Dramatis Personae workshop with Kirk Lynn, Scriptworks, May 7, 2013

DRAMATIS PERSONAE WORKSHOP COMING UP!

Kirk Lynn of the Rude Mechs
place and time TBA

Contact Christi@scriptworks.org to sign up!

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Dramtis Personae: Delving into Character with Dael Orlandersmith, Scriptworks at the Hyde Park Theatre, April 3, 2013

DRAMATIS PERSONAE WORKSHOP COMING UP!

Delving Into Character

with Dael Orlandersmith
Wednesday, April 3rd at 7:00 pm
Hyde Park Theatre, 511 West 43rd St.

Contact Christi@scriptworks.org to sign up!

This workshop will explore character development using aspects of Carl Jung's work. The workshop will emphasize the inner life of characters and how and why they respond to the story set up by the playwright. How and why does a character think/respond to circumstances? How does the family background/environment play a role?

Dael Orlandersmith is an actress, poet and playwright who is best known for her Obie Award-winning Beauty's Daughter and the 2002 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Drama, Yellowman. Her latest project, a co-production between Berkeley Rep and the Goodman is Black N Blue Boys/Broken Men in which she plays male characters who have been abused. She will be doing a reading of that work at Austin Community College as part of their Arts and Humanities Festival on April 4th.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Upcoming: Sherry Kramer disusses Magical Objects, Hyde Park Theatre, March 8

ScriptWorks 'Dramatis Personae' Series

presents

Magical Objects

a lecture-discussion with Sherry Kramer

Tuesday, March 8th, 7-9 p.m.
Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd St.

COST:$15 ScriptWorks members/ $25 General

INFO/RESERVATIONS: info@scriptworks.org; 512-454-9727

There is a great difference between a prop and an object on stage that is built or filled with the dramatic forces of a play.  Such objects become metaphors, they become fresh comprehensions of the world. In the theatre, we believe in magic.  Our gaze is focused on ordinary objects...a glass figurine, a pair of shoes, a wedding dress...and then our attention is shaped, and charged, and we watch the everyday grow in meaning and power.  Most of our greatest plays, written by our most poetic playwrights, contain a visual metaphor, an object with metaphorical weight that we can see on stage, not just in our mind’s eye.

How do we make the ordinary into the extraordinary?  How do we create something that can carry meaning across the stage, into the audience and then out of the theatre, all the way home, and into the lives of these strangers who come to sit together in the dark?  How do we generate a magical object on stage?

It will help if you have more than a passing relationship with A Streetcar Named Desire, The Piano Lesson, and Buried Child, but if you don't you'll still do okay.  We'll be talking about the magical object, and there will be a small in class writing assignment.

About Sherry Kramer

Sherry Kramer is currently a visiting professor at the James Michener Center for Writers, UT Austin.  She is a graduate of both the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and was former head of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop. Her plays have been produced in theaters across the country and abroad.  She is a recipient of NEA, New York Foundation for the Arts and McKnight Fellowships, the Weissberger Playwriting Award and a New York Drama League Award (WHAT A MAN WEIGHS), the LA Women in Theater New Play Award (THE WALL OF WATER), The Jane Chambers Playwriting Award (DAVID'S REDHAIRED DEATH).  She was the first national member of New Dramatists, and is on the permanent faculty at Bennington College.

About Scriptworks
ScriptWorks is a playwright driven organization that seeks to promote the craft of dramatic writing and to protect the playwright's
integrity by encouraging playwright initiative and harnessing collective potential. The Dramatis Personae series was initiated to provide area
playwrights a place to experiment with their craft and expand their careers. 

This project is funded and supported in part by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts and the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division believing an investment in the Arts is an investment in Austin’s future. Visit Austin at NowPlayingAustin.com.

Scriptworks Dramatis Personae Lecture: Micah Magee on Found Storytelling, State Theatre, March 7

ScriptWorks Dramatis Personae Series presents Found Storytelling Workshop - telling global stories on a shoestring budget with Micah Magee
Wednesday, March 7th, 7-10pm at The State Theatre,719 Congress Ave. (click for map)

COST: $20 ScriptWorks members/ $30 general public
INFO/RESERVATIONS: info@scriptworks.org; 512-454-9727

What are our values as independent filmmakers or playwrights? How can we best use our limited resources to tell global stories?In this three-hour workshop, participants explore the narrative material of self and environment through place, memory and improvisation - using both fiction and documentary as storytelling material to create subjective universes Hollywood would never dream of building.

Writer/director Micah Magee will present ways of structuring found stories through archetype, fairy tale and a story-specific macro-dramaturgical analysis of time, character and place developed by screenwriter Armando Lao. Seeds of initial writing exercises will be further developed through partner writing, acting exercises and improvisation in the group.

