ONLINE class:
advanced playwriting
By invitation only.
This class offers a select group of returning ESPA writers a more rigorous curriculum than our First Draft and Rewriting classes. Over eight or ten weeks, students write and rewrite their play, receive feedback, and participate in class discussion. Invitations for this class are sent to eligible students.
FACULTY
Megan Carter
Caridad Svich
Stefanie Zadravec
LOCATION
Online!
PRICING
10-Week Class
Returning Students: $560
New Students: N/A
8-Week Class
Returning Students: $480
New Students: N/A
Learn about our Payment Plans
FOR MORE INFO
Learn more about How It Works.
For more information, please call 212.840.9705 x215 or email espa@primarystages.org.
REGISTRATION AND SCHEDULE
SECTION A
Instructor: Caridad Svich (Writer, OBIE Winner for Lifetime Achievement, 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama and Performance Art)
Tuesdays from 5:00pm – 8:00pm ET
February 18, 25, March 4, 11, 18, April 8, 15, 22, 29, May 6
-
This class is run as a writers’ workshop. Caridad believes in an equitable and respectful writing room, sensitive to each person's respective process, but also one where a vigorous, rigorous, and intuitive approach is manifest in establishing a group atmosphere. The sessions will be structured around response to work turned in (on average 5 to 8 pages a week) with pieces read out loud in the virtual room live in class with peer and instructor response time after each sharing of work using the Liz Lerman approach. At the beginning of the semester, you will determine if everyone will share work at every session or every other session. There will be occasional in-class writing exercises, and homework will be limited to recommended reading, prompts, and/or viewings assigned. In other words, the focus will be on your generative process, and as such, homework will be minimal outside of that.
Caridad's writing focuses on human and environmental rights from a Latinx feminist perspective for the most part, though her work also explores deeply the reconfiguration of classic and modern texts, gender fluidity, and porous borders aesthetically and formally. She has also adapted novels to the stage and sustains a parallel career as a theatrical translator, editor, and artivist. Caridad's work is often labeled by others as “poetic realism" or “atomized realism."
SECTION B
Instructor: Stefanie Zadravec (Writer, The Electric Baby at Two River Theatre Company)
Mondays from 7:30pm – 10:30pm ET
February 24, March 3, 10, 24, 31, April 7, 14, 21, 28, May 5
-
Stefanie's class is run as a professional playwriting workshop. You may work on a brand new idea or pull out an old draft you would like to approach with fresh eyes. Each week, writers bring in 10-12 pages, with feedback and response to each student's work filtered through a series of prompts by Stefanie geared toward empowering writers to guide their own play development process. These are designed to create as much of a professional playwriting workshop environment as possible, and to respect the process of new play development, so each writer can develop the muscles and confidence to solve the problems of their play by asking questions and steering feedback so that it is productive and helpful. Stefanie will encourage you to use the medium of theater to the fullest, while staying true to your voice and vision. She believes that all playwriting is political and that every act our characters take has socio-political implications beyond their particular circumstances. To that end, she will help you look beyond the story you're telling and see the larger context of your work.
Stefanie writes dark, funny character-driven plays that mix straightforward storytelling with poetic rhythms and fantastical story elements, addressing questions of identity, class, power, and loss through the lens of the quotidian: the extraordinary in the ordinary.
SECTION C
Instructor: Megan Carter (Creative Producer and Dramaturg, former Producing Director of SITI Company)
Tuesdays from 6:00pm – 9:00pm ET
April 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, May 6, 13, 20
*Please note that this is an 8-week class
-
Megan approaches Advanced Playwriting as intensive dramaturgical sessions that also incorporate peer feedback. Classes will be structured like a playwrights’ lab, sharing pages and discussing, with students bringing in a greater number of pages every other week to get a sense of the larger arc of the plays. Depending on where you are in your process and what challenges you are experiencing, Megan will tailor in-class exercises for each individual student. Given Megan’s training as a dramaturg, she is interested in all styles of writing and what each student’s play is bringing to life.