Molly is happy to announce that she has survived the nine-day Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive in Washington, DC, and come away inspired, her sleeve full of technical tricks she can’t wait to to deploy not only in her plays, but also in the sequel-in-progress to Satan’s Chamber. Theatre is a supremely collaborative art, and thus the daily workshops and discussions were led by theatre professionals of all sorts–Broadway playwrights, costume designers, directors, and dramaturgs. A company of superb actors lent its talents as well. The repeated theme of the conference echoed Fuze’s mission statement: how can we tell our stories as powerfully as possible?
The Playwriting Intensive selected 60 participants from 300 applications and was held in the Theatre Lab and rehearsal rooms of the Kennedy Center, along with a coffee shop across the street called Cup’a Cup’a, where Molly caught several sightings of a mouse-in-residence (not the computer kind). There were on-the-spot writing exercises, and nightly homework assignments based on actors’ improvisations, stage directions, selected photos, and design challenges. As a former professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, Molly called it “plebe summer for playwrights.”
