ONLINE SEMINAR: FANTASY - Beyond Fairies and Pixies

Taught by Core Writer Riti Sachdeva
Monday, February 27th from 7:00pm - 9:00pm CT
Venue: 
Online via Zoom
Cost: 
$10 for Members, $20 for Non-Members

**REGISTRATION CLOSED**

Class Type: Writing Genre, Writing Craft                     

Class Level: All Experience Levels Welcome

Class Dates: Monday, February 27th

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

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.


"What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven."
    ― Mary Oliver

SEMINAR DESCRIPTION

What is the FANTASY genre in theater? Is it horror, magical realism, science fiction, superheroes? What is it not? How do writers build the world of fantasy? What’s the role of spectacle in fantasy? What does agency have to do with the supernatural? Delve into these questions using examples of contemporary and modern plays and playwrights.

This Is the Seminar for You if You:

  • Are a writer at any level.
  • Are interested in exploring the different shapes and forms of fantasy writing.
  • Want to explore non-realism.
  • Are interested in worldbuilding.

What to Expect:

  • Engage with plays that span the genre of "fantasy" from surrealism to magical realism to utopian/dystopian worlds.
  • To explore questions like, what makes a story fantastical? Spectacle? Worldbuilding? Superpowers?
  • Explore what agency has to do with the supernatural.

Important Things to Note:

  • When you sign up, you will receive an auto-confirmation email. About a week before the 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 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.

NOTE FROM RITI

Fantasy is a way to express faith/mysticism/evil/the unknown in a three-dimensional form.

INSTRUCTOR BIO

As a performance maker and cultural worker, Riti Sachdeva has been creating art in some shape, pattern, or rhythm for over twenty-five years. Incorporating text, installation, song, and dance into her writing and performance, she straddles the practices and conventions of traditional U.S. theater, performance art, and international approaches to theater. Interweaving the personal, political, and arcane, she has crafted the singular Indo-Gothic aesthetic of her work. 

Playwriting fellowships include: the Dramatists Guild Fund, which awarded her the 2019 Thom Thomas playwriting award; The Public Theater’s EWG; WP Theater Lab; Ingram New Works Lab; and New Georges. She is recipient of the Kennedy Center ACTF Quest for Peace award and Sultan Padamsee award for her play Parts of Parts & Stitches and a Theater Communications Group/Mellon Foundation travel grant to begin adapting her play Suicide Seed to the kathakali dance-theater form. Her play The Rug Dealer made the 2016 Kilroys List. Additionally, plays have been developed by Phoenix Theater, Working Theater, CenterStage, The Civilians, the Playwrights’ Center, NNPN, U of Hawai’i, and Lincoln Center Director’s Lab. 

Acting/performance highlights include work with National Hispanic Cultural Center, PopUp Theatrics, Honest Accomplice, HBO, Disney, lots of cool indie films, and an Outstanding One Act award from Planet Connections for her performance art show Scene/Unseen. She continues to develop her solo show BEHIND EVERY FAVORITE SONG IS AN UNTOLD WOMAN, part cabaret, part memoir, part mythicism.

As a cultural worker, Riti was a sexuality educator with South Asian Youth Action (SAYA) in Queens; a teaching artist and community organizer with Somos Los Otros and Cambio in Albuquerque; and a founding sister of South Asian Women for Action (SAWA) in Boston. Her cultural works activate the crossroads of solidarity; economic, gender, and racial justice; and the arts—with intergenerational, cross-cultural, transnational communities.

Instagram @midniteschild


 Sign Up Below! 

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

Headshot of Riti Sachdeva wearing a black leather jacket in front of a white background.