the place I could spend the next four years so.
Lauren Ray
But it wasn't my it wasn't my expectation, it wasn't my goal. I did know that I was gonna study theater.
Lauren Ray
I did think like so many 16-, 17-, 18- year-old girls think that I was gonna go to Broadway and be a triple threat and sing and dance and act and while
Lauren Ray
Is true is that while I'm capable of all of those things, they aren't my show.
Lauren Ray
Thanks, I I am a a good performer. I am a good dancer. I am a good singer but I am I am outshone by excellence in all three areas all the time. Which is awesome and I I want to be able to to support our.
Lauren Ray
Our artists, who are just where that's the thing that they are just so good and so compelling it doing.
Lauren Ray
And it was. I was one semester in I had finished freshman studio and voice in diction, one semester of classes, and I'm good at academics. And I had done well in these classes.
Lauren Ray
But I'm looking at my collaborators going. Y'all are just awesome and I want to be able to sort of facilitate that. So I shifted from being on the BFA track into being in this general theater track.
Lauren Ray
At the end of the first semester of my freshman year, I love to direct. I love to design just all of the all of the pieces that let us bring together the people who are really good at those specific niche is in the in the theater world. That's that's really what's so exciting.
Lauren Ray
To me about about this collaborative art.
Katherine Stewart
Yeah, I was going to ask. I know you have performance and directing and design all in your resume. What did you end up focusing on while you were in in school?
Lauren Ray
So that's that's kind of a funny question and I might not. Should admit that I might have gotten away with like not doing any of the assigned juries because I switched from thing to things so many times.
Lauren Ray
Uhm, I was a I was a design student for a hot minute. I have designed a lot. I I did costume design with Carey Hanson, who I think is still up there.
Katherine Stewart
She is.
Lauren Ray
Uhm who I just adore. I did a computer aided design under Michael, which is how I got to know him.
Lauren Ray
And uhm, I did. I did performance.
Lauren Ray
But at the end of each semester, I was like no. I want to be more general. I want I want more. I want more.
Lauren Ray
Or, uh, different things and. And so I come, I just I just looked at what is the?
Lauren Ray
Broadest like what? How can I acquire the most different knowledge about about this thing that we're doing?
Lauren Ray
Uh, to to be the most effective.
Lauren Ray
Facilitator of making art I guess. So my my degree is a Bachelor of Arts and it's a BA in Theatre Arts and in French.
Lauren Ray
Language, because that's a thing that I also do.
Lauren Ray
Uhm, probably because communication and storytelling is of really high importance to me and and I actually have a masters of science from Purdue University in communication that I got in. I think I finished it December 2016. So so communication as a.
Lauren Ray
As an art form is one of the things that that I value very highly and and that really drives me into.
Lauren Ray
Can I communicate visually? Can I create these this design work so that if you're working with me and can look at it, you can go OK.
Lauren Ray
Yeah, I I see what you're trying to communicate and can I communicate vocally? Am I able to say words that make sense in the order that they.
Lauren Ray
Come out of my mouth sometimes they do, sometimes they don't and come in such a way that you connect with that and that we're able to make these real human connections.
Lauren Ray
To each other and to people we don't know and to people on the Internet and.
Lauren Ray
Whoever, whoever hears them, or sees them like how can we? How can we tell compelling stories with honesty? And how can we connect in ways that lets us or that let us feel the things that we need to feel all the time so I don't know if that actually answers the question you just asked me.
Katherine Stewart
OK, I think it did and it ties into another question. I was going to ask.
Katherine Stewart
Which is, so you have taught theater, but you also have taught speech and debate and communications. What aspects of your theater training have been helpful in teaching speech and communications in in particular?
Lauren Ray
So that's a really good question. UM, and they're so intrinsically connected that it's hard to pinpoint like what what happened like like can. Is there anything from the theater world that doesn't improve my ability to teach speech in oral communication?
Lauren Ray
I have learned over several years of doing this that.
Lauren Ray
Uhm, that teaching someone to be a confident, capable public speaker and teaching someone to be a compelling actor aren't necessarily like we don't follow the same pathways. But at the heart we very much are trying to convince people that their story matters.
