EVDIV 67 - Writing for Performance: A Playwriting Workshop

James Anthony Tyler
If you are at ease calling yourself a writer but choke on the word “playwright,” then this workshop is for you. Designed for adventurous wordsmiths from all backgrounds, ages, and levels of experience, Writing for Performance equips participants with tips and techniques that they can use as they develop story for the stage. We will take inspiration from a selection of contemporary playwrights, practitioners, and performance artists such as Young Jean Lee, Okwui Okpokwasili, Winsome Pinnock, Hassan Abdulrazzak, Lisa Goldman, Amit Gupta, and Debbie Tucker Green, and we will experiment with exercises to unlock you when you’re blocked and help you generate rich and challenging new material. Participants will leave the workshop with a portfolio of short works, a toolbox packed with inspiring prompts, and their own set of “rules” to guide them further on their journey into performance writing. Placement application required.

Biography: James Anthony Tyler is the recipient of the third Annual Horton Foote Playwriting Award, an inaugural playwright to receive a commission from Audible, and a 2016 Theatre Masters Visionary Playwrights Award recipient. He is currently a Playwrights Center Core Writer, and most recently was the recipient of The Playwrights Center’s McKnight National Residency and Commission, a member of The Fire This Time Festival’s New Works Lab Cycle 5, and a member of Circle X Theatre Company’s Evolving Playwrights Group. His plays include Some Old Black Man (Berkshire Playwrights Lab at St. James Place and 59E59 Theaters, and a University Musical Society filmed production), All We Need Is Us (Keen Company, currently streaming on all podcast platforms) hop thA A (Currently streaming on Audible), Artney Jackson (World Premiere at Williamstown Theatre Festival, 2018 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award), and Dolphins and Sharks (LAByrinth Theater Company and Finborough Theatre in London). He’s a 2021/2018 MacDowell Fellow, a 2021 Hermitage Artist Resident, a 2018 Djerassi Fellow, 2018-2019 Amoralists Wright Club Playwright, 2017-2018 Nashville Rep Ingram New Works Playwright, 2016-2017 Ars Nova Play Group Resident, 2016 Working Farm Playwrights Group Resident at SPACE on Ryder Farm, 2015-2016 Playwrights’ Center’s Many Voices Fellow, 2014-2015 Dramatists Guild Fellow, and he was a member of Harlem’s Emerging Black Playwrights Group. He has a MFA in Film from Howard University and a MFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University. He is also a graduate of The Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program. For television, he was the Staff Writer for the OWN Network show “Cherish the Day” created by Ava DuVernay, and was most recently in the writers’ room for a new Apple + Drama Series starring an Academy Award winning actress, and he’s currently an Adjunct Professor at NYU and Columbia University. Upcoming 2024 play productions include Into the Side of a Hill at Flint Repertory Theatre and Some Old Black Man in London.

10 weeks

Thursdays 6–8pm ET

September 26–December 5

Fridays 6–8pm ET

September 27–December 6

Online Only

$700

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