Playwriting Workshops
Description
NFT offers two playwriting workshops: one for beginners, the other for experienced playwrights. Both are taught by same faculty of award-winning playwrights. Check with Ajene Washington before enrolling if you are unsure which is best suited to your needs and experience.
The Beginner’s workshop introduces students to play construction which is rooted in character and narrative structure, with emphasis on the play’s arc through its beginning, turning point, and ending.
The workshop for experienced students provides an intensive study of playwriting culminating with the creation of a full-length work by the end of the semester. Registration begins September 1, 2023
| First Semester | Second Semester |
|---|---|
| October 1, 2023 thru Dec. 18, 2023 | February 5, 2024 thru May 20, 2024 |
| Mondays, 6-9 PM (Experienced) Wednesdays, 6-9 PM (Beginning) | Mondays, 6-9 PM (Experienced) Wednesdays, 6-9 PM (Beginning) |
Classes are normally held at NFT offices. During COVID, some or all classes may be conducted via Zoom. Yearly Tuition is $375 (Two Semesters). You have the option to pay up-front, or split payment into 3x$125
For More Information
Ajene D. Washington, Workshop Coordinator
Phone: 212-353-1176
Fax: 212-353-1088
Email: a.newfedajene@yahoo.com
Registration /
Payment Forms
Faculty
Michael’s teaching interests include cultural studies, African American theatre history, dramatic writing, filmmaking, and ragtime music.
A dramatist whose works have been produced in New York, regional, and educational theatre, Florida A&M University, SUNY Stony Brook, California State University at San Bernardino, and Universidad de Palermo in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He spent a year at Touchstone Pictures as a Walt Disney Fellow and worked as a staff writer he has been playwright-in-residence at Michigan State University and St. Louis University and taught writing courses at the College of New Rochelle.
Michael was a writer on ABC-TV’s Hangin’ with Mister Cooper. In 1994 he was a Sundance finalist, and in 1995, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Playwriting. A Gallatin graduate, Professor Dinwiddie earned his M.F.A. in dramatic writing from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Professor Dinwiddie received NYU’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2005.
Kermit Frazier’s more than twenty-five plays have been produced around the country at such theaters as the New Federal Theater, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Detroit Repertory Theater, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Seattle Children’s Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage, and the Asolo Theatre Company. Some of his plays have also been published by Broadway Play Publishing and Dramatic Publishing. He’s also written for several television series, including Ghostwriter, the popular children’s mystery series that he helped to create and for which he was a head writer. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such publications as Callaloo, Essence, Black World, The Missouri Review, American Theatre, and The New York Times Book Review.
His work as a playwright was spotlighted in June, 2020, in a full-page New York Times feature article.
He is Professor Emeritus at Adelphi University, where he taught playwriting, TV/screenwriting, and dramatic literature in their MFA program in creative writing.
Cassandra Medley’s recently produced plays include: American Slavery Project (NYC), Cell (Molelo Theater, CA, and Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon 2011, NYC), Daughter (Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon 2009, NYC), Noon Day Sun (Diverse City Theatre Company, NYC), and Relativity, a commission from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Ensemble Studio Theatre, NYC).
Ms. Medley won the 1990 National Endowment for the Arts Grant in Playwriting, the New Professional Theatre Award, the Marilyn Simpson Award, the Theatrefest Regional Playwriting Award for Best Play in 2001, the 2002 Ensemble Studio Theatre 25th Anniversary Award for Theater Excellence, the 2004 “Going to the River Writers” Life Achievement Award and AUDELCO’S August Wilson Playwriting Award in 2006. Her most recent play, Cell, was produced by Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon in 2011.
Richard Wesley is now enjoying his forty-fifth year as a writer for stage, screen, and television. He is a past winner of the Drama Desk Award, a Rockefeller Grant, (thank you Woodie King!!) a two-time winner of the NAACP Image Award, a four-time recipient of the Audelco Award, a Pioneer Lifetime Achievement Award from the Organization of Black Screenwriters, The August Wilson Playwriting Award from the National Black Theater Festival and the Otto Award for Political Theater Writing.
A former Vice President of the Writers Guild of America, East, he is a member of National Film Preservation Board at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, a member of the Board of Directors of the Symphony Hall Performing Arts Center in Newark, NJ, the Black Film Festival Selection Committee of the Newark Museum and is currently an Associate Professor in the Rita and Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.
And he is married to the novelist, Valerie Wilson Wesley.
