Want to give yourself a deadline for playwriting on a regular basis?
Want to help develop new plays and read new work?
We may have a group for you.
We were hoping to be doing this in person again but given the general spike in the pandemic, we're remaining online for now - a playwriting group that meets the first and third Monday of the month, starting September 20, 2021, and continuing through May of 2022. (Perhaps later on in the calendar we'll be meeting in one another's homes again, but for now...)
We're just trying to keep creative while we wait for theater to truly re-open on a large scale again. Looking for new blood, since both actors and writers tend to get busy in
cycles sometimes and we like to have a regular core of people to keep
the meetings well-attended and useful.
Material to be read could be scenes, could be an act, could be an entire
draft. We also throw out a writing challenge,
just in case people want to sharpen their teeth (or pencils, or
keyboards?) on something random, or use it to help jumpstart them past
writer's block.
We invite actor friends in to help us read (hence the call for actors as
well as writers). All are welcome to offer constructive feedback - it's
neither supposed to be a lovefest nor a feeding frenzy. We're here to
get better, but also to support one another. The idea is to get better
collectively, rather than at one another's expense. It's not a place for
fragile egos or manufactured personal drama (drama on the page only,
please).
Monday Group Manifesto
Six Things We Consider Important About The Group and How It Runs
-Monday Group will invite actors to attend meetings and read most roles.
Matthew will be the point dude for inviting actors, but all members
should feel free to invite actors if they want someone specific to read.
-Monday Group is and will remain a group of playwrights. While the focus
is on writing plays, members may bring any work that can be performed.
Long pieces of prose are not appropriate.
-Monday Group members will aim to bring work to every meeting they can
attend. Group members who are not pursuing individual projects will do a
homework exercise, designed by the host of the next meeting. Group
members are, however, not to waste any time beating themselves up if
they cannot always meet this goal.
-Monday Group will hold to the Roundtable guidelines for feedback, by
beginning the discussion with positive remarks and moving on to offer
constructive, specific criticism.
-Monday Group will recruit new members on a mentor system. If you have a
candidate for a new group member, after ascertaining the candidate's
interest, check in with the group about the person. If the group agrees,
bring the new person to a meeting and be willing to serve as their
guide.
-Monday Group is about supporting each other in our growth as writers.
We want to be, and recruit, writers who can learn from each other's
work, and who do work that is inspiring.
So if you’re interested in sitting in on a meeting to see if it's the kind of thing that could help your own creative process, reach out to Matthew online (blog, facebook, twitter, instagram, website, etc.)