If you're wondering where my show, How to Put On a Sock, got its title, wonder no longer. It comes from a very well-meaning YouTube video, below, in which a sex educator in Mississippi demonstrated how to put on a sock because--under Mississippi law--he was not allowed to teach about how to put on a condom. 

To learn more about sex education in Mississippi, check out this article from the Los Angeles Times. It's one of the first articles I found when I started researching sex education, and I haven't been able to look at a Peppermint Pattie the same way since.

“TUNICA, Miss. — Marie Barnard was delighted when, after decades of silence on the topic, Mississippi passed a law requiring school districts to teach sex education. But the lesson involving the Peppermint Pattie wasn’t what she had in mind for her sons.”

— "Sex education stumbles in Mississippi," Alana Semuels, Los Angeles Times

My second year of grad school starts tomorrow! The summer was wonderful, with devising a new play, directing a new play, and seeing tons of new plays across New York. Now I'm back in Pittsburgh and ready to dive in to everything that the coming semester holds.

Chief among that is the show I'm creating and directing called How to Put On a Sock, which looks at sex education and abortion policy across the United States today. It's inspired by Frank Wedekind's classic play Spring Awakening and actual sex ed curricula and abortion legislation. It'll be my biggest project to date, by far.

I've been doing endless research to create the show, and I'll share some of it here throughout the semester.

To start, here's a recent article from the New York Times about abstinence-until-marriage education--and how problematic it is.

Enjoy (as much as possible)! And check out How to Put On a Sock at CMU November 1-3.

Hello and welcome to my new website! The old one was, well, old, and it couldn't do lots of things that websites tend to do these days. This new one can do it all and makes it easy to update on all things happening in Rachel Karp Directing Land. And so--here's update #1!

After finishing my first year of graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University, where I directed two shows (Oil and Watercolor by Seanan Palmero and Giant Slalom by Jess Honovich), assistant directed one (Opacity by Big Art Group), and learned more than my head can honestly hold, I am back in New York for the summer to work on a number of projects:
- directing Motherland by Cecilia Corrigan, presented at The Brick Theater through its This Is Not Normal: an Arts & Activism Festival, June 24th through July 2nd. We got a great mention in The New York Times' write-up of summer festivals--get tickets here and check out some activist art!
- devising and directing a new piece with Ben Hoover through theater company The Instigators, going up June 24th and 25th at Access Theater
- workshopping my big grad school second-year project, How to Put On a Sock
and more!

Check back here for update #2--and beyond--coming soon!

Motherland by Cecilia Corrigan