Adult Playwriting Workshop
With Abigail Drach
August 2&3, 2025
10am-4:30pm (with a 30 min break)
Is there anything more mysterious than a play? How does an idea in someone's head become words on a page and then transform into life embodied on a stage that moves its audience to cry and to laugh and to rage and to think? In this weekend workshop, we will explore just that. Everyone is welcome—whether you are a novice or experienced, whether you have an idea you've been dying to explore or you don't know where to start. We will cover the basics of formatting, setting the stage, narrative structure, characterization, and dialogue by drawing on examples from the canon such as: Lorraine Hansberry, Thorton Wilder, Arthur Miller, and Tony Kushner. Participants will also have ample time to develop, write, and workshop a scene from anywhere in their play. Everyone will have an opportunity to receive feedback from the workshop leader and from the other participants. By the end of the weekend, each participant will have a fleshed-out concept for a play and several pages of a draft to continue writing if they so desire and a strong sense of how to develop ideas into a script in the future.
Abigail Drach is a NYC-based writer, scholar, and lifelong theater-lover. She has worked as an actor, theater educator, and high school English teacher in addition to organizing an international conference for women playwrights and writing/staging several plays of her own. She earned her BA in Theater and Gender studies from McGill University, her MA in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, and she is starting her PhD in Comparative Literature at Rutgers University in the fall. You can find her work in the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Journal (Winter 2022), The Mixtape Project (February 2025), and Doubly Mad Journal (April 2025).
Sliding Scale Pricing
If you are able to pay at the middle or higher rate, the difference goes directly into our financial aid fund and helps other families access NEYT programming.
$200
$150 with coupon code WRITE150
$100 with coupon code WRITE100
To apply for financial aid use coupon code ANGELS to register for $25 and fill out the application.
For payment plans contact Michelle Meima at support@neyt.org