An Introduction to Playwriting

Is the registration fee an obstacle for you to attend this workshop? Fishtrap offers a limited number of scholarships to help with the cost. Contact Program Director Mike Midlo for more information. mike@fishtrap.org

Have you ever wanted to try to write a play? Are you a new writer, just finding your voice, or an experienced fiction or non-fiction writer or poet who wants to try a different form?

In four dynamic and interactive two-hour sessions, award-winning playwright E. M. Lewis will cover all the fundamentals of playwriting. Writing exercises will allow you to explore the building blocks of this very specific type of writing — action, setting, character, dialogue and more. You’ll read examples from plays both classic and current to clarify each lesson. The class will focus on craft, but touch upon practical aspects such as formatting your play, and how to find productions for your work.

This class is online — so join us from wherever you are for a fast and fun exploration of how to write for the stage!

M. Lewis is an award-winning playwright, teacher, lyricist, and opera librettist. Her work has been produced around the world, and published by Samuel French. She received the Steinberg Award for How the Light Gets In and Song of Extinction and the Primus Prize for Heads from the American Theater Critics Association, the Ted Schmitt Award from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle for outstanding writing of a world premiere play, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a playwriting fellowship from the New Jersey State Arts Commission, the 2016 Oregon Literary Fellowship in Drama, and an Edgerton Award for her epic Antarctic play Magellanica that was produced at Artists Repertory Theater in 2018 and released as a five-part audio podcast in 2020.  Other plays by Lewis include: Apple Season (National New Play Network rolling world premiere), The Gun Show (more than fifty productions across the country; Edinburgh Fringe), True Story, Dorothy’s Dictionary, You Can See All the Stars (a play for college students commissioned by the Kennedy Center), and Apple Hunters! Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Fallen Giant, a new opera commissioned by American Lyric Theater that Lewis wrote with composer Evan Meier, premiered at Opera Modesto in 2024.

She is now working on a big new play called The Frankenstein Project, which will have a workshop production at Florida Atlantic University in spring 2025.  Lewis is currently part of the Mellon Foundation’s National Playwright Residency Program, and is a proud member of LineStorm Playwrights, Opera America, and the Dramatists Guild. She teaches at Lesley University, and lives on her family’s farm in Oregon.

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