This hands-on workshop is for writers, actors & storytellers at all levels who want to work on the development of a solo show or story for the stage. This can include work at any stage of development from an idea to a finished piece. The class will focus on finding your unique voice and the voice of your story, plot, structure, character development, and techniques to manipulate storyteller/audience relationship. This class offers an opportunity to develop material, class exercises, one-on-one coaching, AND cheerleading. I am here to be your vision keeper with the goal of getting your work in the world. We will work hard and have big fun!

Arlene has been performing and teaching Solo & Story for over 25 years. Her award-winning solo works have been performed both in the US and internationally. She views her solo work as an artistic espresso of her social justice work in the area of Deafness and disability.  Her plays include, A Little Bit Not Normal, Full Disclosure, Aiming for Sainthood, What Does the Sun Sound Like, Interrobang, and Where All of it is True and None of it is Real. Theaters include Victory Gardens, Pritzker Pavilion, 16th Street theater, HBO Workspace, Collaboration, West Coast Ensemble, Minneapolis Arts center, St Louis Center of Contemporary Art and College and Universities. She is the recipient of 3 Arts/UIC fellowship, LA Ovations award, LA Garland Award. Finalist in New Plays from Heartland, semi-finalist Blue Ink award, and the O’Neill.As an actor, she has performed on stages in LA and Chicago including Goodman, 16th Street, Victory Gardens. She has been an Artist in Residence at 16th Street and Quad City. As a storyteller, she has performed all over Chicago & LA. Taught at College of the Canyons, Victory Gardens and Master-classes nationwide. She is a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists where she has developed the Solo & Story curriculum.

This course is designed for you to work on a brand new play: your next one! Each of the eight playwrights participating will have four chances to share new pages during the ten-week-long process. The 90-minute zoom meetings will also include discussions and micro-lectures on issues ranging from craft to professional development.

A proud resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists, Emilio Williams is a bilingual (Spanish/English) award-winning writer and educator. His critically acclaimed plays have been produced in Argentina, Estonia, France, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, including in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington DC.

Emilio has lectured worldwide and teaches at several U.S. universities, including DePaul University, Columbia College Chicago, and Georgia State University. He holds a BA in Film and Video and an MFA in Writing.

You will spend six sessions mining your experience and imagination to develop a ten-minute performance. In our seventh session, you will present your piece in a final, public performance. Performance styles may span the range of traditional variety performance modes: comedy, song, magic, puppetry, song, dance, circus or create something brand new!

This class will culminate with a live showcase, billed as a CD Saturday Series @ 2:00 PM CT on Nov 12. It will enforce any and all COVID-19 restrictions/safety protocols for live performance at that time.

***MASKS AND VAX CARDS REQUIRED FOR CLASS ENTRY***

Kestutis Nakas’ work has been presented at La Mama, Dixon Place, P.S. 122, St. Mark’s Church, 8BC, and many other venues. Works include RIP, Railroad Backward, Remembrance of Things Pontiac, Lightning and  The Andrew Carnegie Story.\He has taught at NYU, UCLA, CUNY, and the University of New Mexico. He is an Emeritus Professor of Theatre at The Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University in Chicago. His performance text about urban beekeeping, No Bees for Bridgeport, was published in Animal Acts, Performing Species Today, an anthology of new performances edited by Una Chaudhuri and Holly Hughes, University of Michigan Press. A bilingual edition of his critically acclaimed tragi-comic cycle: When Lithuania Ruled The World was published by Aukso Zuvys, Vilnius, in February 2017. In December 2017, he presented Channel D a new solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. 

In this class students will write or revise a full length play. Using a workshop class approach, students will have multiple opportunities to share their work for in-class feedback facilitated by the instructor. Students are welcome to bring plays at any stage of development. We will take a holistic approach to examining each other’s work—not only focusing on plot, but on all the theatrical elements that can be utilized for storytelling (i.e. imagery, metaphor, structure, etc.). Not only will students deepen their writing craft, they will also develop their ability to give feedback to peers.

Eric Micha Holmes is a playwright and audio-dramatist whose work has been heard on Audible (“Rapture Season”), the BBC (“Care Inc.”), and seen at The National Black Theatre (“Mondo Tragic”),  The New Black Fest (“Pornplay; or, Blessèd Are The Meek”), New York Theatre Workshop (“Nimpsey Pink”), and Guild Hall (“Falls For Jodie”). Residencies and fellowships include Djerassi Artist Residency, The Dramatist Guild Fellowship, Space At Ryder Farm, and the ‘I Am Soul’ Playwright’s Residency at The National Black Theatre. “Walking Next To Michael Brown: Confessions Of A Tragic Mulatto,” was commissioned by The New Black Fest and has toured with Kennedy Center’s Civic Artist Award winning “Hands Up: 7 Playwrights / 7 Testaments” to theaters across the country including The Alliance Theatre, The Brooklyn Museum Of Art, Red Door Theatre, Crowded Fire Theatre, The Museum Of The Moving Image, The Hansberry Project, and Flashpoint Theatre.

