"Writing the Short Play" will give writers the chance to explore the parameters and possibilities offered by the stage!
After discussing how to embrace the "liveness" and physicality of dramatic writing and reading a select number of short plays, students will have the chance to workshop one 10-page (or 10-minute) script, receive feedback from their peers and instructor, and discover what's working well in the play and how to utilize the tools of the genre even more effectively. Because of the nature of the medium, writers will be asked to select a cast for their play from their fellow workshoppers, and each script will be read aloud in full. Finally, the course will conclude with an overview of where you can take your scripts after the workshop, including submitting to short play festivals and contests!
Kristen hails from Melbourne, Australia and is a graduate of Northwestern’s MFA in Writing for the Screen and Stage. Her first full-length play she will fade at the finish was part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2014 and the following year she wrote her undergraduate thesis on the presence of the outsider in the plays of Sarah Ruhl. She participated in a rehearsed reading at Chicago Dramatists in the spring of 2017 and her short play Sway was performed at Theater for the New City in New York (after being workshopped for a week in Aspen) as part of the Theater Masters National MFA Playwrights Festival. Her full-length play (l)earn was developed with the support of Facility Theatre in Chicago and received a staged reading in March of 2020, right before the world went into hibernation. She’s currently pursuing a PhD in playwriting and teaching at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo and working as the Drama Editor at Third Coast Magazine.
Kristen is new to The Porch. Welcome!