Micah Magee is an award-winning writer and filmmaker based in Berlin, Germany and Troy, New York. In the past, Micah has worked as co-director of Cinematexas Film Festival, pirate radio programmer and (currently) full-time mom. She holds two undergraduate degrees from UT Austin (B.A. Plan II Liberal Arts/B.S. Film Production) and attended graduate school at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin. She has taught at the DFFB in Berlin, Istanbul Film Academy and WizArt Art Academy in the Ukraine. Micah's films have taken her to festivals all over the world. She is overjoyed that they are finally taking her back to Texas with SXSW 2012! Micah has received a Fulbright Award in Journalism, a screenwriting fellowship from NYFA and an individual artist grant from NYSCA.

ScriptWorks is a playwright driven organization that seeks to promote the craft of dramatic writing and to protect the playwright's
integrity by encouraging playwright initiative and harnessing collective potential. The Dramatis Personae series was initiated to provide area
playwrights a place to experiment with their craft and expand their careers.

This project is funded and supported in part by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts and the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division believing an investment in the Arts is an investment in Austin’s future. Visit Austin at NowPlayingAustin.com.

Upcoming: Christi Moore on How to Produce for FronteraFest, Hyde Park Theatre, September 15

Received directly:

Austin Script Works Dramatis Personae Series

FRONTERAFEST 101
A primer in self-producing for the fringe
A workshop taught by Christina J. Moore
Wednesday, September 15, 7:00 pm

Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd St.

COST: $5 Scriptworks members; $10 general admission

INFO/RESERVATIONS:
512.454.9727; christi@scriptworks.org

This workshop, led by ScriptWorks Executive Director and FronteraFest Producer Christina J. Moore, will guide participants through the process of preparing a piece for FronteraFest, the month-long festival to be held January 11 to February 12 at the Hyde Park Theatre and other venues. From resources for finding actors, directors, and rehearsal space to the ins and outs of the technical rehearsal, we'll cover it all.

Christina J. Moore is a director and producer whose work has been seen at The State Theatre, Zachary Scott Theatre Center, Mary Moody Northen Theater, Vortex Repertory Company, Capitol City Playhouse, Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre, Different Stages, and Austin Script Works, which she helped found in 1997. FronteraFest 2011 will mark her tenth year as producer of the festival under the joint enterprise of Hyde Park Theatre and ScriptWorks.

ScriptWorks is a playwright-driven organization that seeks to promote the craft of dramatic writing and to protect the playwright's integrity by encouraging playwright initiative and harnessing collective potential. The Dramatis Personae series was initiated to provide area playwrights a place to experiment with their craft and expand their careers. Contact: Christi Moore @ 512-589-4055

Upcoming: Michael Michaelian, Dramatis Personae, Austin Scriptworks at State Theatre,

Received directly:

Austin Script Works Dramatis Personae Series

presents

STAGE TO SCREEN: AN OVERVIEW OF SCREENWRITING FOR PLAYWRIGHTS . . . AND EVERYONE ELSE

with MICHAEL MICHAELIAN

State Theatre, 719 Congress Avenue
Saturday, March 27, 2 - 5 p.m.

Admission: Austin Scriptworks members $25, general admission $40
Info and reservations: :512.454.9727; info@scriptworks.org

This 3 hour workshop will provide a practical approach to the basics of screenwriting with an emphasis on structure as well as the application of those basics to adapting your play for the screen. The "Business of the Business", including agents, meetings, deals and contracts, the Writers Guild of America, and credits will also be discussed.

Michael Michaelian has more than 36 years of experience as a screenwriter in motion pictures and television. He has written more than 50 episodes of such TV series as "Kung Fu", "Charlie's Angels", "The Quest" (Western Writers of America Award), "Fantasy Island", "Dukes of Hazzard" (story editor), and "Star Trek: The Next Generation". TV movies include an adaptation of Paul Gallico's "Miracle in the Wilderness" starring Kris Kristofferson for TNT and "The Black Fox" starring Christopher Reeve for CBS. His plays have been produced in London and the US. He holds a B.A. in film and an M.F.A. in theatre from UCLA and is a member of the Writers Guild of America, West and the Dramatists Guild.

Austin Script Works is a playwright-driven organization that seeks to promote the craft of dramatic writing and to protect the playwright's integrity by encouraging playwright initiative and harnessing collective potential. The Dramatis Personae series was initiated to provide area playwrights a place to experiment with their craft and expand their careers.

Austin Script Works is funded in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division and by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts, and is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art, and by individual donors.