PlayGround offers a series of monthly two-hour playwriting Intensives for emerging professionals, led by PlayGround artistic staff and guest lecturers drawn from the Bay Area's most distinguished playwrights and other theatre professionals. Writers may sign up for individual or multiple classes as each is intended as a stand-alone program. Classes take place on selected Monday nights, 7-9PM, at A.C.T. Studios, 30 Grant Avenue in San Francisco. Registration: $15 for October 3 class only; $35 for all subsequent classes ($40 at the door); $125 for 4-class subscriptions (Dec-Mar).
To register for individual classes or subscribe to the remaining five classes, click here.
2011-12 Intensives Schedule
Join some of the Bay Area’s best writers, directors and literary managers in PlayGround’s Master Classes to discover your potential as a Playwright.
October 3 - The Working Playwright, Revisited:
Everything You (Still) Need to Know with Aaron
Loeb
November 7 -Back to the Basics with
Philip Kan Gotanda
December 5 - Writing with an Eye for Staging
& Physicality with Mark Jackson
January 9 - Adaptations with Anthony
Clarvoe
February 6 - You Write Funny with Peter
Sinn Nachtrieb
March 5 - Finding the End with Lauren
Gunderson
Suggested Reading: Best of PlayGround series (2001-2011)
To register, click here.
The Working Playwright, Revisited: Everything You (Still) Need
to Know with Aaron Loeb
A detail few artists like to think about: if you're going to get paid
to produce your work, you are starting a new business. It may not make a
billion a year, but it's a business nonetheless. In this intensive, we will
cover the business of show in detail. Contracts, agents, working with a
theater, submissions, getting your name out there. Everything the emerging
writer needs to know to protect the three R's: rights, relationships and
reputation. Note: For those who took the March 2011 Intensive with Aaron,
this workshop will provide new and deeper insights into this subject.
Back to the Basics with Philip Kan
Gotanda
This is for beginning and experienced writers. If you're new at it, this
will be an introduction. If you're old at it, it will serve as a reminder.
A lecture/workshop about two critical pillars of playwriting: personal voice
and basic craft. And then. Everything else.
Writing with an Eye for Staging & Physicality with
Mark Jackson
A play is at once heard by an audience and seen by spectators. How might
a playwright write for both? Shakespeare had virtually no stage directions,
allowing his dialogue to paint the action. In recent decades playwrights
have been given to stage directions like “a sunflower bursts from
the floor and grows above their heads” to prompt their collaborators
toward visual storytelling. In this class we’ll look at a variety
of examples of what a playwright might write on the page to tell a theatrical
story that’s both heard and seen on the stage.
Adaptations with Anthony Clarvoe
From Sophocles to Shakespeare to A CHRISTMAS CAROL, most of our greatest
theatrical events have been inspired by something else – myth, novel,
history, or someone else’s play. For anyone with a fear of the blank
page, remember: for the adaptor, the page is never blank. Award-winning
adaptor Anthony Clarvoe can help you learn what to look for in a source,
how to turn prose into drama, and why the best way to tell your story may
be to share your love for someone else’s.
You Write Funny with Peter Sinn
Nachtrieb
In this workshop, we'll discuss and explore writing comedy. A sense
of humor is very subjective but are there some energies, universal principles
and (god forbid) rules that might be helpful when writing it? Through discussion
and writing exercises we'll explore what's funny to ourselves and what underlies
all the things that make us laugh.
Finding the End with Lauren Gunderson
Why is getting to "the end" so debilitating? This workshop unpacks,
re-packs, defines and defies the search for your play's ending. What does
"ending" actually mean, why is it so damn hard to commit to, how
can you find it, know it, plan it, and write it. The secret to writing your
play may just be in the end.
2011-12 Faculty
Anthony Clarvoe is an award-winning playwright and acclaimed teacher. His adaptations include The Brothers Karamazov (LA Drama Critics Circle and Garland Awards), City of Light (which sold out its extended run at Studio Arena Theatre), translations of Ibsen and Camus, and currently Gizmo, inspired by Capek’s R.U.R. and Sinclair’s The Jungle, premiering this season at Pennsylvania Center Stage and in Cutting Ball Theater’s Risk Is This festival.
Philip Kan Gotanda is a Sansei (third-generation Japanese American), Bay Area resident, and native of Stockton, California. Over the last three decades, playwright Gotanda has been a major influence in the broadening of our definition of theater in America. Through his plays and advocacy, he has been instrumental in bringing stories of Asians in the United States to mainstream American theater as well as to Europe and Asia. His plays are studied and performed at universities and schools across the country, as well as, internationally. He currently teaches Playwriting at UC Berkeley with the Theater, Dance, Performance Studies Department.
Lauren Gunderson is a playwright and screenwriter who has worked with companies all over the U.S. and the Bay Area, including South Coast Rep, The Kennedy Center, O'Neill Playwrights Conference, Marin Theatre Company, Crowded Fire, SF Playhouse, and more. www.LaurenGunderson.com.
Mark Jackson is a playwright, director and performer. His work has been seen at Art Street Theatre, Aurora Theatre Company, Encore Theatre Company, Potrzebie Dance Project, San Francisco International Arts Festival, Shotgun Players, Z Space, and The Studio Theatre (Washington D.C.), among others; as well as internationally at Arts International Festival IV (Japan), Edinburgh Festival Fringe (UK), and Deutsches Theater Berlin (Germany). TEN PLAYS, a collection of his work, was recently published by EXIT Press.
Aaron Loeb is author of four full-length plays, including Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award winners First Person Shooter and Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party, both of which premiered at SF Playhouse. Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party was named Outstanding Play at the 2009 New York International Fringe Festival and recently received its off-Broadway debut. Aaron has written extensively for PlayGround, with seven appearances in the Best of PlayGround Festival and is the recipient of two full-length commissions from PlayGround. He has BFAs in Dramatic Writing and Dramatic Literature from NYU. Aaron is a member of the Dramatists Guild and a Playwrights Foundation resident playwright.
Peter Sinn Nachtrieb holds degrees in theatre and biology from Brown University and is a graduate of San Francisco State’s playwriting program. His play boom has been produced around the country and was listed by TCG among the top produced plays of 2009-10. His latest play, BOB, premiered at the Humana Festival in 2011. He is a recipient of the ACTA/Steinberg new Play Award (Hunter Gatherers); the PlayGround Emerging Playwright Award (Self Help). A member of New Dramatists and a resident playwright at the Playwrights Foundation, he wrote a play, Litter, about dodecatuplets, commissioned by A.C.T. for the 2011 MFA class.