Kickstart the creation of the show that only you could dream up. Generate new material from prompts that unpack your memories, your stories, your opinions, your quirks, your obsessions, and your big ideas, and maybe even your unsent email drafts–in order to turn them into performance-worthy gems. Reveal the incredible thing waiting to be discovered inside the personal collection of seemingly-random material and ephemera you already have.
Take your writing off the page and onto the stage, expanding your experimental toolbox to find the most compelling ways to craft your ideas for an audience.
Trawl through your archive of ideas and observations, weaving references from past and present, and use elements of collage, deconstruction, and beyond to bust open your stories and spin them into action in performance.
Feel more empowered as writer, performer, and director of your own work as you create something not only highly personal, but highly portable. Lean into a DIY indie-theater aesthetic, making magic out of spare parts, and creating worlds using only what you have on hand.
Class will culminate in a showing of 15-30 minutes of your new work on the Elysian stage.
Class Information in the Skunk Room:
8 weeks / Thursday’s from 3-6PM starting March 6
CLASS PERFORMANCE DATE TBD IN THE MAINSTAGE
About the instructor:
Jacquelyn Landgraf is the Artistic Director of the Elysian Theater. She is a director, performer, writer, and teacher, with a focus on new and developing work, and supporting artists-in-process. Alum of the experimental comedy collective The New York Neo-Futurists, the writer/performers of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, The Infinite Wrench, and a long roster of downtown performance pieces. For over fifteen years, she was on the acting faculty at NYU Tisch School of the Arts/Atlantic Acting School, teaching scene study for Atlantic’s NYU Studio and Professional Conservatory. For those programs, she also created the class Moment Lab, a study of chasing the sincere and unplanned moment in performance and deepening connection between actors and audience. She teaches performance and writing workshops across the country and internationally, including at the Williamstown Theater Festival, Austin Film Festival, London’s Central Film School, Hollins University MFA program in Berlin, On Time Productions in Mexico City, Brave Studios in Melbourne, Australia, and the U.S. State Department. As an actor, Jacquelyn was in the original cast of the U.S. premieres of Deaf West’s Orpheé, Anna Nicole the Opera at BAM/New York City Opera, John Guare’s 3 Kinds of Exileat the Atlantic Theater, Suzan Lori Parks’ 365 Days/365 Plays at The Public, and The Complete and Condensed Stage Directions of Eugene O’Neill, vol. 1, which was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for “Unique Theatrical Experience.” She created the musical fiction podcast It Makes A Sound, and produced its original soundtrack album, Wim Faros: the Attic Tape.