If educators want students to practice and prepare for challenges they might eventually face, there are a number of useful strategies to connect academic learning to the "real world." One is to ask students to complete what are variously called "performance tasks," "case studies," "simulations," or "project- or problem-based learning units." Performance tasks present students with complex, real (or realistic) situations, often asking them to assume the role of individuals who need to make decisions or solve problems and thereby experience the complexities, ambiguities, and uncertainties confronting those individuals. There are numerous educational benefits to the use of performance tasks. They encourage active learning and help students practice skills such as critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and problem solving, as well as communication, collaboration, and metacognition--all while learning academic content. By bridging the gap between theory and practice, tasks also have the potential to increase students' desire to learn. They can make learning come alive, illustrating theories or concepts through engaging examples that require deeper investigation in realistic settings. In this article, the author enumerates ten questions educators might ask themselves in order to ensure that the tasks they develop maximize the impact they have on student learning, and he shows how they are similar to the ones playwrights ask in creating a play.