Jen Silverman: 2021-2022 Ruth E. Flournoy Playwriting Fellow "

Tuesday, December 7 Workshop Via Zoom: 5:30 - 7:30 p.m.

To join Zoom meeting: https://wlu.zoom.us/j/92024802640

Turn and Face the Strange: Writing Non-Naturalistic Theatre

But what is absurd, or rather what is unusual, is first and foremost what exists: reality. [Eugene Ionesco]

This two-hour workshop focuses on theater as a particularly fertile ground for non-naturalistic story-telling. How can we defamiliarize the familiar? How do non-naturalistic approaches disarm an audience, or help disorient (and then reorient) them? In what ways can we access the political or emotional realities of our world by approaching them at an unexpected angle? Students will be lead through an intensive series of writing exercises aimed at developing their surrealist and absurdist instincts. Exercises will be interspersed with short readings from plays such as Caryl Churchill's Far Away or Young Jean Lee's monologue Yaggoo. Students don't need to know anything about absurdist theater, nor do they need to be self-declared playwrights; all they need is the willingness to go on a focused writing journey.


Jen Silverman is a New York-based playwright and writer. Her plays include Witch, Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties..., The Roommate, and The Moors, and have been produced off-Broadway, regionally, and internationally in countries including England, Australia, The Czech Republic, Spain, Switzerland and China. Her plays are published with Samuel French/ Concord Theatricals (US), Oberon Books (UK), and S. Fischer Verlag (Germany). Silverman is the author of The Island Dwellers, a collection of interlinked stories published by Random House and longlisted for the 2019 PEN America Literary Awards. Her debut novel We Play Ourselves was recently published by Random House, featured in the NY Times, and selected by O Magazine as an 'LGBTQ Book That Will Change the Literary Landscape.'

Her work has appeared in Vogue, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review, The Sun and LitHub among others. Silverman also writes for TV and film.

Education: Brown, Iowa Playwrights Workshop, Juilliard. More info: www.jensilverman.com

W&L Dance Master Class https://my.wlu.edu/theater-dance-and-film-studies/wandl-dance-masterclass-fall-2021-series

All individuals, including those who are fully vaccinated,
are expected to wear masks in public indoor spaces on W&L campus.