The 2021 Day by Day Conference Schedule

ALL CONFERENCE TIMES ARE CENTRAL TIME ZONE

Tuesday, June 1 2021

10:30AM-12:00PM
WORKSHOP SESSION 2

John J. Caswell Jr.
Getting Personal: Writing What you Know: Writing a play requires
vulnerability regardless of subject matter. But it can be especially
challenging when we more directly address private traumas, belief
systems, and relationships through our work. Using exercises based in
abstraction and controlled obfuscation, as well as anecdotal discussions
about making deeply personal work, we will explore ways to find a safe and
fruitful proximity to challenging and close-to-home subject matter.

Eugenie Chan
Heaven & Hell: Sometimes you need a little bit of the sublime and the profane
to jumpstart a play. Have fun with extremes in this scene writing workshop.

Mashuq Mushtaq Deen
The Gaze and How It Affects Your Work: A workshop about deepening
your understanding of how your work is seen by an audience. Who is
your imagined audience, and who is your actual audience? How do you
understand the lens through which they look at your work? What is the
male gaze? What is the white gaze? What is the dominant gaze? What is
an American gaze? How does this affect how your work is encountered?
Conversation will be punctuated with writing exercises.

Tony Meneses
Storytelling is just good gossip: As much as we pride ourselves on our craft and
ingenuity, we also need to acknowledge that audiences love to clutch their
pearls—whether at our storytelling, characterization, or even just aesthetic
choices. I’m sure we all remember when we’ve been actually thrilled at the
theater, and what can we learn from and apply to our own work from these
moments? Art is always the goal, but we must admit we love it when things
get juicy onstage. How can we surprise and innovate and literally give folx
something to talk about? Please think about your own play as reference as we
diagnose where that good gossip might already permeate.

Jiehae Park
Musical forms for playwrights: We’ll consider musical forms and figures as
possible jumping off points for the shape of a play, and experiment with
texts as scores. (No formal music training necessary).

12:00PM-12:45PM
BREAK

12:45PM-3:55PM
The Hall of Final Ruin
by Kelly McBurnette-Andronicos
PlayLab and Response Session
Someday, the ‘madrina’ of 19th century Santa Fe would like to die a good
Catholic death and be buried in her beloved church, La Parrochia. But Death is
coming sooner than she thinks and the arrival of a needy Protestant, a fortune
in gold, and the invasion of the American Army complicate her perfect exit into
Purgatory. In order to save her family from ruin and earn her way into Heaven,
the gambler must orchestrate a final, high-stakes card game in which all is both
lost and won.

Director:
Ellen Struve
Stage Directions:
Francisco Franco

Cast:
DOÑA SEBASTIANA: Leah Cárdenas
LAS TULES: Marina Rosado
CARMELITA: Alyssa Gonzalez
RALLITOS: Ximena Herrera
PILAR: Juana Marcos
SISTER JANE: Laura Leininger-Campbell

Responders:
Mashuq Mushtaq Deen, Michael John Garcés
Dramaturg:
Martine Kei Green-Rogers
Designer:
Paul Vaillancourt

3:55PM-4:15PM
BREAK

4:15PM-6:30PM
BURNBABYBURN: An American Dream
by a.k. payne
PlayLab and Response Session

Sky II returns home from college unsure of her own voice. Seeking answers,
she turns to her grandmother, a person she has never met in the flesh, with
whom she shares a name. Sky and Sky II — two Black American women of
the same lineage, born in the second half of the 20th century — exist together
across boundaries of time, space, life and death. Sky II embarks on a journey to
reclaim her grandmother’s story, and through this, to demand the right to name
and actualize the dreams she has for her own life.

Director:
Beaufield Berry-Fisher
Stage Directions:
Jake Benton

Cast:
SKY: Katherine MacHolmes
WILLIAM: Anthony Holiday
JOYNER: Marcel Daly
MYRNA: Paula Bell
SKY II: Xena Broaden
CHAR: Breanna Carodine

Responders:
Eugenie Chan, Kia Corthron
Dramaturg:
Martine Kei Green-Rogers
Designer:
Pamela López Maldonado