NEW FALL CLASSES
Come take classes with some of my favorite artists. Kate Douglas returns by popular demand with an 8-week lab for in-depth feedback on a work in progress. Tony nominee Chalia La Tour teaches character creation for writers and actors. Arturo Luíz Soria, who won an Obie for his solo show Ni Mi Madre stops by for a three-week intensive on the one-person play.
THE WRITER’S LAB
With Kate Douglas
Sundays 1-3 EST
Beginning October 4th (8 sessions)
By popular demand, Kate Douglas returns with an 8-week lab for playwrights who want in-depth feedback and peer support on works in progress. Designed for writers in the middle of a project, this intimate cohort provides the accountability structure you need to finally finish that draft you’ve been working on and build creative community with other playwrights through feedback and encouragement.
Capped at 12 writers so everyone gets individual attention. Every writer will receive at least two 40-minute sessions to read and discuss their work. Writers can use this time however they like: to read new pages with the group live, get in-depth feedback, or some combination of the two. Kate will work with all writers to ensure the best use of their sessions.
Sliding scale and payment plans available.
Kate Douglas is a writer, performer, and composer based in New York City. Her play The Apiary was the New York Times Critic’s Pick and Outer Critics Circle Award nominee. Other work includes If I Forget Thee, O Earth (Next Forever Commission: Princeton/The Civilians), My Dog is Dead (Ancram Center for the Arts), Tulipa (NY Stage & Film), and The Ninth Hour starring opposite her co-star Shayfer James (The Met Cloisters). Most recently, she received the Jonathan Larson Award for music and lyrics. Additional performance credits include Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, Liz Phair's 30th Anniversary World Tour of her seminal album Exile in Guyville, and Fernando Rubio’s Everything by my side. Kate is an alum of the BMI Musical Theater Writing Workshop and the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program.
INVENTING CHARACTERS FROM THE INSIDE OUT
With Chalia La Tour
Saturdays 1-3 EST
Beginning October 10th (5 sessions)
This workshop is designed for writers and actors seeking an embodied practice to character creation. This class moves beyond the “book report” of character traits and into characters living with vitality, specificity, and the need to speak.
Drawing from Yale MFA training, somatic practices, Grotowski, Balinese performance (BMTT), and Michael Chekhov exercises, participants will investigate the idiosyncratic nuances that make us distinctly human. Through a combination of physical and writing exercises, we will dive into imagination, impulse, behavior, and relationship. The practice emphasizes both rigorous transformation and care for the artist’s own body, cultivating the ability to empathetically create another life without abandoning your own.
Sliding scale and payment plans available.
Chalia La Tour is a Tony Award–nominated actor, director, and educator based in New York and working internationally. She received a 2020 Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress for her work in the original Broadway company of Slave Play, and reprised the role in the Los Angeles and West End productions. She is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama MFA Acting program, Cal State East Bay for Design, and the British American Drama Academy at Oxford. Recent acting credits include Broadway, New York Theatre Workshop, The Women’s Project, Yale Repertory Theatre, Ugly Cry at SXSW, The Good Fight (CBS), Elementary (CBS), and The Code (CBS). La Tour is the co-director of Encompass Collective, an acting collective dedicated to empowered training for BIPOC actors and acting educators, and serves as a mentor and teaching artist with Broadway for Arts Education. She is currently a directing lab fellow at the Mercury Store.
WRITING THE SOLO SHOW
With Arturo Luíz Soria
Wednesdays 6-8 EST
Beginning October 7th (3 sessions)
Have an idea for a show but don't know where to start? Got too much material and can't figure out how to shape it? This workshop is for performers and writers looking to shake up their creative process.
Over three sessions, students will learn new approaches to writing, gain tools for developing original characters, and generate raw material for future solo performances.
Through movement, improv, writing prompts, and more, this workshop pushes actors and writers out of their comfort zones. No need to arrive with a fully formed idea — just bring an open mind, a playful attitude, and movement pants.
Sliding scale and payment plans available.
Arturo Luíz Soria is an award-winning actor, writer, producer, and the founder of VagaMundo Productions. His solo show Ni Mi Madre premiered off-Broadway at Rattlestick Theater and went on to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, winning Obie and Offie awards. His solo show The White Whale Journal has been developed at Rattlestick Theatre, The Flea, Theaterlab, and Downtown Urban Arts Festival. He has received a micro-commission from the Lucille Lortel Alcove Development Program, two NYSCA grants, and a MacDowell fellowship. As an actor, recent credits include Broadway’s Tony Award winning play The Inheritance; off-Broadway’s Wet Brain (World Premiere), Hit the Wall (World Premiere); and many regional productions across the country. He holds a BFA from The Theater School at DePaul University, an MFA in Acting from Yale School of Drama, and will be at Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program in the fall.
SCRIPT FEEDBACK
Have an existing script and need expert feedback? Work with some of the artists I show my own early drafts to. They are all skilled at helping you get closer to your own unique vision and voice.