“Kelly’s monologue workshop taught me the power of my own story. Her guidance on creating effective drama, her concrete feedback on improving my work, the nurturing environment she created for participants and the excellent resources she brought to the table opened a whole new world for me. This was one of the most effective online classes I’ve taken.”
Actor Sally Nutt
Monologue & Solo Show Play Lab: Begins Nov. 30, 2017
Writing Dynamic Dramatic Monologues for Performance with Kelly DuMar
A Six-Month Online Play Lab via Zoom
Starts Thurs, November 30, 2017 8:00-9:30 p.m. (ET)
Meets monthly, 3rd Thursday of the month (except Nov.)
COST: $165.00 (for the entire 6 month series)
REGISTER: E-mail Kelly kellydumar@gmail.com to arrange payment or ask questions
Whether or you’re interested in developing a single monologue for performance or a one-person show, this online Play Lab facilitated by playwright Kelly DuMar, will provide a group process that will help you develop powerful dramatic monologues that are personally meaningful, artistically satisfying, and relevant and engaging for an audience. Everyone will participate through Zoom videoconference from your computer, where you’ll present your monologue and discuss with participants. Our lab discussions & feedback process will explore elements of dramatic structure, including theatricality, the role of conflict, plot, communicating subtext, voice, narrative, and the importance of set-up and how to get your monologue produced. New writing will be generated in and out of the play lab, shared in our monthly meetings, and aspects of revision will be presented.
ABOUT KELLY DUMAR
Kelly is a poet, playwright and workshop facilitator from the Boston area. Her award winning plays are produced around the US and are published by dramatic publishers. Kelly founded and produces the Our Voices Festival of Women Playwrights at Wellesley College, now in its 11th year, and leads a variety of workshops for writers across the US. Kelly teaches Your Memoir as Monologue online for the Transformative Language Arts Association. She’s on the board & faculty of The International Women’s Writing Guild and produces the IWWG Summer Conference Play Lab and the Annual Boston Regional Writing From Your Life Retreat. She’s author of two poetry chapbooks, All These Cures, (Lit House Press), and Tree of the Apple, (Two of Cups Press). Her poems and prose are published in many literary journals. Closer to home, Kelly facilitates a weekly writing workshop for women, the Farm Pond Writer’s Collective, now in its third year. Kelly is a certified psychodramatist and a Fellow in the American Society for Group Psychotherapy & Psychodrama and a Playback Theatre practitioner.
What Inspires Kelly to Teach Monologues -
An Interview with the Transformative Language Arts Blog
What inspires you to teach this lab:
I love monologues. Listening to them, helping others write them, and writing them myself. First person narratives are gripping invitations to audiences, particularly when they present a dramatic journey, and moments of survival of someone – a person, a character – who has enlisted my compassion and concern.
Don’t you love the invitation to enchantment? The theatre, darkened, the stage lit. Whether I’m in the audience or the playwright, I’m involved and transported by possibility. The theatrical question, What if. . . is an invitation to be enlightened, and changed through storytelling.
I love helping writers tell powerful stories on the stage – particularly those whose voices and stories have been unheard, silenced, trivialized or marginalized. Eleven years ago, I founded a play festival, Our Voices, for new and experienced women playwrights to have a uniquely supportive place to develop their stories for the stage. Our Voices is an all day play lab that has supported nearly 150 women playwrights to develop plays with actors and directors. I love how one participant last year describes her experience in Our Voices, because she nails why writing monologues based on life experience can be so validating:
“Writing is my solace and joy, coming to me in bursts of laughter or darkness. I have stories to tell yet, at times, I shrink from sharing, doubting my own voice. Through more workshops and conversation, I hope to strengthen that confidence in my point of view and reinvigorate the process to write the things I don’t yet dare to consider.”
How is writing for the page different from writing for the stage?
Collaboration with other artists is illuminating, joyful, and challenging – and writing for the stage requires it. Sitting day to day at one’s desk can be lonely. But writing for the stage invites us into a theatre – a rehearsal, into a relationship with actors, directors, and audiences. Here’s what an Our Voices participant shared about writing for the stage:
“One of the things I love most about writing plays is the possibility of witnessing one’s words and dramatic vision come alive on stage.”
Writing monologues for the stage makes the healing power of writing visible, visceral and accessible – not just for the playwright, but the audience as well. People are so amazingly resilient! Writing monologues for the stage is a natural way to find out how resilient you are – and sharing what you write inspires other people to feel hopeful and resilient.
What are some of your favorite dramatic monologues?
My favorite is definitely Emily Webb’s “Goodbye,” monologue in Thornton Wilder’s classic play, Our Town. What moves me in a dramatic monologue is when a character goes on a compelling emotional journey and takes me with her – she begins in one place and ends in another – she’s more awakened, and so am I. Watch these Youtube videos of two different performances of the Emily Webb role – the first is from a movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCLHkaHOO80
Here’s the same monologue in a recording of a stage performance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmCnzU5uZUY
What can students in this class expect?
We need spaces where we can give ourselves permission to un-silence our deepest truths and most authentic self. In Memoir as Monologue, I facilitate a safe, supportive, healing environment for writers to tap into their deep feelings and beliefs and find the courage and skill to share them for personal growth and craft them for performance. Participants can expect to express ordinary and extraordinary life experiences, and feelings and construct powerful, dramatic stories with universal appeal.
Praise for Kelly’s Monologue & Playwriting Workshops
“Memoir as Monologue taught me the power of my own story. Kelly's guidance on creating effective drama, her concrete feedback on improving my work, the nurturing environment she created for participants and the excellent resources she brought to the table opened a whole new world for me. This was one of the most effective online classes I've taken.”
“Kelly provided excellent resources, offered valuable, timely feedback, sought our feedback as the course progressed and created a nurturing atmosphere. The opportunity to both write and hone monologues and then hear our work performed by a professional actress exceeded my expectations of the class. I learned the freedom monologues offer in contrast to writing.”
“[I learned] better ways to approach monologue than the ways I'd been trying; liked that I cracked open a tough nut of a story in a new way, identifying the core problem Narrator needed to solve (which was different from the problem she was trying to solve).”
“Thank you so much for guiding us all into a most wondrous experience . . . and your attentive intelligence in keeping us on track and focused as each shared and bared depths.”
“Your class was awesome, inspiring and so very insightful. What gifts you bring and give. Thank you!”
“Your memoir-to-monologue class has inspired a whole new project. Thank you. And thanks to my classmates. I learned so much from each of you.”
“Thank you for creating such a collaborative atmosphere of mutual support.”