Class Description
If you have the foundations of playwriting in place, or a stack of early pages ready for deeper development, this intermediate workshop offers the structure and community to help you push your work further.
Over six weeks, we will balance craft-focused generative exercises with close reading and discussion of contemporary playwrights such as Charly Evon Simpson, Kristoffer Díaz, and Julia Izumi. Together, we will explore world building, character, dramatic structure, and revision strategies, always asking how a moment will land in performance and what makes a scene theatrically alive. Participants will share excerpts of their work in class and hear them read aloud by their peers, an invaluable opportunity to experience how dialogue moves off the page and into the room. You will also receive written feedback from the instructor.
By the end of the course, you will leave with concrete strategies for approaching second, third, or fifth drafts, a clearer sense of your play’s larger architecture, and renewed momentum. You will also receive a curated list of professional resources, including submission and development opportunities, to support your next steps as a playwright.
Writing Roadmap: We've created a simple, goal-based writing roadmap to help you find the perfect GrubStreet course for your writing needs.
Thanks to the excellent literary citizenship of our donors, scholarships are available for all GrubStreet classes. To apply, click the gray "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your application at least one week before the start date of a class. Please await our scholarship committee's decision before registering for the class. We cannot hold spots in classes, so the sooner you apply, the better. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
For more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. After registering, a yellow Resources tab will appear in this section containing a link to join class. Please note that you will need to be logged into view the Resources tab.
Zoom Participation:
In our experience, the intimate nature of a writing workshop benefits from on-camera participation. Students are of course welcome to turn their camera off whenever they need to, but it is a community norm for cameras to be on most of the time. You can learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
You can enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting by clicking the CC button at the bottom of the screen. If you'd like to access the transcript after class, please make sure to let your instructor ahead of time that you'd like a copy.