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 works. She teaches playwriting, and solo performance workshops around the country. She is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild, SAG/AFTRA and Actors Equity.

The work of Shakespeare remains a deep well which writers continue to return to, time and again. This workshop based class will center on in depth explorations of Shakespeare’s major tragedies Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, King Lear, and Macbeth. Writers will be asked to rework and adapt the scenes, motifs, and characters found in these plays, and are encouraged to reimagine the very plays themselves. Using these works as a starting point, specific focus will center on how to craft tragedy for the stage. This course is led by classically trained actor and Rutgers BFA Acting graduate, Ean Miles Kessler. During his time at Rutgers, Ean studied at Shakespeare’s Globe in England under Tony nominee Tim Carroll, where he performed the title role of Hamlet on the Globe Stage. A deep lover of Shakespeare, Ean has performed and directed a wide range of the Bard’s work, and has written several adaptations of Shakespeare’s work. This course will be an even mix of generating/workshopping student material, dissecting Shakespeare’s work, open discussion, and a variety of writing exercises and prompts. Students will have the option to bring in work they’ve developed previously to be workshopped within class, or can develop pieces during the course of the class itself. The course will culminate in a reading of student work, performed for the public by professional actors.

Ean Miles Kessler is a playwright, teacher, and horse trainer. His jobs have run the gamut: he’s processed poultry, worked briefly at Fedex loading trucks, bartended in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, and is currently a ranch hand in Montana, where he gentles mustangs. A Rutgers BFA Acting graduate, Ean studied at Shakespeare’s Globe in England under esteemed director and Tony nominee Tim Carroll. At the Globe, Ean performed the title role of Hamlet on the Globe Stage. His plays have been produced nationally and internationally, and his work has been published by Vintage Books. His plays have been developed with a variety of companies, including: The Playwrights’ Center, Chicago Dramatists Saturday Series, and Naked Angels among others. Previously, Ean was the Network Director at Chicago Dramatists, where he taught Deconstructing the American West, and he is thrilled to be back working with his Chicago family.

Have a story idea for a great movie? Or a script you’ve begun to write? Or a play you want to adapt into a motion picture? This seven-week class emphasizes visual storytelling, thematic development, and the ever-important logline. We will analyze and map out the classic story structure of a screenplay that went on to be made into an Oscar-winning movie. The class further delves into the realities of how Hollywood evaluates screenplays. It’s not a marketing class, but a deep dive into bringing ideas to life for the Hollywood mindset. It will help you unearth that great hook that will cause a producer to shout, “That’s a movie!” There will be ample time allotted to discuss participants’ ideas, stories, structures, and scenes. This class is applicable to any movie genre.

Mary Ruth Clarke co-wrote and starred in the original Meet the Parents and co-adapted it into the blockbuster version, starring Robert De Niro. Her dramedy teleplay Broadway, Ohio is a finalist in the Chicago Screenplay Awards, Page Turner Awards, and a semi finalist at Sundance Labs. Her comedy screenplay Alice and Celia and Whatever It Takes is a finalist for the Lit Laughs Comedy Film Festival and the Chicago Comedy Film Festival, and a is a semi finalist in the Chicago Screenplay Awards. Mary Ruth’s students are staffed on the TV shows Queens, Woke, and Family Reunion. She consults for clients in LA and Chicago, and she has critiqued about a gazillion plays and screenplays. She’s a regular guest lecturer at the Chicago Screenwriter’s Network and the Off Campus Writer’s Group. She is a member of the Writer’s Guide of America East and the Dramatists Guild.

Designed as an ongoing resource for experienced playwrights and now in its 17th 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.

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.

Kestutis Nakas’ work has been presented at La Mama, Dixon Place, P.S. 122, St. Mark’s Church, 8BC, and other venues. Works include Railroad Backward, Remembrance of Things Pontiac, The Andrew Carnegie Story. He is 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 performance 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 is published by Aukso Zuvys, Vilnius , in 2017. Also in 2017, he presented Channel D a new solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in conjunction with their acquisition of his video archive. His newest work, Revenge of the Dummy, explores ventriloquism.

A holistic approach to dramaturgy, this master class focuses on a writer’s play as a whole, allowing students to examine both the micro and macro within their work. Writers will bring in one complete, full length play to be workshopped over the course of the class. Each play will receive an in depth script evaluation from the instructor, and every session will focus on the work of 2-3 writers, ensuring that each play receives the full attention it deserves. Utilizing a specific set of dramaturgical questions, (as led by the instructor) writers will then receive notes and critiques, in a workshop-based approach from their fellow students. With a strong emphasis on dramatic structure, thematic layering, character development, and the importance of change over the course of a play, writers will be asked to explore both the minutiae of each scene, as well as the larger themes and arcs they are working to create. Each playwright will have their script reviewed twice: in session 1, the play as a whole will be discussed and analyzed; in session 2, focus will hone in on the specific scene the playwright has selected for their final presentation. In writers’ second session, those select scenes will be read and discussed by the members of the class. These two sessions together will constitute as one script lab. Students will be required to read the work of their fellow writers each week, in order to facilitate in depth critique. The course will culminate in a Saturday Series Reading of select scenes. Writers accepted by submission only.

Ean Miles Kessler is a playwright, theater educator, storyteller, and horse trainer. His jobs have run the gamut: he’s processed poultry, worked briefly at Fedex loading trucks, bartended in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, and is currently a ranch hand in Montana, where he gentles mustangs. A Rutgers BFA Acting graduate, Ean studied at Shakespeare’s Globe in England under esteemed director and Tony nominee Tim Carroll. His plays have been produced nationally and internationally, and his work has been published by Vintage Books. His plays have been developed with a variety of companies, including: The Playwrights’ Center, Chicago Dramatists Saturday Series, and Naked Angels among others. Previously, Ean was the Network Director at Chicago Dramatists, where he taught “Deconstructing the American West,” and “Thieves of Shakespeare.” He is thrilled to be back working with his Chicago family.

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. ninamorrison.com