DREAMING A PLAY: Fast First Draft with Obie Award-winner Caridad Svich

ONLINE for five weeks starting the week of June 10, 2013 (skipping the week of July 4th)

$125 ScriptWorks members/ $175 General

INFO/RESERVATIONS:
info@scriptworks.org

Nationally recognized playwright Caridad Svich, of Salvage Vanguard Theatre’s FUGITIVE PIECES, THRUSH, and IPHIGENIA CRASH LAND FALLS ON THE NEON SHELL THAT WAS ONCE HER HEART (A RAVE FABLE), guides you through a group and individual writing process to write a fast first draft of a new play in five weeks.

Open yourself to diving into character work and structuring new writing, reading different models and applying them to thinking about live performance using methodology geared toward creative visualization, dreaming and re-mapping dramaturgical strategies for the stage.

We got extremely positive feedback from this workshop last year, so we’ve asked Caridad to do it again. Enrollment is limited, so claim your spot today!

ABOUT CARIDAD SVICH
Caridad Svich is a highly-awarded US Latina playwright, translator, songwriter, lyricist and editor. Svich was awarded an Obie for Lifetime Achievement in 2012, and the 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize for her play THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS, based on the novel by Isabel Allende. Her theatre pieces and songs, written in English and Spanish, have been presented across the US and abroad at diverse venues including Denver Center Theatre, Teatro Mexico (Quito, Ecuador), and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival/UK.  She is alumna playwright of New Dramatists, founder of NoPassport theater alliance & press, associate editor of Routledge/UK’s Contemporary Theatre Review, contributing editor of TheatreForum, and Drama Editor for Asymptote international translation magazine. Svich is astutely entered in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latino History.

Theo Turner is a young cosmologist on the verge. But Theo’s “big bang” isn’t theoretical. His universe explodes when he and his wife travel to the Appalachian South to visit his parents about an impending adoption only to discover that Theo’s aging parents are meth addicts. Science crashes violently into nature, identities shift, memories speak, and the future can only be won by renegotiating the past. The cosmos is no more wondrous than a troubled human family improvising its path into the future.

A previous version of QUALITIES OF STARLIGHT was the winner of the 2010 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award and was produced by the Essential Theatre, Peter Hardy, Artistic Director, as part of the 2010 Power Plays Festival in Atlanta, Georgia.  A new draft was subsequently workshopped and produced at Cultural Development Corporation’s 2012 Source Festival in Washington, DC.

QUALITIES OF STARLIGHT is the sixth play in a 7-play collection called The Attapulgus Elegies.  Through the lives of the residents, over the course of the last two decades, the collection chronicles the death of a small, rural town in the foothills of the Appalachians Mountains.

Gabriel Jason Dean is a New York/Austin- based playwright who originally hails from Atlanta, GA. His plays have been produced or developed at Theatre Row, Hangar Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, the Lark, New York Stage & Film, People’s Light, ASSITEJ International, The Kennedy Center,  Oregon Shakespeare, Dallas Children’s Theatre, A Red Orchid Theatre, Aurora Theatre, Dad’s Garage Theatre, Actor’s Express, Horizon Theatre, Illinois Shakespeare Festival, FronteraFest, Source Festival and Essential Theatre.  Gabriel received the Kennedy Center’s ACTF 2012 Paula Vogel Prize, Theatre for Young Audience’s Award and was Runner-Up for the National Steinberg Award.  In 2011, he received the Kennedy Center’s ACTF Ken Ludwig Prize for a body of work from an emerging writer and was Runner-Up for the Princess Grace Award.  His script for children, The Transition of Doodle Pequeño received the 2011 New England Theatre Conference Aurand Harris Award and was selected for the 2012 Kennedy Center New Visions / New Voices Conference with People’s Light and Theatre Company.  He is the recipient of the 2010 Essential Theatre New Play Prize and won the 2010 Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival.  Gabriel was voted “Best Playwright” in 2009 by Creative Loafing: Atlanta. In 2005, he won the City of Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs Playwriting Award. Other plays have been finalists or semi-finalists for the Seven Devils Conference, The O’Neill Theatre Conference, PlayPenn, JAW, Bay Area Playwright’s Festival, the Lark Playwright’s Week and Aurora Theatre’s Global Age Project.  His scripts are available through Dramatic Publishing, Playscripts and Samuel French.  Gabriel’s poetry, fiction and journalism has been published in Snake Nation Review, The Tower, Eclectica Magazine, The Melic Review, and Creative Loafing. He received the Porter Fleming Prize for Fiction and the Sidney Lanier Prize for Poetry. He teaches Playwriting at the brief-residency MFA Creative Writing Program at Spalding University. BA: Oglethorpe University. MFA: Michener Center for Writers—UT Austin.

