Primary Stages ESPA

September 18, 25, October 2, 9, 16, November 6, 13, 20, December 4, 11

Thursdays from 5:00pm – 8:00pm ET

via Zoom

NEW STUDENT RATE: $580

RETURNING STUDENT RATE: $560

Whether you're writing your first play or your hundredth, it's not always easy to set the creative wheels in motion. This 10-week class will guide you through the development of your first draft.

More about class with Caridad: 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.”

Learn more about Caridad here.

Learn more about First Draft here.