Online Seminar: Writing from Image and Object

taught by Jerome Fellow Lucas Baisch
Monday, December 13th from 7:00pm - 8:30pm CST
Venue: 
Online via Zoom
Cost: 
$5 for Members, $15 for Non-Members

Class Type: Playwriting Craft                         Class Level: All Experience Levels Welcome

When: Monday, December 13 7:00pm - 8:30pm CT 

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

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

Structure: Lecture, discussion, writing prompts, and exercises 

Questions: Email Alayna at alaynab@pwcenter.org

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


CLASS DESCRIPTION

In a time when so much of our creative consumption has been made virtual, it's important that we remember that there is story laced within the visual and physical world around us. This is a generative seminar and workshop that considers the organic and inorganic matter that populates our surroundings. Here, we will examine the form of playwriting as an act of conjuring environments as vessels for performance. What is a vessel? What is flesh? What is plastic art? Plastic in this context? The plastic object? Plasticity? How does this field of query fit on the typed or written page? Writers will leave the seminar with language for making object-based theatre and a series of creative exercises to launch you into your next project.

This Is the Class for You if You:

  • Are working through a block from inspiration.
  • Are an artist of other media looking to dabble in writing.
  • Are interested in experimental forms of playwriting.
  • Are interested in a shared history between visual art and performance. 

What to Expect:

  • To generate writing in class.
  • Touch on elements of world-building.
  • Engage with artists who are considering text as a material medium.  
  • To write a lot by hand, with physical paper and a writing utensil.

Important Things to Note:

  • There is a pre-assignment for this seminar.
  • Come prepared with physical paper and a writing instrument to work.
  • Payment plans are available as needed, please contact Membership Programs Associate, Alayna Jacqueline Barnes, to discuss payment options.

NOTE FROM LUCAS

This subject is important because it reminds us that writing for theatre moves beyond the literary, activating the visible and physical world around us.

 

My creative life is half spent as an artist working outside the confines of theatre. This subject matter is close to my heart as it bridges my various artistic disciplines!


INSTRUCTOR BIO

Lucas Baisch is a Guatemalan-Mexican-American playwright and artist from San Francisco, whose work circulates within themes of systems, waste, and excess. His plays have been read and developed at The Goodman Theatre, The NNPN/Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights' Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, Chicago Dramatists, Links Hall, SF Playground, etc.

Full-length plays include: REFRIGERATOR (First Floor Theatre), On the Y-Axis (The Bushwick Starr Reading Series), Dry Swallow (Brown University), import speech_memory (Cutting Ball’s Variety Pack Festival), The Scavengers (DePaul University), A Measure of Normalcy (Gloucester Stage Company), and co-writing on The Arrow Cleans House (The Neo-Futurists).

Lucas is a recipient of a 2020 Steinberg Playwright Award, the Kennedy Center's 2020 KCACTF Latinx Playwriting Award, the 2021 Chesley/Bumbalo Playwriting Award, and the 2021 Princess Grace Award in Playwriting. He is currently a 21-22 Jerome Fellow through The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis and a 21-22 Princess Grace Fellow at New Dramatists. Lucas has taught writing at Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, and through the Chicago Public Schools.

Outside of writing for theatre, his artwork has been presented at Elsewhere Museum, the Electronic Literature Organization, gallery no one, and the RISD Museum. He has held residencies through ACRE, Elsewhere Museum, the Goodman Theatre's 2016-17 Playwrights Unit, as a 2018 Lambda Literary Playwriting Fellow, and Millay Arts. Lucas received his MFA in Playwriting from Brown University, where he studied under Lisa D'Amour and Julia Jarcho.

 


 Sign Up Below! 

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