February 18, 25, March 4, 18, 25, April 1, 8, 15

*Please hold Thursday, April 17 as a potential make-up date

Tuesdays from 5:00pm – 8:00pm ET

via Zoom

NEW STUDENT RATE: $520

RETURNING STUDENT RATE: $480

This is a dramaturgically-inspired playwriting class. While forging ahead on your own works can be very fulfilling, sometimes the best way to forward your writing is through studying the work of others. Over the course of 8 weeks, Winter will guide you through play analyses and writing exercises, looking at great works from the outside in order to strengthen your own writing.  

This class might be for you if you are: 

• A writer who wants to employ the principles of dramaturgy to strengthen your scripts and engage with your collaborators more effectively. 
• Interested in sharpening the components of your writing rather than diving into a full-length play.
• Curious about how genre and style define the parameters (or don't) of your own play.

In this class you will:

• Read a play each week that Winter chooses, which you will discuss in class.
• Break down each play to examine structure, plot, character development, and dialogue from the outside in, looking at existing works and seeing why they succeed.
• Actively participate in the play discussion with prepared observations.
• After discussing each play, you’ll have an in-class writing prompt to write a scene in that writer's voice, perhaps a scene that was never in the play, but could have been. You will share your new pages inspired by our playwrights every other week.

By the end of this class you will: 

• Confidently approach a broad range of plays with an ability to identify a play's fundamental components and what makes it successful.
• Have a deeper understanding of your own writing through analyzing and emulating the writing of others.
• Break out of your patterns and habits and explore new facets of your own writer's voice.

Learn more about Winter here.

March, 4, 11, 18, 25, April 1, 8, 15, 29, May 6, 13

Tuesdays from 2:00pm – 5:00pm

via Zoom

NEW STUDENT RATE: $560

RETURNING STUDENT RATE: $540

“I deeply believe radical imagination is a vital part of creating a future in which the marginalized and the subjugated are free; and so, I dare to create with all the audacity of my ancestors and with all of the joy of their resistance.” –AriDy Nox

The job of a theatermaker is to transport audiences to another world. When artists use this skill set in service of social change, they can utilize imagination as a transformative force. In this 10-week class facilitated by AriDy Nox, you will use methodologies rooted in visionary fiction to imagine beyond our current reality - and in doing so, start building towards the world we want and collective liberation. 

This class might be for you if you:

• Are a theater artist or creative of any kind—playwright, director, deviser, dramaturg, or any type of generative artist—looking to use world-building as a tool to imagine a better future.
• Want to reimagine what theater can be.
• Are invested in liberation and want to channel your drive into a piece of creative work. 

In this class you will:

• Ask what kind of new worlds you can create in your storytelling, and work to actively take away traditional constraints to generate from a blank slate.
• Discuss the work of activist writers such as Lorraine Hansberry, adrienne maree brown, and Toni Cade Bambara to better understand collective liberation and world-building.
• Be given context and expertise by AriDy for imagining and engaging with radical imagination, with in-class time dedicated to learning new concepts, deep discussion, in-class exercises, and feedback.
• Outside of class, apply these concepts to weekly assignments for a project of your choosing to build your own methodology for radical imagination, and be ready to share your progress in class.

By the end of this class you will:

• Have created or started to create your own piece, inspired by the discussions you had in class.
• Better understand the ways visionary fiction and cultural organizing t methodologies inform our current world and can inform our creative works. 
• Be ready to radically imagine new worlds for future creative projects.

Learn more about AriDy here.