PLAYWRITING LAB | July 4 – 14, 2022
Instructed by GUILLERMO VERDECCHIA
Summer programs will be offered online due to COVID-19.
Applications for the
2022 Spring & Summer Adult Programs are now closed.
Application Fee: $25
Tuition: $595
Shaping Your Play: crafting dramatic moments
is a facilitated course for six playwrights who wish to further develop their playwriting skills and may have had works produced. You do not need to be published to attend. The course will focus on works in progress and will combine group discussion, writing time, and individual critiques. Instruction occurs within a deep-immersion setting over 10 days. Application is open to writers 19 years of age and older from Canada and abroad.
“Sage Hill has not only changed my life as a writer, but also as a person. Being part of a Sage Hill retreat connects you with other writers, allowing you to move forward in your own individual project–with focus and concerted effort–over a ten day period. The small groups of like-minded and skilled writers mean that you can go off, do your writing on your own, and then receive really beneficial feedback about your work on a daily basis. ”
– Kim Fahner, 2021 Playwriting Lab Alum
“Even virtual, Sage Hill is still magical.”
– Kelley Jo Burke, 2021 Playwriting Lab Alum
Playwriting workshop application packages must include:
- A brief letter outlining your writing project, including:
– goals
– where you are in your process
– how you would work on your project while at Sage Hill
– any other pertinent information - Twelve pages of your writing. The writing sample can be works-in-progress that you plan to develop while at Sage Hill (at least 7 pages), and/or samples of your produced or published work(s)
- Your literary/dramatic CV
Click here for information on tuition
Click here for information on scholarships & bursaries
with Guillermo Verdecchia
Guillermo Verdecchia is a writer of drama and fiction as well as a director, dramaturge, translator, and actor. He is the recipient of a Governor-General’s Award for Drama for his play Fronteras Americanas and a four-time winner of the Chalmers Canadian Play Award. His work, which includes The Art of Building a Bunker (with Adam Lazarus), the Governor-General shortlisted Noam Chomsky Lectures (with Daniel Brooks), the Seattle Times’ Footlight Award-winning Adventures of Ali & Ali (with Marcus Youssef and Camyar Chai), A Line in the Sand (with Marcus Youssef), bloom, and Another Country has been recorded, anthologized, translated into Spanish and Italian, produced in Europe and the US, and is studied in Latin America, Australia, Europe, and North America.
As a director and actor he has worked at theatres across Canada, from the Stratford Festival, where he directed Sunil Kuruvilla’s Rice Boy, to Vancouver’s East Cultural Centre, where he has presented several original works including Ali & Ali: The Deportation Hearings. He has also directed for Soulpepper Theatre — the critically acclaimed production of The Royale – and the Tarragon Theatre – The Jungle written by two of his former students (Toronto Critics’ Award for Best New Play).
He has also served as dramaturg on Sarena Parmar’s The Orchard at the Shaw Festial and David Yee’s Governor-General’s Award nominated Lady in the Red Dress, which was produced by Fu-gen Theatre. Former Director of New Play Development at Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre, Guillermo served as dramaturge for numerous plays and productions including Vern Theissen’s multi-award winning adaptation of Sommerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, and Anthony MacMahon’s adaptation of Animal Farm. He has translated plays by Lorca and is particularly fond of Once 5 Years Pass.
He has an M.A. from the University of Guelph where he received a Governor-General’s Gold Medal for Academic Achievement. He has published a number of scholarly articles and contributed book chapters on aspects of intercultural theatre practice in Canada, and teaches regularly at the University of Toronto.
His most recent work includes A Good Place for Factory Theatre and an adaptation of the 12th Century Sufi poem The Parliament of the Birds, which was featured in Soulpepper’s audio program Around the World in 80 Plays. His play Our Heart Learns opened in Genoa in the fall of 21, and he is working on a new play provisionally entitled Galicia (all that is solid …).
ONLINE SUMMER SCHEDULE ELEMENTS
- Classes usually meet for 1 to 2 hours each day.
- Sessions will likely take place in the late morning / early afternoon, to accommodate the various time zones of the writers taking each course.
- Some classes may instead meet every second day if more writing time is needed between sessions.
- Each writer will also have 1-on-1 sessions scheduled with their instructor throughout the program.
- Faculty and participant readings, as well as other social activities, will take place at 5 pm CST.
- Other optional activities will be scheduled around class times.
- With online retreats, we understand that writers may continue to have responsibilities at home. We’ve found that the more time writers put into the program, including time set aside for personal writing and working with feedback received on their writing, the more they get out of the experience!
“This experience was extremely beneficial and I am excited to partake again in the future.”
– Natasha Urkow, 2021 Playwriting Lab Alum
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Q & A with Guillermo Verdecchia
1) What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
GLV: “It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play” Miles Davis. In other words, what you leave out is as important as what you put in. If something is well constructed or well-written, there are ‘gaps’ – you don’t tell (or show) your audience everything. This allows your audience to make connections, they fill in those ‘gaps’ based on what you have provided. These moments of intellection, of discovery and understanding bring a play to life. When I was working on one of my very first plays. Daniel Libman, dramaturge at ATP, told me: you can cut some lines, replace them with a silence and leap to the next thought. That was eye-opening. Suddenly, moments and scenes became much more exciting, dynamic, dramatic. This may not be the best advice I ever received but it has been important. Though I have to say, as a Latin American, I appreciate the power and value of baroque excess as much as minimalist understatement. That may seem like a contradiction. Maybe it is. But contradiction is important too. Look at Brecht’s characters …
2) What’s the best short story or book you’ve recently read?
GLV: I’ve just finished Colson Whitehead’s novels: Harlem Shuffle and Underground Railroad. Loved them. He’s terrific: the writing is deceptively unfussy but it’s smart, compelling and moving. And a while ago, I read Tawfiq al-Hakim’s one-act Death Song. Knocked me out. Oh, and I’m reading Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet right now and wondering why it took me so long to get to him. It’s fantastic: quiet and dreamy and funny and so perceptive.
3) How do you tackle writer’s block?
GLV: Not sure I’ve ever had writer’s block. But when I do get stuck, I try to identify where the problem is. Is it in the piece or is it me? I might set myself some related tasks, research, diagrams, beat sheets. I might leave the thing for a bit and let my ‘unconscious’ solve the problem.
4) What character in literature do you relate to the most and why?
GLV: Don’t think there’s a character I relate to but I did feel that Deborah Levy’s The Man Who Saw Everything somehow captured something like how I experience the world. It had nothing to do with my life experience but somehow I felt very at home in the novel’s world, preoccupations, characters.
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Bursaries and Financial Support
Click here for information on scholarships & bursaries
Writers are frequently successful at securing artists’ grants and/or external professional development funding to attend Sage Hill Writing, we recommend exploring your funding options.
Here’s a place to start!