Lauren Ray
That the way that they approach an audience.
Lauren Ray
It needs to be thoughtful. It needs to be. They need to consider both the content of their of of what they are sharing, but also the needs and and the expectations of whatever audience is coming in for them. So a lot of these, a lot of the things that I think directors.
Lauren Ray
Have to put on a hat.
Lauren Ray
1st, I'm working to teach individuals in I teach a dual credit public speaking class that my high schoolers get.
Lauren Ray
Three hours of Hinds College credit for which is awesome, but I I try to teach those individuals that they have to put on that hat of I am directing my own performance here, and so I have to do these analysis.
Lauren Ray
Projects I have to I have to identify again who am I talking to? Am I talking to a fourth grade classroom?
Lauren Ray
Am I talking to the football team? Am I talking to my parents, colleagues and and each of those things come with specific needs?
Lauren Ray
And how can we identify the?
Lauren Ray
Uh, the objective of my speech, which sort of pull in that theater jargon that that we like to use in our performance classes.
Lauren Ray
What are my objectives? Water my tactics? How am I going to focus on getting from walking into the room a little bit? Frightened of these people? Who am I talking to into?
Lauren Ray
No, I have a compelling story to tell. I have a goal I want you to take something away from it, and I want to do that in a way that is most likely to connect with you. So there's there's really nothing out of my theater experience and training that doesn't help me.
Lauren Ray
In in those public speaking environments and classes.
Katherine Stewart
That's great. That's great. So you mentioned coming to school with this ideal, which a lot of people have. I'm going to go to Broadway and be a triple threat.
Katherine Stewart
That doesn't happen for everybody.
Katherine Stewart
But you've also been, it sounds like involved with community theater for a very long time. Why is community theater important? Kind of broadly and also maybe to the state of Mississippi.
Lauren Ray
Yeah, that's that's a great question, and one of the things that I love about the Mississippi community theater is how many small groups are making art that speaks to them. I'm I, I'm in Jackson and I won't, but probably could tick off 12 different tiny.
Lauren Ray
Pop up community theater groups that are independently.
Lauren Ray
Uhm, making art and and this art I'm gonna pause take a happen.
Lauren Ray
Step back, put on a different hat for for two years I was the the community theater chair and the vice chair for a year before that for the Mississippi Theater Association, right, yeah.
Lauren Ray
And and so one of the jobs of that that chairperson is to to identify and connect to the people who are making community theater art all around the state.
Lauren Ray
But one of the yeah, one of the huge things that I love about community theater is that we have these opportunities to choose our collaborators.
Lauren Ray
Uhm, if I want to, if I want to go and make art with a group of people that I'm really excited about making art with, I don't have to do this professionally.
Lauren Ray
I I have a personal policy but I don't do it during the school year because that's bananas because I do work very closely with.
Lauren Ray
Our competition theater group and you can't do you can't? You can't actually physically aren't enough hours in the day to do two shows at the same time.
Lauren Ray
Doesn't work, we do it because we're crazy people, but but you can't. So. So if we want to spend.
Lauren Ray
And if we want to spend our summer putting together a pop-up community theater production.
Lauren Ray
I can say to my 5 closest friends. Hey, you are a person who makes good art. I want to play with you, uh, let's do show and and we have the structures that that already exist through a lot of the community theaters in in our local area and really all across the state.
Lauren Ray
To allow for that and and structuring these things like, there's there's some legal manner in mind that you gotta do, but there are enough of them that already exist. But if you if you network right, you can be like, hey.
Lauren Ray
Your 501C3 community theater hasn't been. It hasn't been active in five years, but you're up to date on your paperwork.
Lauren Ray
Do you wanna like put that hat on my production and I'll take my collaborators and we can run together and make this cool art and you can put your name on it.
Lauren Ray
So there's there's a lot of that.
Lauren Ray
That happens as well.
Lauren Ray
Several years ago.
Lauren Ray
I got this crazy idea in my head that I needed and this is I do these weird personal projects that I just why I don't know. But then I needed to do this one woman, one hour community theater competition show.
