Building off last session's focus on commentary (and an examination of whiteness) we'll look at two plays (this time by white playwrights) that glimpse into conservative Christian culture. The Christians, by Lucas Hnath, uses the presentational style of a church service, with long monologues in the style of sermons, while Will Arbery's Heroes of the Fourth Turning is a (mostly) naturalistic fishbowl. Both plays unfold without the introduction of an "outside agitator", built solely around Christian-on-Christian clashes, which allow for unique sources of conflict.

In my monthly playwriting seminar, we take a look at a different contemporary play each four-week session, discussing its craft and using it as inspiration for a number of writing exercises. At the end of each month, we workshop a short selection of material from each playwright.

Saturdays, Sep 28–Oct 19; 10am-12pm Pacific Time/1-3pm Eastern Time (The final, workshop session may run until 3:30pm and is recorded for students’ personal use)

Maximum enrollment is 10.

Tuition for one session is $175. For $450 you can get credit for three sessions (they do not need to be contiguous).

Register here.

Throughout the majority of American theater history, white artists have represented Black and other marginalized identities onstage/screen with varyingly nauseating degrees of racial bias, while whiteness itself has been left mostly unexamined. Now, diverse writers are leading many breakthroughs in the American theater, among which is a lens on whiteness that is unsettling in a unique way. Larissa FastHorse's Thanksgiving Play (one of the most-produced plays in the country) and Young Jean Lee's Straight White Men exemplify this technique, among others. We'll discuss the dramatic construction of satire (if that's what this is) and commentary, and discover how to tell a story when the true protagonist, perhaps, is never seen onstage.

In my monthly playwriting seminar, we take a look at a different contemporary play each four-week session, discussing its craft and using it as inspiration for a number of writing exercises. At the end of each month, we workshop a short selection of material from each playwright.

Saturdays, Aug 24–Sep 21 (no class 8/31); 10am-12pm Pacific Time/1-3pm Eastern Time (The final, workshop session may run until 3:30pm and is recorded for students’ personal use)

Maximum enrollment is 10.

Tuition for one session is $175. For $450 you can get credit for three sessions (they do not need to be contiguous).

Register here.

Lynn Nottage is one of our greatest and most-produced living playwrights. Sweat (for which she won her second Pulitzer Prize) builds on the great American theatrical genre of what I'll call the "tragic ensemble dive bar play," in the tradition of O'Neill and Lanford Wilson and others. However, where O'Neill's bottomed-out drunks navigate existential sorrow, Sweat adds a layer of complex social and political tension which is both contemporary and timeless. Can we osmose some of Nottage's brilliant dramaturgical construction? Let's find out.

In my monthly playwriting seminar, we take a look at a different contemporary play each four-week session, discussing its craft and using it as inspiration for a number of writing exercises. At the end of each month, we workshop a short selection of material from each playwright.

Saturdays, July 20–Aug 17 (no class 8/10); 10am-12pm Pacific Time/1-3pm Eastern Time (The final, workshop session may run until 3:30pm and is recorded for students’ personal use)

Maximum enrollment is 10, and students in the prior session get first refusal for their spot. Minimum enrollment to run the session is 4.

Tuition for one session is $175. For $450 you can get credit for three sessions (they do not need to be contiguous).

Register here.