People have been asking me when I will teach my own playwriting course. After much hemming, hawing, procrastination and second guessing myself (all key indicators of being a playwright), I’ve decided to run an 8-week course starting in September!
This course is open to established and emerging playwrights as well as those of you who have yet to write your first play.
Exercises and assignments will be geared to each writer’s need and level of experience. I have a bag of tricks that include stream-of-consciousness writing, prompts and group exercises. I will also leave room for the needs of the group and the individual. The group will be kept small to allow for enough one on one time.
During the first class, each student will state his/her goals. Whether it’s to finish a draft, start a draft or come up with an idea, I’ll take it on!
My goal is to help writers find or improve their own unique style. My specialty is dialogue-driven, character-driven plays.
Here are the details:
September 25 - November 13, 2012 (Tuesdays) NEW START AND END DATES
7:00 – 10:00pm
Obsidian Theatre Company
1089 Dundas St. E. (Toronto) at Logan
Non-CAEA/PGC/Theatre Ontario member AFTER August 1:
$330.00 + 42.90 HST $372.90
Non-CAEA/PGC/Theatre Ontario member BEFORE or on August 1
$264.00 + 34.32 $298.32
*Please note: Only one membership discount applies.*
CAEA/PGC/Theatre Ontario member AFTER August 1
$300.00 + 39.00HST $339.00
CAEA/PGC/Theatre Ontario member BEFORE or on August 1
$240.00 + 60.00 HST $300.00
Please send me an email at johns-daughter@rogers.com if you’re interested or have any questions.
“There’s no such thing as writer’s block; only the fear of writing something bad.” – Marcia Johnson
Marcia Johnson has been a Toronto-based theatre artist since 1983. Plays include Binti’s Journey, an adaptation of the teen fiction novel ‘The Heaven Shop’ by Deborah Ellis (Theatre Direct Canada/Manitoba Theatre for Young People/Young Peoples Theatre, Toronto -Oct. 2012); Courting Johanna (Blyth Festival) based on Alice Munro’s ‘Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage’ and Late, an original piece produced by Obsidian Theatre Company. She has written several radio dramas including Perfect on Paper (silver medalist at the 2003 New York Festivals) and Say Ginger Ale (Finalist, 2004 Canadian Screenwriter Awards).
The stage version of Perfect on Paper debuted at the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2001 and will be presented at the Women Playwrights International Conference in Stockholm, Sweden in August 2012. Say Ginger Ale was presented at the 2009 WPI Conference in Mumbai, India and at the 2010 SummerWorks Festival in Toronto.
Marcia has participated in playwrights’ groups at Obsidian Theatre Company, Theatre Passe Muraille, an Ontario Arts Council Playwright’s Residency at Blyth Festival as well as Tapestry New Opera’s Composer-Librettist Laboratory, a musical theatre workshop with William Finn at Canadian Stage Company and the Siminovitch Prize Playwriting Master Class with Carole Frechette. She took a second Master Class with Ms Frechette at Playwrights Workshop Montreal. She has been accepted in the FemFest Bake-Off by Saravati Productions in Winnipeg. Marcia and five other female playwrights will face the challenge of writing a play in two weeks in September 2012.
The short opera My Mother’s Ring for which she wrote the libretto with composer Stephen A. Taylor was nominated for a 2009 Dora Mavor Moore Award in Toronto. Their second collaboration, Paradises Lost based on the Ursula K. Le Guin novella had an excerpted concert performance in Portland, Oregon and had its full premiere at the Krannert Center; University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana in April 2012.
Also an actor, Marcia’s roles include eight characters in The Real McCoy by fellow actor/playwright Andrew Moodie at Factory Theatre in Toronto and Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa. She was also an original cast member for the 2007 Toronto Fringe runaway hit, The Gladstone Variations and had roles in several US and Canadian film and TV projects.
Currently, Marcia Johnson coaches musical theatre students on their acting monologues and teaches an introduction to playwriting course at Sheridan Technical Institute for Advanced Learning, School of Art, Animation and Design in Oakville, Ontario.
Thanks for making it to the end of my verbose bio.
