Press Release: Take a Class With ELLE Senior Staff Writer R. Eric Thomas in Philly
PlayPenn, Philadelphia’s artist-driven organization dedicated to the development of new plays and playwrights, has teamed up with R. Eric Thomas, Senior Staff Writer for ELLE Magazine (known for his “Eric Reads the News” column) and winner of the 2016 Barrymore Best New Play Award for his work TIME IS ON OUR SIDE, to present an innovative and fun seminar designed to unlock the creative writer in any of us. Thomas, along with Yale-Horn Drama winning playwright Jacqueline
The event, part of Theatre Philadelphia’s Philly Theatre Week, is perfect for anyone who has ever been curious about leading a writing-infused creative life. Jacqueline and Eric will share some of their favorite (and effective) writing exercises, plus will provide expert advice and insider tips for building confidence while composing plays. They will also discuss different paths to building lives as writers and theater makers.
R. Eric Thomas is a Barrymore Award-winning playwright, the long-running host of The Moth in Philadelphia and D.C., and he is a Senior Staff Writer for Elle.com where he writes “Eric Reads the News,” a daily current events and culture column. He is the recipient of a 2017 National New Play Network commission and is at work on his debut memoir-in-essays, entitled Here For It, which will be published by Ballantine Books in 2019. With over a million social media shares, Eric’s ELLE.com column “Eric Reads the News” has quickly become an online humor staple. Covering pop culture, politics and current events, the column is a sardonic and sassy take on our world. Since its inception, it has been praised by such disparate personalities as Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mariah Carey, Maxine Waters, Tamron Hall, and Tituss Burgess.
Jacqueline Goldfinger won the Yale-Horn Drama Prize for Emerging Playwright, Smith Prize for Political Theater, Barrymore Award for Outstanding New Play and Philadelphia Critics Award for Best New Play. She was runner-up for the Ryan Prize, received a Commendation from the McNally Award, and was nominated for the Weissberger Award and Blackburn Prize. Her plays include BABEL, BOTTLE FLY, THE ARSONISTS, CLICK, and more. Her work is published by Yale Press, Samuel French, Playscripts, Blackbird Literary Magazine, and Smith & Kraus. She has worked on public art projects with Philadelphia Young Playwrights, FringeArts/Reading Terminal Market, Missing Bolts/After Orlando, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She teaches playwriting at the University of Pennsylvania and is the Director of Education at PlayPenn.
ART FOR ALL…will take place on February 18, 2018 from 4-5:30PM at Philadelphia Young Playwrights Learning Lab (1219 Vine Street, Floor 2, Philadelphia). Tickets are only $15 and can be purchased at theatrephiladelphia.org (direct link here: http://www.
SERVICE DETAILS
PlayPenn and Theatre Philadelphia present
ART FOR ALL: A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR LEADING A CREATIVE LIFE
featuring R. Eric Thomas and Jacqueline Goldfinger
February 18, 2018
4-5:30PM
Philadelphia Young Playwrights Learning Lab
1219 Vine Street, Second Floor, Philadelphia
$15
ABOUT PLAYPENN: PlayPenn, in its 14th year, is an artist-driven organization dedicated to the development of new plays and playwrights. PlayPenn fully supports the needs of the writer and the demands of the play in an ever-evolving process within which playwrights can engage in risk taking, boundary-pushing work. The organization’s flagship annual new play development conference and year-round development workshops in cooperation with producing theatres result in staged readings of at least 10 new plays each year for over 1,800 artists, producers, and theatergoers. Additionally, PlayPenn’s rapidly expanding educational programs—which include 17-20 in-person and online classes annually with notable instructors, application assistance, personalized dramaturgy services, plus The Foundry, a three-year membership group for emerging playwrights resident in Philadelphia—serve another 230+ playwrights from the region and across the nation. PlayPenn supports artists at all career stages across a broad spectrum of cultural, economic, ethnic, and gender experience. Since 2005, PlayPenn has helped to develop over 110 new plays from infancy to a state closer to production-readiness. Nearly 60% of these plays have gone on to more than 315 professional productions at esteemed institutions in the United States, Great Britain, and elsewhere around the world, including the London’s National Theatre, National Theatre of Israel, English Theatre Berlin, Roundabout Theatre, Lincoln Center Theatre, Atlantic Theatre, Second Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, LaJolla Playhouse, Denver Center Theatre, South Coast Repertory, and a host of theatres in the Philadelphia region, in cities across the country and around the world. In 2017, PlayPenn celebrated the first of its developed plays to hit a Broadway stage, and win a Tony Award—JT Rogers’ Oslo at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. Find out more at playpenn.org.
