CLASS DESCRIPTION
Are you in the messy middle of a playwriting project? Do you want to rewrite with strategy and clarity, but without losing your freedom to explore? Have you perhaps lost steam on a script and need an energizing jumpstart to find your way back in? Or would it simply make your life a little better to spend some time in a respectful, generous writer’s space with inspiring prompts and weekly accountability?

If you’re at the point with a script where the most important thing is to keep going, this is the course for you. Writing a play is an ambitious, complex undertaking that requires most of us to write a succession of drafts, but the revision process doesn’t have to be a slog. In this salon-style class, we’ll keep each other company, hold one another accountable, and play with traditional and out-of-the-box ways to revise and refine your work-in-progress.

WHAT TO EXPECT
-An all-new suite of writing exercises and strategies for going deeper with characters, relationships, structure, setting, and story.
-Inspiring, actionable, and practical handouts to keep you organized and galvanized.
-A supportive crew for commiseration and elation, making the writing process less lonely and more fun.
-Encouragement towards finding the shape that is uniquely right for your play, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to structure and form.

WHAT YOU’LL COME AWAY WITH
Whether you’re doing this for fun or as part of your career, you’ll grow the most by seeing your project all the way through. Results will depend on how dedicated you are to implementing what you learn! But if you do the work and put in the time, you can reasonably expect:

You’ll make meaningful, satisfying progress on your play, including fresh discoveries to shift your understanding of your fictional world and its inhabitants. I will encourage you to take on ten pages of rewriting per week as a baseline, with one week of your choosing where you only have to write five.

You’ll learn practical, career-changing skills for improving middle drafts that you can use again and again for your projects down the road, and you’ll fundamentally come away more empowered because you know how to apply strategies that work.

And for this play, you will take a giant step closer toward having that submission-ready draft you can send out into the world!

WHO THIS CLASS IS FOR
The Rewrite is a professional-level class open to playwrights of all levels who have a completed, messy first draft (what I call a Draft Zero) and are now eager to dig deeper into improving and shaping their writing.

It’s also for writers looking for a Draft Zero Point Five, which is to say: if you’ve made real headway on an initial draft but you are still sprinting toward that first finish line and want to sustain momentum.

It’s for writers who don’t work linearly, and for writers who do; it’s for people who want to seriously shake up their process, and for people who have a clear plan but just need a little kick in the butt to actually do it.

Ultimately, wherever you’re at with your script, this is a call to come back to the writing table, and to recharge your practice with purpose, strategy, and drive. My Draft Zero course is not a prerequisite, but The Rewrite continues naturally from where that course leaves off and maintains a similarly playful ethos.

CLASS STRUCTURE
The typical class format is 50 minutes of community & accountability time, discussion, and mini-lessons on rewriting, followed by a ten minute break, and then an hour of writing exercises. But stay flexible: the session can shift based on the unique needs and questions of the cohort. This is not a traditional workshopping class.

HOW TO PREPARE
You’re welcome to do as much or as little prep work, or pre-writing, as you like. I’m here to augment your process, not supplant it.

ADDITIONAL DETAILS
-The class is capped at 15 participants.
-Sessions are held over Zoom and make use of Google Classroom.
-Recordings of class sessions will be available for review for 36 hours afterwards. (That said, this is a live, in-person class. There’s magic in showing up. Please only sign up if you can make it to most of the sessions.)

IF YOU CRAVE MORE SUPPORT AND FEEDBACK…
I’m here for you and happy to go deeper into the process with you. You can pair this class with booking one-on-one draft feedback and/or consulting sessions according to your specific project and writer development needs.

CANCELLATION POLICY
If you cancel your registration up to a week before the first session, you will receive a full refund. During the week before we start, you’ll receive a 50% refund. There are no refunds or partial refunds starting 24 hours prior to class time.

ABOUT ME
I’m a professional playwright living in Providence, RI, with past productions in NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. I also had my first international production in Germany this past fall. I studied under Paula Vogel at the Yale School of Drama, where I received my MFA in 2014. The press have called my plays “screamingly funny” (NYTimes), “staggeringly original” (SF Chronicle), “exuberant” (The New Yorker), and “highbrow + brilliant” (NY Magazine).

I consider my teaching, mentoring, and coaching an essential and joyful part of my creative practice. I’m currently a lecturer at MIT and will also be lecturing at Yale College this fall. I have additionally taught at Connecticut College, Wesleyan, Brown, PlayPenn, University of the Arts, Salve Regina, and Macalester College.

As a writer, I'm driven by a relentless and rebellious curiosity about what the medium of live theater can do. I write countercultural plays for smart, curious audiences, and trust in the powers of radical truth telling, community gathering, and collective effervescence to overhaul our most delusional and damaging cultural scripts.

If you have any additional questions, email me!