Monarch Theater NYC presents award-winning playwrights Migdalia Cruz and John Jesurun, two artists known for their spirited and multidimensional approach to writing for the theater. The twice-weekly intensive playwriting workshop runs from October 5-November 30, 2010.
The Playwriting Intensive is a rare workshop opportunity for serious early-career playwrights to work closely with experienced mentors and focus intensely on developing a specific work. The eight-week workshop concentrates on developing the individual voice of the playwright in an atmosphere that is both disciplined and open to diverse ideas and approaches. Participants are given the option to focus on exploring the creative initiatives that move their own work. Constructive, rigorous discourse is integrated with a flexible work session environment. The varied directions of the participants are facilitated through alternating sessions with Cruz and Jesurun. The Playwriting Intensive process features individual and group assignments, mentorship, guest talks, theater visits, feedback, a retreat, and a public reading of scripts with actors. Monarch Theater NYC welcomes playwrights who seek to expand and enrich their work in a supportive and dynamic atmosphere. Workshop limited to ten students.
Monarch Theater is dedicated to staging contemporary theater that challenges and excites the creators and audience alike. Our interest in a wide variety of texts has led to the creation of not only stage plays but movement based pieces, puppet shows, podcasts, media and radio plays. Working with artists from different disciplines is essential to our mission in creating a laboratory for new work in collaboration with those who challenge the political and theatrical status quo. Recently supported projects this year include: LIZ ONE by John Jesurun, GHOST STORIES directed by José Zayas and DAYS AND NIGHTS directed by Byungkoo Ahn.
Intensive Information
When: October 5, 2010-November 30, 2010
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6:30-9:30 PM
Where: La MaMa rehearsal studios at 47 Great Jones St
To Apply: Guidelines at www.monarchtheater.org
Tuition: $750
Limited Scholarships Available
MIGDALIA CRUZ has written more than forty plays, operas, screenplays, and musicals including Fur, Miriam’s Flowers, Salt and Another Part of the House, and has been produced in venues as diverse as National Theater of Greece/Athens, Old Red Lion/London, Houston Grand Opera, Ateneo Puertoriqueño, Brooklyn Academy of Music, En-Garde Arts, HOME, Shaliko Company, New York Shakespeare Festival’s Festival Latino, Theatre For The New City, WOW Café Theatre (New York), and Latino Chicago Theater Company (where she was writer-in-residence from 1991 to 1998). She is an alumna of New Dramatists, and was mentored by Maria Irene Fornés at INTAR. Her play, El Grito Del Bronx, had its world premiere in July 2009 at the Goodman Theater in a co-production of Teatro Vista and Collaboraction. Her play Telling Tales (sand & fire) will be produced fall 2010 by the University of Puerto Rico.
Her work has been published in several anthologies, including the recently released El Grito Del Bronx and Other Plays through NoPassport Press. Cruz has been awarded several grants including two NEAs, a McKnight Fellowship, a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays award, a PEW/TCG National Artist Residency, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Award, and a Connecticut Commission on the Arts grant. She has taught playwriting at many universities including Princeton University, University of Iowa, NYU, and Amherst College. She is currently at work on both an adaptation of the Satyricon, and Two Roberts, a play with music based on the lives of Roberto Cofresí and Robert Johnson with the Lark Play Development Center. Migdalia received her MFA degree from Columbia University and was born and raised in the Bronx.
JOHN JESURUN is a MacArthur “Genius” award-winning playwright, director, and designer living in New York. His presentations integrate elements of language, film, architectural space, and media. His exploded narratives cover a wide range of themes and explore the relation of form to content. They challenge the experience of verbal, visual and intangible perceptions. Jesurun’s work is distinguished by his integrated creation of the text, direction, set, and media design. Jesurun earned a B.F.A. from Philadelphia College of Art, 1972, and an M.F.A. in Sculpture from Yale University. From 1979-82, he was Assistant to Producer for The Dick Cavett Show producing shows on John and Mackenzie Phillips, John Hammond Sr., Odetta and Tito Puente. In 1982 he began at the Pyramid Club in the East Village with his groundbreaking serial play CHANG IN A VOID MOON, now in its 60th episode. (Bessie Award). Since 1984 he has written, directed, and designed over 25 pieces including: the media trilogy of Deep Sleep (Obie Award), White Water and Black Maria. Others include: Everything That Rises Must Converge, Philoktetes, Slight Return, Faust/How I Rose, Firefall, Liz One and Snow. His work has been presented internationally at a wide number of venues and festivals, most extensively in Mexico.
Jesurun is the recipient of numerous grants, including Rockefeller, Guggenheim, NEA, and Foundation for Contemporary Arts fellowships. Teaching includes Goethe University/ Frankfurt, Justus Liebig University/ Giessen, DASARTS/ Amsterdam, Tokyo University, Kyoto University of Art and Design, NYU, and the New School. His work is published by Performing Arts Journal, Ediciones El Milagro, Theater Communications Group, Sun and Moon Press, Theater der Zeit, and Yale Theater Magazine. New publications include “Shatterhand Massacree and other Media Texts” on PAJ and “ A Media Trilogy” on NoPassport Press.
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