Lauren Ray
No, so I don't identify as a performer. There are actors out there who are far better than me and.
Lauren Ray
And I just decided that this was the thing I needed to do, sort of to see. Is this something that I can? Uh, is something I'm even capable of doing?
Lauren Ray
And somehow I I I'm asked a team of a fabulous director who's a community theater director and a consultant who who doesn't want to even want to be named the director.
Lauren Ray
He's he's, he says, he's too old for that, but really, he's fabulous and and who had pageant training and who helped to sort of?
Lauren Ray
Develop the character in the show and.
Lauren Ray
And the one friend and this tiny group of us put the show together and took it to the the competition.
Lauren Ray
The MTA State Festival was at 1718 and I won Best Actress which was super exciting and then I went on to CTC with the show because.
Lauren Ray
We have this opportunity to choose. These are the people who want to make good art together that that's that to me. The following year I, I think you probably know. Reese Overstreet.
Lauren Ray
Yeah, she and she's in the program at Ole Miss following year. One of my colleagues and.
Lauren Ray
Uh, picked up Lauren Gunderson I and you, which, if you're not familiar with, is just a fabulous piece of text. It's one of two scripts that I've ever read that I think is just perfectly crafted.
Lauren Ray
And I read it and sent it to my colleague Juniper, who's currently the President of MTA and and then pestered her for about 6 weeks.
Lauren Ray
Hey you need to read the script. Now you need to hang. You read the script right now. Hey you need to read this and I sent it to you.
Lauren Ray
Thief, who I I knew through through Jackson connections and both of them read it and said no, we have to do this right now and so we picked up a couple of other performers. Jeremiah Henry is was our actor. He had just graduated from Murrah and is now at.
Lauren Ray
Southern studying broadcast journalism I think. And then Carrie Horn, who works for MPB, was our stage manager and the five of us.
Lauren Ray
I put together this show to take to competition and and Reese and Jeremiah, by the way, won best actor and Best Actress and this show at MTA that following year. So if you see her, just know she's the best.
Lauren Ray
And and and she really is like, right. There is not a. There's not a project that I would not find a place for race to work with me on and she's just so good.
Lauren Ray
But they they just killed it on that project because we had the community and the opportunity to use the Community theater infrastructure to to collaborate in a way that wasn't the people who were put together geographically. Jeremiah.
Lauren Ray
Reese graduated from Mass or from. I'm sorry from Jackson Academy.
Lauren Ray
And Jennifer and I were working at Northwest and Carrie’s at at MPB, but we're all sort of local and we went through Fondren Theatre Workshop.
Lauren Ray
So all of these like we wouldn't normally be able to work together in a secondary structure or in a collegiate structure, and so the Community theater allows.
Lauren Ray
For for us to choose our collaborators across those geographical and and sort of predefined lines, which is awesome and and do it and and do it with a band and and and don't do it while you're also doing a secondary show, because it's actually impossible.
Wow, yeah.
Katherine Stewart
You mentioned reading new scripts. One thing I know you've been involved with is this 52 week new Player Week challenge.
Katherine Stewart
Reading a new play every week, how did you get involved in that and how has it been important to you?
Lauren Ray
So sort of like Second lady the one woman show that I did this is this is a.
Lauren Ray
Stupid personal projects that I thought up.
Lauren Ray
myself, uh and and I have no justification for why I would get myself into such a silly thing, like what is this plan?
Lauren Ray
It was so so this is this was born out of a project that I started about four years ago.
Lauren Ray
Same thing, stupid personal idea what who comes up with these things? My brain in the shower like what are, what are we doing?
Katherine Stewart
Where all the best ideas happen?
Lauren Ray
Right, right suddenly I'm able to calm down and so now I think of new things to add to my plate, uhm?
Speaker 2
Right?
Lauren Ray
So, so about four years ago, I said, uhm, sort of following the NaNoWriMo model. So NaNoWriMo is the national novel writing month, and it's November.
Lauren Ray
And and they they make this big push for people to to spend the month and write a crappy novel.
