Generative Playwriting with the Internal and External World PART 1.5 (with Leslie Gauthier on Zoom)

In this course, students will be given generative, low-stakes writing exercises meant to reveal settings, characters, dialogue, and images in order to excavate and encourage exciting and raw first drafts. From the first draft, students will be given revision tools and guidance on how to form those raw materials into a story for the stage.

This course stands alone, but it pairs well with Generative Playwriting with the Internal and External World PART 1. If you are a returning student, the difference between the first and second class will be that we discuss effective and positive ways to give and receive feedback. So this second course will be both generative and feedback-focused. You can take this course without having taken the first course. All are welcome!

Leslie Gauthier is a playwright and screenwriter. Her plays include Elsewhere (semifinalist Rattlestick’s Terrence McNally New Works Incubator, semifinalist LaMama Experiments in Playwriting),  Cul-de-Sac (AFF second-rounder, Terrence McNally New Works semifinalist), and Greetings! From the Mojave (BAM, September 2024). She earned her MFA in Playwriting from Brooklyn College in 2024, and is a recent recipient of the Rona Jaffe Fellowship and Himan Brown award for creative writing. Her prose has appeared in The New York Times and Paste Magazine. Her screenplay, Buena Vista, is a semifinalist at Cascadia Intl Women’s Film Festival, and her first feature, Grand Island is a quarter finalist in the ISA’s Emerging Screenwriter’s Drama Competition. Previously, Leslie attended Fordham University for acting and directing, trained at MXAT, and studied contemporary French theater with NYU in Paris. She’s held residencies at SPACE on Ryder Farm (2017, 2019, 2022) and CourCommune in Voulx, Fr. (2019, 2023). She survived leukemia in her early 20’s. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner, playwright and screenwriter, C.A. Johnson, and their rescue dog and kitten.