Co-Leading Workshops

I have long felt that the best learning environment for a playwright is in rehearsal. I often find myself sharing my experience (either as a writer or a director) in order to drive home a point about a certain element of craft. But why not have an actor in the room who can actually demonstrate this? So, over a year ago I started a conversation with Hope Lambert about this idea. I went to her because she is an educator as well as an actor and she has considerable experience working on new plays. Like composers who understand the instruments they write for, so it is with playwrights: we can only benefit from understanding the actor's process. Not only does Hope provide insight into this process, she gets everyone on their feet with some acting exercises that ultimately generates ideas and inspiration for writers. Nothing beats the process of rehearsing your play with actors, directors and designers, but those opportunities are woefully rare. Our hope is that co-leading a workshop like this moves us from focusing on words on the page to visualizing and hearing what our imaginations are conjuring.