From the time they met as undergraduate students, Daisy Schrieber (BA 2004, Drama Performance) and Sammy Weinert (BA 2004, Drama and Linguistics) collaborated on many things, from class projects to theatre performances. But it was Daisy reaching out to ask Sammy for advice about her personal project that led to their collaboration on Figure Drawing for Dummies.

The writing of the play began one summer and continued during Daisy’s time at UW. While Daisy doesn’t remember exactly how the story came to her, she knew that she wanted to write about art, but not necessarily theatre. As the story took shape, Daisy reached out to Sammy to ask if a particular semantic metaphor made sense, and Sammy - who double majored in theatre and linguistics - was the right person to help. During the spring of her senior year, Daisy submitted the play to Annex Theatre’s New Works festival, and it was accepted. Annex left it up to Daisy to find a director, and she knew who she wanted. 

“Sammy is a smart director and has a good bird’s eye view of all the things that directing is,” Daisy said, adding that the friends also share a similar ethos of directing and creating a positive environment for artists. Leading up to the New Works stage reading, they worked on the script, editing, revising, and having long conversations about what did or did not serve the story. Sammy continued being a sounding board for the piece and had a different view. “I could help Daisy see the really beautiful work that she created. Writers will do things that are incredible and build themes and metaphors throughout a show and not realize that they have done it.” 

After the staged reading, Annex selected the script to be produced as part of their 39th full season. Once the final draft of the play was completed, Daisy handed it to Sammy and said it was hers to direct. Figure Drawing for Dummies has since become even more of a UW Drama [SM2.1]family affair, with current students and alumni filling almost every role on the designer and production team. “This has been a benefit to the production,” says Sammy, “The connections help. There is also a logistic benefit when you know what they do and how they were trained. Also, we are cheerleaders for each other.”

You can still see Figure Drawing for Dummies at the Annex Theatre until August 29th. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit Annex Theatre's website.