Horse Trade Theater Group, “arguably the epicenter of the independent theatre world in New York” (Leonard Jacobs), is happy to announce its very first series of playwriting workshops for 2009/2010.

All classes will be held at

The Red Room
at 85 East 4th Street
between 2nd and 3rd Avenue
third floor
 
Classes are $50.00 each.  20% discount when buying 3 or more classes.

Registration deadline is the first of the month for each month's class.

Early registration is recommended as each class will be capped at 6 people to insure that all writers' work gets significant time to be workshopped.

Contact submission@horsetrade.info or call 212-777-6088 to register.  

Horse Trade has created these innovative monthly workshops to give aspiring playwrights a new perspective on their writing process. In addition, to further the growth of their own work, workshop attendees will bring in a 10 minute piece or excerpt for critique.

Horse Trade has gathered a group of trail blazing, emerging voices to lead each workshop including Chris Kipiniak (author of ”Save the World” produced by Roundtable Ensemble; writer for Marvel Comics), Pia Wilson(Public Theatre’s 2008 Emerging Writers Group), Kelley Girod (Columbia MFA’s 2008 Stein and Liberace Scholar and John Golden Fellow), Clay McLeod Chapman(author of Rest Area, Miss Corpus, and the hit plays “The Pumpkin Pie Show” and "Hostage Song"), Suzanne Dottino (Samuel French Short play finalist, curator of KGB’s fiction reading series), and Paul David Young(Paula Vogel Playwriting Award winner). Anyone at any stage of their career will benefit from this vibrant, intimate setting.

Class information:

November 22, 2009, 12-3pm
Plot, Character and Theme
with Chris Kipiniak

January 30, 2010, 12-3pm
Writing Characters
with Pia Wilson

March 27, 2010, 12-3pm
Writing Dramatic Action
with Kelley Girod

April 17, 2010, 12-3pm
Storytelling Foundation
with Clay McLeod Chapman

May 22, 2010
Mining your Life for Drama
with Suzanne Dottino

May 29, 2010
Non- Aristotelian Poetics
with Paul David Young

Workshop Leaders

Class Description: When you're writing anything can happen, but that doesn't mean that everything should. How do you choose? A play has a plot, is made up of characters, and communicates a theme. We will be discussing the relationship between these three components and what they have to do with defining a story

Chris Kipiniak is an actor, writer and playwright. Plays include Stalled, which played at the Kraine Theatre in New York City and later as part of the Hangar Theatre Lab in association with the Drama League Directing Fellowhip; Pass the Buck and For the First Time, Together Again!, two children’s plays commissioned by the McCarter Theatre’s First Stage Company; The Big Search, a children’s play commissioned by the Middleground Theatre; and The Nature of the Beast, a modern-gothic, zombie-romance; Save The World, which played at the American Theater of Actors, produced by the Roundtable Ensemble. Most recently his short play, IIIINSAAAAAAAANE! was part of Horse Trade Theater Group's evening of, "6 Short Plays About Hope." He is also a freelance writer and has worked with Marvel comics writing Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man, the limited series Nightcrawler and for the anthology Amazing Fantasy. His first piece of travel-writing, “Magic Carpet Ride,” was published in the travel anthology, Encounters With the Middle East. As an actor he has appeared on Broadway in Mary Zimmerman’s Tony-winning adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which he also performed off-broadway and at regional theatres such as the Mark Taper Forum, Hartford Stage, and Berkeley Repertory. Other New York acting credits include Stalled, Kit Marlowe at the Public Theatre, Silence with the Roundtable Ensemble, Baby Girl with Partial Comfort Productions, Gift with Rising Phoenix at the New York International Fringe Festival, and How To Act Around Cops with Singularity company at both the New York and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals and at the Soho Theatre in London.

Class Description: Oedipus Rex, Medea, Hamlet, Willy Loman, Blanche DuBois. Complex characters drive good plays, and strong characterization lends a richness to dialogue. This workshop will help writers develop the skills they need to create three-dimensional, authentic characters that are engaging and provocative

Pia Wilson received a 2009 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She is a member of the 2009 Project Footlight team of composers and librettists and a member of the 2008 inaugural Emerging Writers Group at The Public Theater. Pia is also a 2009 resident in the Women's Work Lab at New Perspectives Theatre. Her full-length drama, Red Rooster, was a part of the Emerging Writers Spotlight Series at The Public Theater. All the Pretty Girls was featured in The Looking Glass Theatre's Spring 2009 Writer/Director Forum. The River Pure for Healing was part of the 2008 Resilience of the Spirit play festival. Her play, Tree of Life, received a 2007 workshop production at The Red Room Theater. Short plays and one-acts: The Things Tom Left Behind (The Drafts 10 Minute Play Festival: Six Plays About Hope); End of the World (New Perspectives Theatre's "By Popular Demand" festival); Dressed In Your Dreams (Stagecrafter's New Works Play Festival); Do You Proud (Eclectic Theater Company's "Got a Minute?" play festival); Whatever and Delicately (Groove Mama Ink; The Looking Glass Theatre's Spring 2008 Writer/Director Forum); The Rooster Never Crows (OneHeart Productions).

