The Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training is just a few blocks from the Resource Exchange in the Crane Arts Building, so many of its students have found costume, set and prop materials here over the years. The school is “a center of creation – dynamic, energetic, messy, collaborative and ever-evolving … composed of forward-thinking theatre-makers with a desire to forge new boundaries for live performance.” Through a partnership with the University of the Arts, Pig Iron offers certificate and MFA programs that train students in the skills needed to be a 21st century theatre artists, drawing inspiration “from architecture to masks to street theatre to opera to the rhythms of nature and the rhythms of the city, always with the goal of making immediate and arresting theatre.”
Gina Murdock is one of Pig Iron School’s students who recently found materials at the re. As a final project, the students were given three weeks to create 13 different pieces, with each student acting as the lead for one piece with any of the other ensemble members as the cast. They performed these pieces publicly at Uarts a few weeks ago. Gina sent photos from her piece, called “Drawn Outside the Lines”, which show the variety of reclaimed fabrics and other materials that she used to create the costumes!
