ONLINE SEMINAR: Playing With Form

taught by Core Writer L M Feldman
Monday, December 5th from 7:00pm - 9:00pm CT
Venue: 
Online via Zoom
Cost: 
$10 for Members, $20 for Non-Members

**REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED**

 

Class Type: Writing Craft                     

Class Level: All Experience Levels Welcome

Class Dates: Monday, December 5th

Class Time: 7:00pm - 9:00pm CT 

(5:00pm PT, 6:00pm MT, 8:00pm ET)

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

Structure: Lecture/presentation, Discussion, Writing prompts, Exercises, Q&A

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.


SEMINAR DESCRIPTION

In this interactive workshop, we'll look at some examples of nontraditional play structures – forms that are bold, creative, playful, and unconventional. We'll consider the symbiotic relationship between form and content. We'll ask: what container best serves this story, best illuminates these themes? We'll envision structures we haven't yet seen… and imagine what plays they might then yield.

This Is the Seminar for You if You:

  • Are interested in exploring different forms and structures of a play.
  • Are a playwright, deviser, or other performance creators, although script-writers of other kinds and/or authors from other genres may also find it useful.
  • Are interested in how we best serve the needs of our creative works when it entails breaking from the traditional.
  • Want examples of nontraditional structure.
  • Want to discover ways to be risk-taking and visionary not only in what we choose to write about, but in HOW we choose to write about it.
  • Want to explore dramaturgical forms and how they best support and reflect our voices, our values, our perspective, our politics, our experience of the world?

What to Expect:

  • We’ll discuss and play with 4 different examples of nontraditional forms: 
              - PLAYING WITH TIME 
              - PLAYING WITH PLAYWORLD 
              - PLAYING WITH PRISM 
              - PLAYING WITH SHAPE/INSPIRATION 
    We’ll be taking a quick look at each, intertwined with quick writing time for you to jot down and tease out your own ideas and impulses for each one.

  • We’ll take a stretch break halfway through!

Important Things to Note:

  • When you sign up, you will receive an auto-confirmation email. The next business day 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 by the next business day, please check your spam folder or reach out to Alayna and she will make sure you have the information you need for the seminar or class.
  • 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.

INSTRUCTOR BIO

L M Feldman is a queer, GNC, feminist playwright who writes theatrically adventurous, physically evocative, intimate, inquisitive, ensemble-driven plays. Plays that are dynamic, honest, brave, and the smallest bit impossible. Plays that transcend into an EXPERIENCE.

So far, her plays include THRIVE, OR WHAT YOU WILL [AN EPIC] (Lambda Literary Award Finalist, American Shakespeare Center, Kitchen Dog New Works Festival, New Georges Audrey Residency, Page 73 Residency, InterAct Core Playwrights); ANOTHER KIND OF SILENCE (Colorado New Play Festival, FEWW Prize Honorable Mention, Magic Theatre Play Festival, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, PlayPenn Conference, Playwrights Realm Fellowship); SCRIBE, OR THE SISTERS MILTON, OR ELEGY FOR THE UNWRITTEN (The Playwrights’ Center, Emerson Stage, Georgetown University, Northwoods Ramah Theatre commission); THE EGG-LAYERS (Jane Chambers Honorable Mention, New Georges/Barnard College co-commission); GRACE, OR THE ART OF CLIMBING (Denver Center, Brown Paper Box Co., Art House Productions, Nice People Theatre, ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award Nomination, Barrymore Nomination); A PEOPLE [A MOSAIC PLAY] (Terrence McNally Award Finalist, Orbiter 3, YiddishFest, Jewish Plays Project); and a TYA adaptation of TROPICAL SECRETS, OR ALL THE FLUTES IN THE SEA (Children’s Theatre of Charlotte; Kindness Project commission). 

L has been nominated for the Wendy Wasserstein Prize, Stavis Playwright Award, New York Innovative Theatre Award, Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award, and twice for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. And she’s ongoingly grateful to have been a fellow at MacDowell, the Playwrights Realm, and the Dramatists Guild, and a Core Writer with InterAct Theatre, Orbiter 3, and (currently) The Playwrights’ Center.

An alum of both the Yale School of Drama and the New England Center for Circus Arts, L is also a contemporary circus artist. She has performed duo trapeze and other circus-theater at festivals around the world, and she’s a dramaturg for circus artists around the country. She loves theater that moves, and circus that delves.

L has lived in seven cities and is now based in Philadelphia, where she writes, teaches, devises, and handstands. Currently, she's working on an EST/Sloan commission – a three-part behemoth of a new play called THE MERCURY 13 GUIDE TO GETTING OFF THE GROUND [working title].


 Sign Up Below! 

Questions? Email Membership Programs Manager, Alayna Jacqueline Barnes, at alaynab@pwcenter.org

Headshot of L M Feldman, looking down with a bashful smile, sitting at an old wooden desk covered in papers and a laptop; L is white, is wearing a flannel yellow-and-blue-plaid shirt, and has super-short-cropped brown hair that’s graying. :)