Lauren Ray
And they say it's going to be good. You're gonna do it fast and it's going to be over and and you should do that. But sort of on that sort of in that vein.
Lauren Ray
Let me take a month and see if I can read a play a day. I have a I have a stack that I need to read down.
Lauren Ray
I'm sure I've got more than 30 of them. I I I need to do this, I'll I'll note the that need word I I I sort of live by a theory that needs are determined by once.
Lauren Ray
And so once I can identify what it is that I want that I've got to figure out what I need in order to get that, then we're back to silly theatre jargon, like objectives and tactics and things.
Lauren Ray
I I have this very sort of crystal clear memory of being a very young theater director of a very new high school program and I had picked up a script by Alan Haehnel who writes a lot of of of high school comedies and scripts that are pointed at.
Lauren Ray
Middle and high school age students and I picked up this script called Andromeda Galaxy that I was preparing for my my secondary kids. I was teaching at Germantown High School at the time and I was sitting in Oxford.
Lauren Ray
Uhm, at Taquiera Milagre which isn't there anymore, but which used to be right off of Jackson Ave with a group of theater teachers of various tenure, including Susie Allman, who you might or might not know she's been teaching at Oak Grove for the past, I think 18 years and she is.
Lauren Ray
A master of the craft, she is. She's just consistent. She is phenomenal. Her students consistently make good art.
Lauren Ray
Uhm and and I was talking about this new script that I was so excited to have found.
Lauren Ray
And because up to.
Lauren Ray
That point I had been pulling scenes from what I had read in college, which was a lot of Pulitzer Prize winners, which was great, but which I?
Lauren Ray
Had to edit my love.
Lauren Ray
Because we can't be asking our high school students to sort of grapple with a lot of the same language and content that we asked for college students to grapple with, and I found this.
Lauren Ray
Script and it was like I don't have to edit it. It's the right length we can. We can value it's and it's funny and my kids are excited about it and she is sort of offhand.
Lauren Ray
I'm sure she doesn't even remember the conversation was like Oh yeah, I had it on my shelf. I read it like six years ago I was like.
Lauren Ray
My news fact.
Lauren Ray
How have you already read this?
Lauren Ray
And and I like in that moment I had this clear recognition that if I was going to have an encyclopedic knowledge of content that I can work with.
Lauren Ray
I have to consume that content right? So and and I struggled with this through high school and really through college.
Lauren Ray
When reading is a sign, I'm suddenly like rare 20 other things I need to do I.
Lauren Ray
Don't read a whole scenario.
Lauren Ray
I'm reading a book and.
Lauren Ray
And I I certainly Wikipedia. The second half of Wuthering Heights. And I mean you can't make me want to read even from I'm not doing it. But uhm, but if I'm gonna if I'm gonna ask my students.
Lauren Ray
To work with text.
Lauren Ray
I need to know what the text that I'm asking them to work with actually says.
Lauren Ray
And and and if I haven't read it.
Lauren Ray
It's not part of me. So so then we fast forward to this several years ago. I get this crazy idea that I will take a month and I picked February because it's short and read down my sack of plates.
Lauren Ray
Purchased a bunch of plays from play scripts and from dramatists, and there were too many and I needed to to have.
Lauren Ray
Find them and so I decided that I would do a play a day in February where, which I which I have done for the past four years. It sort of sort of runs where we're in starting February 1 arena play and.
Lauren Ray
My colleague and.
Lauren Ray
And really, my closest collaborator is Juniper Wallace, who's mentioned a minute ago. She's the current president of MTA. She's also just a master of the craft.
Lauren Ray
She also tends to escalate my projects. I'm like I'm just gonna read about it. It's gonna be great and she's like, oh, you could read a play and also review it on.
Lauren Ray
Facebook every day and I was like.
Lauren Ray
That's you're adding some things that do, but.
Lauren Ray
Through our conversations and she was going to do it with me.
Lauren Ray
And I think she got through about 10 days the 1st February and has never tried it again. Thanks, but through working with with her on that.
Lauren Ray
We've I've developed this very.
Lauren Ray
Very concise five piece review format that is the title the author stars out of five.
