STRATEGY AND STRUCTURE: AN INTERMEDIATE PLAYWRITING WORKSHOP
Description
Building upon lessons from What Moves You: An Intro to Playwriting, this new play workshop will teach intermediate playwrights strategies (tricks?) that make drama compelling—Repetition, the Ticking Clock, the Move and its Promise—and how to utilize them in their play’s next draft. The workshop is ten weeks long and designed for eight playwrights. First, they'll learn techniques for analyzing play structure using two outside plays—a Fornés play and one of mine. Next, the cohort will have one week devoted to each of their plays, reading an early draft for homework and a revised draft together in workshop. By immersing themselves in strategies for revision while noting how fellow playwrights leverage—or discard—these strategies in their own processes, students will grow together as a cohort, hone their individual voices, and take an early draft to the next level. The application deadline is October 21.
Details
Instructor: Alexander Lubischer
Dates: November 4, 2020 - January 27, 2021
Wednesdays, 7-10:30pm CST
Location: All class sessions will be hosted online.
Cost: $250*
Application Deadline: October 21, 2020, 11:59pm
Required Texts
A bulk of the reading will be first and second drafts of fellow classmates’ plays. Beyond that, students will need to read the following plays:
MUD by María Irene Fornés (to be read before classes start)
The Amateur by Alexander Lubischer
Class Breakdown
WEEK PLAY READ/STUDIED
Week 1, 11/4 MUD by María Irene Fornés
Week 2, 11/11 The Amateur by Alexander Lubischer
Week 3, 11/18 Playwright A's play
Week 4, 12/02 Playwright B's play
Week 5, 12/09 Playwright C's play
Week 6, 12/16 Playwright D's play
Week 7, 01/06 Playwright E's play
Week 8, 01/13 Playwright F's play
Week 9, 01/20 Playwright G's play
Week 10, 01/27 Playwright H's play
About the Instructor
Alexander Lubischer is a Chicago-based, Jeff Award-winning playwright originally from rural Nebraska. His plays include The Amateur, or The Death of Character (Goodman Playwrights Unit commission), Do Wasps Have Desires? (Milwaukee Repertory Theater), Bobbie Clearly (Roundabout Theatre Company, Steep Theatre), Pivot, Weird Kids (Haven Chicago), The Quonsets (Yale Cabaret, co-written with Majkin Holmquist), and Survey No. 5 (House of International Theatre, Copenhagen). He has developed new work at Playwrights Horizons, Page 73, Atlantic Theater Company, The Orchard Project, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Victory Gardens Theater, First Floor Theater, and Actors Theatre of Louisville. Lubischer was the 2017/18 Tow Foundation Playwright-in-Residence at Roundabout Theatre Company. He has been a semifinalist for the P73 Playwriting Fellowship and a three-time finalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. He is currently working on new play commissions from Roundabout and South Coast Repertory.
In addition to his classes at Steep, Lubischer taught playwriting in Alone Together, the Goodman Theatre's 2020 summer youth program. This fall, he'll teach his original class The Art of Playwriting: An Intro for Young Writers to high school students at the Goodman. Previously, Lubischer assistant taught Playwriting at Yale College under Donald Margulies while he earned his MFA at the Yale School of Drama. Click here for his website.
To Apply
You will be required to submit a complete early draft of a play. If admitted, you would revise this play into a second draft throughout the course. It can be ROUGH—early enough in its development that you could spend the next couple months working on it. Please submit your play as a PDF, and please be sure that your name appears on the first page.
Please click below to apply online.
Scholarship Application
*Tuition covers essential class supplies and supports the teaching artist. Because this is a particularly challenging time for many, scholarships are available. To request a scholarship, please complete the form below. These requests will be reviewed separately from class applications and will not influence the application review process.
Steep Theatre Company is supported in part by a CityArts Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, the Illinois Arts Council Agency, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Arts Work Fund, the Alphawood Foundation, the Bayless Family Foundation, the MacArthur Fund for Arts & Culture at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, the Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the A.L. and Jennie L. Luria Foundation, the Jordan & Jean Nerenberg Family Fund, and the Rothman Family Foundation.