Lakeside School

by Max C. ’29

Lakeside played a key role in shaping who Frank Paiva is today. After graduating, Paiva returned frequently to campus to stay in touch with their drama teachers Mark Shepard and Gretchen Orsland. “Their enthusiasm and kindness were infectious,” Paiva recalls. “They gave me a blueprint for what a career in the theater could look like.” During his senior year, Shepard said, “You on stage just makes sense.” Paiva never forgot those words.

During Paiva’s time at Lakeside, Seattle’s ACT Theatre had a Young Playwrights program. “When we were seniors,” Paiva says, “we wrote plays. Mine got read.” It was the first time that someone had looked at him and told him he had a talent for writing.

Gretchen Orsland and Mark Sheppard taught me how a great director behaves and what a great teacher looks like. I thought they were getting us excited about theater but, really, they were encouraging us to be curious about life. — Frank Paiva ’05

Following stints in comedy and screenwriting, Paiva is now a fellow in the writers room at Los Angeles’s prestigious Geffen Playhouse. They are working with Oscar-winning playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney on “The Last Two Fat People in America,” a play about an apocalyptic event that kills everyone who takes weight loss drugs like Ozempic, “except this gay guy and his female best friend.” If all goes according to plan, the play will premiere next fall in Los Angeles. “Though, doing theater,” Paiva admits, “you can’t have much of a plan.”