QUALITIES OF STARLIGHT  is presented with the assistance of the ScriptWorks Finer Point Fund for New Play Production and the May 31st performance will be a benefit for ScriptWorks to replenish the fund.  Come out and support your fellow member and ScriptWorks at the same time!

Tickets and complete details available at www.vortexrep.org

NEVER DO HARM is a one-act play about three souls in Purgatory, the place Dante envisioned as the second realm of the afterlife. During his encounter with Doctor Karl White, former bodyguard Joe Scarpa admits he accidentally shot and killed the Boss of Louisiana. Also, Scarpa admits he is partially responsible for White’s early death. When Bonnie White appears before both men, she urges her doctor husband to forgive Scarpa. The couple move toward Paradise. However, Scarpa realizes he must stay in Purgatory to compensate for this Earthly failures.

Raymond V. Whelan is a former journalist based in San Antonio and Marble Falls, Texas. He joined Script Works more than three years ago. He wrote, directed and produced SOUTHIE PRIDE EZZAH GIVEN for FronteraFest 2012, and he wrote and directed SOME WOMEN SEE THINGS AS THEY ARE for FronteraFest 2013.

Johnetta Duncan, a homeschool co-op leader, is lost deep in grief after the death of her mother. She finds herself quickly losing control of her life, and worse – her classroom. And when a simple spelling test unexpectedly turns into an unearthing of America’s brutally racist past, one of the moms wants out. No longer willing to look the other way, she challenges Johnetta to face her grief and let go. But letting go is hard, when you’ve already lost so much.

Jonathan Norton is a playwright, director and dramaturge based in Dallas, TX.  His plays have been produced or developed at PlayPenn, Texas Black and Latino Playwrights Conference, South Dallas Cultural Center, TeCo Theatrical Productions, and Soul Rep Theater Company. His plays include MISSISSIPPI GODDAMN, MY TIDY LIST OF TERRORS, SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD, EVERYBODY’S GOT A LITTLE LIGHT, and OUR LADY OF SOUTH OAK CLIFF: THE VIRGIN SHENEQUA. He has also been a Finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, and a Semi-Finalist for Wordbridge Playwrights Lab. He is one of three inaugural recipients of the TACA/Donna Wilhelm Family New Works Fund. His newest piece, HOMESCHOOLED, is funded by the TACA grant and will make its world premeire at African American Repertory Theater in 2013.

Tuesday, May 7 8-10pm
Off Shoot (east end of the Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo)

$20 ScriptWorks Members/ $35 General
Email christi@scriptworks.org to reserve your spot!

Kirk Lynn will share a handful of his current writing practices for your own uses and abuses, including: writing plays without actors without words without anything, fixing Shakespeare, and prayer.  He’s only got two hours of talent to share, so don’t be late.

Kirk Lynn lives in Austin, TX with his wife, Carrie Fountain, and their daughter, Olive Lynn Fountain. Kirk and Carrie are expecting a new baby boy in late May. Kirk writes plays, generally with the Rude Mechs theatre collective. He is one of six artistic directors for the Rudes. Kirk is the Head of the Playwriting and Directing Program in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin. In Spring of 2014 Kirk’s play YOUR MOTHER’S COPY OF THE KAMA SUTRA will be produced at Playwrights Horizons in NYC, directed by Anne Kauffman.