In this course, we will focus on generating new work and discovering the processes and methods that best support your ongoing writing practice. Each week, writing prompts and page count goals will be given. Everyone will share their work out loud and receive structured feedback from the instructor and fellow students. Students can expect to leave the class with at least 40 pages of new work.

Nina Morrison is a playwright, screenwriter and stage director. Her plays have been presented in New York City at Dixon Place, Fordham University, the HOT! Festival of Queer Performance, the NY International Fringe Festival, and the Little Theatre series, among others. She was a finalist for New Dramatists in 2018 and 2019, as well as a finalist for the Jerome in 2019. Nina was the Provost’s Postgraduate Visiting Writer in Playwriting 2019-2020 at the University of Iowa. She was also the recipient of an artist’s residency at Dixon Place and a WORKSPACE writer’s residency at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. MFA Iowa Playwrights Workshop.

Discover, Explore, Experiment, and write!
Discover the core principles of dramatic writing by reading established plays.
Explore your unique voice through writing exercises.

In Fundamentals, you will become familiar with the components of dramatic structure and format, receive tools to explore your unique voice and how to give and receive usable feedback, grasp the difference between dialog and conversation, and will write a 10-minute play or 1st 10 pages of a larger work by applying what you have learned.

Marsha Estell is a resident playwright alumna at Chicago Dramatists, 2010 3Arts/Ragdale Fellow, and recipient of the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for Playwriting. Her plays include Heat, which had its world premiere at Chicago Dramatists and was nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award for Outstanding New Work and many other award-winning work. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, SAG/AFTRA and Actors Equity.

Designed as an ongoing resource for experienced playwrights and now in its 15th year, Scene Shop offers weekly character, scene, and story tools to help you develop your script, professional actors to read your work, and constructive group feedback to help you evaluate your progress. If you ever need to miss a session, you can always make it up in the other Scene Shop section that week. Workshop members are eligible to participate in the Scene Shop Showcase, a night of staged readings presented twice yearly in the Russ Tutterow Theatre.

Will Dunne is the author of THE DRAMATIC WRITER’S COMPANION (2009, Second Edition 2017), THE ARCHITECTURE OF STORY (2016), and CHARACTER, SCENE, AND STORY (2017) all published internationally by the University of Chicago Press. His plays have been presented worldwide in three languages and earned numerous honors, including three selections by the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center for the U.S. National Playwrights Conference, a Charles MacArthur Fellowship awarded by the O’Neill for outstanding comedy, four Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards, two DramaLogue Playwriting Awards, and a Best-of-Year mention from the San Francisco Examiner. He also has been nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Play and twice been named a finalist for the Heideman Award at the Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Discover, Explore, Experiment, and write!
Discover the core principles of dramatic writing by reading established plays.
Explore your unique voice through writing exercises.

In Fundamentals, you will become familiar with the components of dramatic structure and format, receive tools to explore your unique voice and how to give and receive usable feedback, grasp the difference between dialog and conversation, and will write a 10-minute play or 1st 10 pages of a larger work by applying what you have learned.

Marsha Estell is a resident playwright alumna at Chicago Dramatists, 2010 3Arts/Ragdale Fellow, and recipient of the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for Playwriting. Her plays include Heat, which had its world premiere at Chicago Dramatists and was nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award for Outstanding New Work and many other award-winning work. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, SAG/AFTRA and Actors Equity.

Designed as an ongoing resource for experienced playwrights and now in its 15th year, Scene Shop offers weekly character, scene, and story tools to help you develop your script, professional actors to read your work, and constructive group feedback to help you evaluate your progress. If you ever need to miss a session, you can always make it up in the other Scene Shop section that week. Workshop members are eligible to participate in the Scene Shop Showcase, a night of staged readings presented twice yearly in the Russ Tutterow Theatre.

Will Dunne is the author of THE DRAMATIC WRITER’S COMPANION (2009, Second Edition 2017), THE ARCHITECTURE OF STORY (2016), and CHARACTER, SCENE, AND STORY (2017) all published internationally by the University of Chicago Press. His plays have been presented worldwide in three languages and earned numerous honors, including three selections by the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center for the U.S. National Playwrights Conference, a Charles MacArthur Fellowship awarded by the O’Neill for outstanding comedy, four Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards, two DramaLogue Playwriting Awards, and a Best-of-Year mention from the San Francisco Examiner. He also has been nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Play and twice been named a finalist for the Heideman Award at the Actors Theatre of Louisville.

This course is designed for you to work on a brand new play: your next one! Each of the eight playwrights participating will have four chances to share new pages during the ten-week-long process. The 90-minute zoom meetings will also include discussions and micro-lectures on issues ranging from craft to professional development.

A proud resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists, Emilio Williams is a bilingual (Spanish/English) award-winning writer and educator. His critically acclaimed plays have been produced in Argentina, Estonia, France, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, including in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington DC.

Emilio has lectured worldwide and teaches at several U.S. universities, including DePaul University, Columbia College Chicago, and Georgia State University. He holds a BA in Film and Video and an MFA in Writing.