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Taught by Nicole Sellew (website)
May 3, May 10, May 17, May 24 (Sundays)
11:00 am to 1:00 pm
Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research*
A multi-week generative course focused on writing toward and about desire. The class will consist of workshops, written feedback, reading, and discussion. Students will be given tailored readings and excerpts to inspire creativity, and they are expected to bring ten new pages of work per week. Students will receive both feedback on their writing and advice about how to take their work into the wider world. Come to experiment with the body as a source of creativity, leave with polished pages and new ideas about the way desire informs our lives.
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Nicole Sellew is a writer and teacher based in New York City. She is the author of the novel Lover Girl. She received her MLitt in fiction from the University of St. Andrews in 2022 and is the recipient of the 2024/25 Galley Beggar short story prize.
Taught by Eliya Smith
May 9, 16, 23, 30, & June 6* (Saturdays)
11:30 am to 1:30 pm
13 West 17th Street, New York, NY 10011
Playwright Eliya Smith leads a 5-week workshop for playwrights of all levels focused on exploring and developing existential weariness in dramatic writing, as inspired by Chekhov.
In this course, students will complete and share in-class writing exercises and weekly take-home assignments modeled from the work of Anton Chekhov and his artistic successors. We’ll discuss and implement strategies for crafting dynamic and dramatically fraught atmospheres in our writing. We’ll also examine theatrical elements essential to generating mood onstage: developing strong characters, creating suspense using structure and form, writing thrilling dialogue, etc. In addition to Chekhov, the syllabus will include full texts and selections from such writers as Annie Baker, Adrienne Kennedy, Sam Hunter, Sarah Kane, María Irene Fornés, Tennessee Williams, Eboni Booth, Samuel Beckett, and other great architects of atmosphere and emotion in the Chekhovian tradition.
*Class on June 6th will be held at a different location (TBD) due to a scheduling conflict at the Center.
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Eliya is a playwright from Ohio. Off-Broadway: Grief Camp (Atlantic Theater Company, Keene Prize Finalist, Venturous Grant). Other plays: Deadclass, Ohio (with the Goat Exchange; Reboot Studios Grant, Tank Core Season, Ice Factory Festival), TWO GIRLS: A Homeric Retelling in the Oral Tradition (Ars Nova), Memonica (HERE Arts Center, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant), Then We’ll Rest (ISLE Theater Company, Cohen New Works Festival), Dad Don’t Read This (Phyllis Anderson Prize). Additional Support: American Repertory Theater, Working Barn Incubator Program. Proud member EST Youngblood. Playwright-in-Residence at The Goat Exchange. BA Harvard College, MFA UT Austin.
Taught by Alex Dimitrov
May 19, 26, June 9, 16, 23, 30 (Tuesdays)
6:30 to 8:30 pm
13 West 17th Street, New York, NY 10011
We will write and workshop poems that engage the unconscious (prompts may include dream work, crystals, full and new moon rituals), as well as poems that have a direct or indirect relationship to place (New York City, the town you’re from, a body of water, etc). We’ll also read: Frank O’Hara, Frederick Seidel, Bret Easton Ellis, Robert Lax, and others. You’ll leave class with five polished and finished poems. All skill levels are welcome and anything is possible.
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Alex Dimitrov is the author of four books of poems and an upcoming novel. His work has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, and other publications. He teaches poetry at Columbia University.