**REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED**

CLASS DESCRIPTION

As a writer, you are creating a template for other theater collaborators to move your script from the page to the stage. This seminar explores how writers use the worlds they create to question the social and personal constructs of the world we live in. Jovelyn Richards encourages students to take responsibility for their world building by considering how characters are portrayed, who’s not portrayed, and how characters navigate the play’s world.

This class is for you if you:

• Are interested in world-building and character development.
• Want to develop your characters through embodiment and role playing.
• Love to play, improvise, and expand your imagination before putting pen to paper.
• Are interested in learning more about Jovelyn Richards’ work and approach to writing.

What to expect:

• Sharing and discussing your work and the work of your peers.
• Developing characters through guided improvisational scenarios/conversations led through questions by the instructor.

Important Things to Note:

• When you sign up, you will receive an auto-confirmation email. About a week before the first session you will receive a detailed confirmation email with important information about the seminar including (1) Membership Programs Participation Form (2) The Zoom link (3) Pre-assignments from the instructor and (4) Information about the PWC Membership and Education Team.
• If you have not received this email within an hour of the session, please check your spam folder or reach out to Alayna and she will make sure you have the information you need for the seminar.
• All participants must complete and submit a Membership Programs Participation Form for each seminar or class they want to attend. A link to this form is included in the detailed confirmation email.

Class Type: Playwriting craft               

Class Level: All levels are welcomed

Class Dates: Monday, January 22

Class Time: 6:30pm - 8:30pm CT 

(4:30pm PT, 5:30pm MT, 7:30pm ET)

Where: Online via Zoom, check out this quick video on the process.

Structure: Lecture/presentation, Discussion, Writing prompts, Exercises, Breakout groups, Q&A, In-class readings, In-class videos

Questions: Email Alayna, Membership Programs Manager at alaynab@pwcenter.org

Captioning: For all sessions, we enable Zoom's auto-generated captioning. However, live captioning can be requested (with 2-weeks' notice) via the Membership Programs Participation Form shared in the detailed confirmation email.

Recordings: If you cannot attend a portion of the seminar, we have a Teaching Assistant and/or PWC facilitator taking in-depth notes. These written notes will be shared with all participants at the end of each session. (We record all of our sessions for internal use only. We do not share recordings with participants.)

Participants must register to join this class, Sign Up at the bottom of the page.

NOTE FROM JOVELYN

Whose Imagination are we living in? encourages me to re-think and question my choices from the personal to the world's I travel, and my writing. I strongly believe it's the artist journey to push human consciousness forward. How that looks must embrace the unimaginable circumstance we currently exist.

INSTRUCTOR BIO

Jovelyn Richards

I am a writer, director of community theater and film, as well as an international solo performance artist. The inspiration of my work is my fascination of individuals and communities challenged by political, religious, and social atrocities and persecution; the astounding ability to harvest love and intimacy. The spirit/muse that guides me is utterly stunned by the sheer beauty of people(s) who have harvested love and intimacy throughout our complicated human history.

Community theater has included: 9-1-1 What's Your Emergency? The Verdict, exploring the explosion of weaponizing 9-1-1 in communities of color; Ozell's, stories of the migration of black southerners across America; and Mz. Pat's House, the role of Brothels as safe havens for the disenfranchised.

My solo performances have premiered at (selected venues): The Marsh, SF; Afro Solo, SF; La Peña Cultural Center, Berkeley, CA; Los Angeles Women's Theater Festival; the National Black Theatre Festival, North Carolina; Central Eastern University, Budapest, HU.

Published work has included published essays, excerpts from fiction, and poetry anthologies. My first novel, Tulips for Evening, was published in 2015. I currently reside in Honolulu, HI, where I am working in collaboration with Olelo Community Media filming theater videos for our local community: The Space Between Us.

In addition, for 15 years I have hosted and produced radio for Pacifica Radio, KPFA 94.1. I hold an MA and MFA in Humanities.

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