Nick Drnaso on Escaping From Isolation
Editor’s Note: Read Nick Drnaso’s new short story, “Acting Class.”
“Acting Class” is a new story by Nick Drnaso, adapted from his forthcoming book Acting Class (available August 16). To mark the story’s publication in The Atlantic, Drnaso and Oliver Munday, the design director of the magazine, discussed the story over email. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Oliver Munday: Your story “Acting Class” is set, naturally, in an acting class. It opens with a teacher asking two students to volunteer to improvise a scene. Improvisation is often used as a tool to allow people to express themselves more readily. What about an acting class, as a setting, interested you most?
I’ve never attended an acting class,,” there were moments when the story became a reprieve. There was a comforting feeling in returning to the classroom setting and its cast of characters. It allowed me to imagine a community and also to inhabit it.