Class Description: Active language is what separates a play from any other piece of literature and keeps an audience engaged. This class will cover the use of basic poetic devices that can be employed by the playwright to not only get into active language at the onset of their piece, but also create a concrete vehicle in order to explore abstract emotions in the writing.

Kelley Nicole Girod is a 2008 graduate of Columbia's MFA playwriting program where she was named the Stein and Liberace scholar as well as the John Golden fellow for her artistic merit. Kelley hails from Louisiana where she attended Louisiana State University and works extensively with the artistic community of Baton Rouge, most recently serving as a panel judge for Louisiana's artist in residency program. She has had plays produced in Los Angeles, New York, New Orleans, and Columbus, Ohio and has had readings at Primary Stages, the Labyrinth studio and Horsetrade Theatre Co.(NYC) which produced her play "Parabolas" as part of their downtown theatre festival. She is also a resident playwright for the Horse Trade's Drafts this year and a founding member of the developmental group sLab. Kelley currently lives and works in Manhattan.

Class Description: This workshop will focus on getting in the trenches with your characters in order to achieve a level of emotional immediacy oft lost in translation between text, performer and audience. An exercise heavy workshop, it will hone in on those voices that have yet to make their way off the page -- developing monologues that will allow your characters a chance to tell their side of their story.

Clay McLeod Chapman is the creator of the rigorous storytelling session the Pumpkin Pie show. He is the author of rest area, a collection of short stories, and miss corpus, a novel. He teaches writing at The Actors Studio MFA Program at Pace University. For more info go to: www.pumpkinpieshow.com.

Class Description: Personal experiences contain the raw material to
make your play unique. With an emphasis on language, style and editing, this course will explore how to pick a subject, and ultimately how to form and structure a theatrical text.

Suzanne Dottino received an MFA in nonfiction at Columbia University. She is
founder and editor of www.kgbbarlit.com. Her interviews, essays, fiction and
non-fiction articles have appeared in Bloomsbury Review, Heeb, The Brooklyn
Rail, Esopus, Portable Muse, and others. Her short plays have appeared in
The Artists of Tomorrow Festival, The Culture Project Women Center Stage and
The Drafts 10 Minute Play Festival. Her play All-Cued Up was a finalist in
the Samuel French Short Play Competition sponsored by The Kraine Theater.

Class Description: This workshop will look at alternative aesthetic theories in an effort to ground an intelligent way of defining and discussing poetics outside the Aristotelian model and applying that discussion to contemporary playwriting.

Playwright Paul David Young won the 2009 Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and was runner-up for the Kendeda Fellowship of the Alliance Theatre, Atlanta. His play Times and Places was performed in Icelandic in Reykjavik and in English in the La Mama E.T.C. “Experiments” reading series. Primary Stages held a reading of his play “No One But You” in 2007. His play “David & Ira” will be produced in New York in 2009. His play “Aporia’ was given a public reading at the Living Theatre in December 2008, won third in the New Works of Merit International Playwriting Competition, and was presented in a reading in April 2009 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, where it was a finalist for the Cauble Short Play Award. A collaborative performance/installation piece, “Balcony Scene,” was produced at the New York art gallery LMAK Projects in December 2008. His play “Waking Up With Strangers” was produced at the Kraine Theater in June/July 2009. He was a Millay Colony Resident Artist for September 2009. He graduated from Yale College, Columbia Law School, and The New School for Drama, and was a Fulbright Scholar in Germany. He studied with Christopher Shinn, Michael Weller, Frank Pugliese, and Edward Allan Baker, among others. His theater commentary includes “Advanced Forms of Emptiness: Handke and Jelinek in Berlin,” and “Performing the Novel: Elevator Repair Service Reads The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner,” both in PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art (MIT Press). He was co-curator of “Perverted by Theater,” an art exhibition about the intersection of visual art and theater at apexart, New York, October – December 2008. He is currently working on the libretto for a cantata to be performed by The Metropolis Ensemble in its 2010-11 season.