Hi. My name is Laura Schuman and I am a senior at Connecticut College. I am a theater major and music minor, both areas which I have pursued throughout my entire life. My interest in theater and music began at around the age of 4, and I have not been able to tear myself away since that time. I began by taking many forms of dance, vocal, instrumental, and drama study which has continued through the present. In the area of theater, where I was once an actor, I have now turned my interest toward the design and technical aspect of the stage. At Connecticut College I have had the opportunity to work on many shows including work in the areas of costume, lighting, sets, make-up, hair, stage management, and directing. This past summer I even had the chance to put my skills to work at the Thirteenth Street Repertory Theater in NYC where I served as both a director and stage manager for multiple shows.

If I had to describe what I love about theater it would need to include the excitement of live performance, the commraderie of the cast and crew, and the ability to make any performance interactive. After having worked on many shows and in many different theater positions, I can truly say that some of my best and closest friends have come from the long hours and grueling labor we must all experience in order to create a succesful live performance for an audience. The excitement of theater versus that of television or film is the idea of the unknown. No audience member, or cast/crew memeber for that matter, knows what will happen next as each performance differs in some way or another; never to be identically replicated ever again. If a director can expand upon this feature of theater and make the show interactive for the audience, it is even more enjoyable for them in that it includes them and allows them to take part in such a fantastic art form. The key to interactivity in theater is that it must be simple enough for the audience to contribute their share but complicated enough to make them feel that they "did something" and learned something from their experience.

These feelings about theater and my own experiences as part of the theatrical world have greatly contributed and influenced my senior CAT project. Please take a moment to look at my CAT Project page (and other associated pages) in order to gain a better understanding of what the project I have undertaken as a senior at Connecticut College is all about.