Lauren Ray
Uhm, a very brief synopsis. Not off the back of the book, but just whatever is what comes out of my brain when I'm trying to tell you about what this script is about and then something that I take away from.
Lauren Ray
So so I can do that and and that has morphed into this 52 by 12 model. I've got a. I have a Facebook page that is Facebook. I think it's the words 52 by 12.
Lauren Ray
And I I don't. I'm not seeking followers, I'm really just chronicling. This is a play that I read.
Lauren Ray
And the initial goal was to do 52 of those sort of short, simple five point reviews and then do one a month.
Lauren Ray
Sit down and talking head verbally like like just just talk out the same sort of thing, but post a video.
Lauren Ray
It is. Here's a here's a talking review. I have not done a very good job with that. I am, I just haven't done it. I I also knock out about 28 of my 52 in February.
Lauren Ray
So as as much as it seems like, oh I should do one a week, I should do. I definitely have months where I read a whole lot and then months where we get busy.
Lauren Ray
When when we start gearing up for our festival shows they're we're working long weeks and and we just can't, I just can't stop and and shift my brain out of this is the production in the middle of into what's the next thing? But I would say.
Lauren Ray
For the last.
Lauren Ray
Several years really since I've started this mass consumption of dramatic literature on an ongoing basis, I I I'm way better equipped to recommend monologues to students who are looking for them. We aren't seeing the same.
Lauren Ray
The same, the same? Uh, tunafish monologue. At the same time, I dropped, my father was in a baked potato. Mr Christopher durang. I'm sure you've heard that. But the same, I mean the same ones. Because because I'm trying to.
Lauren Ray
To pull I'm sitting. I've got a copy of Chisa Hutchinson Dead and Breathing on my on my table right now.
Lauren Ray
To to pull a couple of really really good monologues out of. I also find that when I'm consuming, speaking of treatment, Chisa Hutchinson who is a fabulous writer of color.
Lauren Ray
Writing for two.
Lauren Ray
African Americans, one of whom is a trans woman. So I also find that I am more likely to consume diversely when I'm consuming a lot, because if I'm just reading.
Lauren Ray
Uhm, what? What I've always read, if I'm reading The Odd Couple again, I'm not. I'm not asking myself to push the boundaries of how, who, who are we able to cast and and whose stories are we telling and and I think that those are big, important questions, yeah?
Lauren Ray
I don't know that I ever would have run across Chisa Hutchinson or Kirsten Greenidge the the these these authors, women, and authors of color, who are writing beautiful, dramatic literature telling important stories.
Lauren Ray
Is that I might never be able to put on stage, but they're not mine to tell, and they might be one of my students. And if I haven't read it.
Lauren Ray
I haven't consumed it, I don't have it as part of me. I can't say, hey, you need to pick up milk like sugar because it's so good and it's gonna speak to your story.
Lauren Ray
So, uh, so I just I just keep reading.
Lauren Ray
Because I started reading and now I can't stop.
Katherine Stewart
Well, it sounds not only like a personally enriching project, but like a wonderful resource for other people who are looking for new things to read.
Katherine Stewart
Or to perform.
Lauren Ray
Well, I hope so and I am constantly making recommendations. Yeah, dead and breathing, but she's Hutchinson. Go read it. Not sponsored.
Yeah, yeah.
Lauren Ray
Don't know her habit matter.
Lauren Ray
But I'm constantly making unsolicited play recommendations to people who don't replays. They're always like Lauren what?
Lauren Ray
Oh, I still don't replace like but it's.
Lauren Ray
But you would enjoy it.
Katherine Stewart
OK, once again that was Lauren Ray 2009, graduate of the University of Mississippi and current teacher and Mississippi Theater Association Board member.
Katherine Stewart
Be sure to check out the show notes for links to some of the things we talked about, including Lauren ambitious play reading project in the next episode, we'll talk about the value of immersing yourself in cultures other than one’s own. Lauren’s worked with the Mississippi Theatre Association and she'll share some advice for students and theater hopefuls. So stay tuned and until next time this is stage and screen.