**REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED**

CLASS DESCRIPTION

From fables and myths to contemporary surrealism, playwrights have asked animals to help tell our stories. What can we learn from talking animals? In this seminar, Paul Kruse will explore talking animals in creative work, how vital their role can be in storytelling, and how they can come to life on the page and stage.

This class is for you if you:

• Want to incorporate talking animals in your play.
• Have an interest in fables and myths.
• Are looking for new source material for your next play.
• Are interested in learning more about Paul Kruse’s work and approach to writing.

What to expect:

• In-class writing exercises.
• In-class reading and discussion of excerpts of plays.
• Brief sharing and discussing work.
• Students will leave with two short scenes, each featuring a talking animal of their choosing.

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 genre               

Class Level: All levels are welcomed

Class Dates: Monday, October 23rd

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: Writing prompts, Exercises, In-class readings

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 PAUL

The tools we'll play with during this workshop have helped me break out of ruts in my own writing. I find that thinking about the perspective of animals is a way to consider your work—and even our world—in new and interesting ways.

INSTRUCTOR BIO

Paul William Kruse tells Queer love stories. As a playwright and media artist from Western Wisconsin, his work flows from his Catholic roots and ever-evolving experience of family. Paul often writes collaboratively, drawing from his years of experience as a videographer and documentarian. He is a 2023–2025 Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis and a cohort member of Audible’s third Emerging Playwrights Fund. His audio play Once Removed was an official selection at the 2022 Tribeca Festival. Paul’s plays have been produced by Adjusted Realists in Brooklyn, NY; Quantum Theatre in Pittsburgh, PA; the Vortex Theater in Austin, TX; and in high schools around the country. Paul has developed work at The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Yaddo, the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, and Middlebury College. Paul completed his MFA at UT Austin in 2020, where he was a fellow with the Michener Center for Writers. From 2012–2022, Paul was resident playwright with Pittsburgh’s Hatch Arts Collective, which he co-founded with Adil Mansoor and Nicole Shero.