In partnership with the Palace Theatre (Manchester), the New Hampshire Writers’ Project is launching, NHWP Onstage, an in-depth six-week series of workshops exploring the art of playwriting. This will be the first time in more than 30 years that the NHWP will offer a full program dedicated to the art of drama.
For six weeks every Saturday morning, we will provide an in-depth playwriting curriculum with professional playwrights from the Boston area. These workshops are designed for both experienced and beginning writers. They will explore the fundamental elements of dramatic writing and how to best tell a story on-stage. Each workshop will focus on one specific element, including character, plot, rhythm, dialogue, and more. In-class exercises and conversation will help dig deep into each week’s theme, and provide skills that writers can apply to their own new and pre-existing works. Writers can pick the courses they think will be most useful, or take them all and come out of the semester with a full toolbox!
In addition, we are running an optional intensive composition program that meets Saturday afternoons after the morning workshops. This composition program will be focused on taking the basics learned in the morning sessions and creating original Ten Minute Plays. The resulting plays will be produced and performed as rehearsed readings on March 28 at The Palace Theatre’s Spotlight Room.
Your Instructors Are:
Robbi D’Allesandro received her MFA from Lesley University in Writing for Stage and Screen (2010), and her MS in Personality and Social Psychology from Northeastern University (2002). She won the 2011 Kennedy Center Paula Vogel National Playwrights Award for her full-length play Broken Prayer and was nominated for the Christopher Brian Wolk Excellence in Playwriting Award for the same work. Robbi attended the O’Neill Playwrights Conference as a Visiting Fellow in 2012, and the Kennedy Center Summer Writer’s Intensive in 2011. Her short play Living…Again recently won SLAM Boston 2014. She won Best Original Sitcom in the New York Screenplay Competition for her television sitcom Outliers. Robbi has been contracted for the adaptation of Ron Drez’ Twenty-Five Yards of War: The Extraordinary Courage of Ordinary Men for television and represented by Gersh for the adaptation of Dean Morrissey’s Ship of Dreams, The Monster Trap, and The Great Kettles for screen.
Patrick Gabridge’s full-length plays include Drift, Mox Nox, Lab Rats, Blood on the Snow, Distant Neighbors, Chore Monkeys, Constant State of Panic, Blinders, and Reading the Mind of God, and have been staged by theatres across the country. He’s been a Playwriting Fellow with the Huntington Theatre Company and with New Rep and has received fellowships from the Boston Foundation and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Recent commissions include plays and musicals for Brown Box Theatre Project, In Good Company, The Bostonian Society, Central Square Theatre, and Tumblehome Learning. His short plays are published by Playscripts, Brooklyn Publishers, Heuer, Smith & Kraus, Stage Rights, and YouthPlays, and have received more than 1,000 productions from theatres and schools around the world. He’s also the author of four novels, The Secret of Spirit Lake, Steering to Freedom, Tornado Siren and Moving (a life in boxes). His work for radio has been broadcast and produced by NPR, Shoestring Radio Theatre, Playing on Air, and Icebox Radio Theatre.
Walt McGough’s plays include Pattern of Life, which was named Best New Play by the Independent Reviewers of New England, The Farm, Priscilla Dreams the Answer, Chalk, Dante Dies!! (And Then Things Get Weird), The Haberdasher!, and Non-Player Character. He has worked around the country with companies such as The Lark, the Huntington, New Rep, the Kennedy Center, NNPN, Boston Playwrights Theatre, Fresh Ink, Sideshow, Orfeo Group, Nu Sass Productions, Chicago Dramatists, and Argos. His play Advice for Astronauts was selected as the winner of the Milken Playwriting Prize, and an evening of his short works was performed in South Korea in 2019. His most recent productions were of Non-Player Character in Chicago and San Francisco, Chalk in Seattle, False Flag in Portland, ME, and an evening of short plays in South Korea. He has served on the staff at SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston and Chicago Dramatists, and is a founding ensemble member of Chicago’s Sideshow Theatre Company. He holds a BA from the University of Virginia, and an MFA in playwriting from Boston University.