On her deathbed Vasilisa’s mother gives her daughter a special doll to comfort her in her grief.  Later, when faced with excessive chores at the hands of a greedy step-mother and step-sisters with serious boy problems, Vasilisa discovers her doll really does have the power to comfort her: literally.  A play about loss, growing up, and the hope that kindness might heal what time cannot.  VASILISA MOST LOVELY is an original adaptation of the Russian folktale featuring Vasilisa (the loveliest girl in the country), her snarky doll, and the infamous Baba Yaga.

Kevin Kautzman is a playwright and screenwriter originally from North Dakota pursuing his M.F.A. as a Michener Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. He began studying playwriting in London at the Royal Court Theatre, where he became a core writer out of the Young Writers Program. He has received commissions from History Theatre and Red Eye, and his work has been performed and developed at theatres around the UK and US. Honors include the Playwrights’ Center’s Jerome Fellowship, the Michener Fellowship, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference’s Tennessee Williams Scholarship (THEN WAVES), Lavender Magazine’s Best Playwriting (IRIS), and the International Student Playscript Competition and Repertory Theatre Iowa’s Alpha Project awards (COYOTE). THEN WAVES was also a finalist for the Pen Center drama award and the Yale Drama Series. Kevin has also taught, tutored, and provided new play dramaturgy at organizations in Iowa, Minnesota, Texas, and the UK. He is an alumnus of the University of Minnesota, where he studied history and philosophy, and is represented by Max Grossman at Abrams.

In April, Kevin’s play DREAM OF PERFECT SLEEP will appear in UTNT at the UT Austin Lab Theater. Details at kevinkautzman.com

The first workshop is Sunday, April 21st at 11:00 AM with our very own Vicki Caroline Cheatwood.

Kitchen Dog Theater at The MAC, located at 3120 McKinney Avenue, Dallas, Texas 75204

Vicki Caroline Cheatwood‘s plays have been produced Off-Off-Broadway and throughout the country.  New York credits include The Risen Chris at Vital Theatre, Fits & Starts: The Sacred Heart at Access Theatre, and 10:10 and The Cowgirl Chronicles at Actors Stock Company/NYC and Six Figures Theatre Company. Playwriting honors include Best New Play, Dallas Theater Critics Forum Award for Ruth and Manicures & Monuments, and two Best New Play awards (Southwest Theater Association, Robert Bone Memorial Playwriting Award) for Fits & Starts: The Sacred Heart.  Vicki’s been a finalist for the Heideman Award for The Risen Chris, the Julie Harris Playwright Award for An Hour South, and the Eileen Heckart Drama for Seniors Award for Manicures & Monuments.  Vicki is a member of ScriptWorks, The Dramatists’ Guild and The International Centre for Women Playwrights, and an artistic company member at Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas.

All workshops are FREE and open to the public but advance reservations are required as spaces are limited. To reserve a spot, send an email to twash@dramatistsguild.com.

Lizelle (Working Title) is about the undeniable damage done to a young woman by an acquaintance rape. It examines a suburban world defined by alcohol abuse. It is about lost dreams, grief, forgiveness, and, most importantly, choices. Lizelle received Seed Support funding from ScriptWorks in January 2010.

Allison Orr Block was not born in Texas, but she got here as soon as she could. She has two theatre degrees: a BA from California State University, Northridge and an MFA from The University of Texas at Austin. Her dream is to one day earn as much money in theatre as she has spent on theatre degrees.

Missing the Mark is a one-act drama set in the early 1900′s characterizing the life of a now aging man who once served the Union Army as a sharpshooter (sniper).  The war continues in his head, enigmatic even to him some forty-five or so years later.  The confusion and anger we now know as post-traumatic stress syndrome makes itself known daily on his enabling wife, his tortured daughter, and most of all, his idealistic grandson.

Gary Swaim is a playwright, poet, and writer of fiction.  His plays have been performed both in Texas and California, and he is the 2011 Texas Poet Laureate teaching at Southern Methodist University in the Master of Liberal Studies Program.  Widely published, he serves as Faculty Advisor for Creative Writing in the MLS Program and is the Executive Editor of SMU’s online literary journal, Pony Express(ions).  He was selected in 1999 as a Minnie Stevens Piper Professor of Excellence for the State of Texas.