Artistic Director James Beaudry and Chicago-based Director Jess McLeod are pleased to announce the 10th Annual Summer Playwrights Lab to be held at Timber Lake Playhouse in Mt. Carroll, Illinois AUGUST 20-24, 2011.  A five day residency at Timber Lake’s tranquil, wooded location is just the thing you need to fine tune your current play or musical, finish a work in progress, or start pounding out that new script idea.

Each day the Playwrights Lab will offer intimate workshops and seminars, readings of portions of your script, private one-on-one instruction … and time to write.

Housing and Prepared Meals are provided for participants.

CLASSES
Every day will offer a lengthy period of time to focus on writing in this wooded, rural setting. Daily workshops will include readings of a portion of your script, followed by a discussion with your fellow playwrights and instructor Jess McLeod.  These discussions will emphasize clarity of structure, style and content. There will also be private, one-on-one dramaturgical coaching with the instructor. These sessions will allow writers to ask specific questions on the overall piece and get feedback on the entire script. Timber Lake’s Artistic Director James Beaudry will also discuss your play from a producer’s viewpoint: its marketability in respect to style, content and production requirements.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR Jess McLeod recently finished her graduate studies in directing at Northwestern. Prior to that, she served as the Director of Programming at The New York Musical Theatre Festival, the world’s largest annual musical theatre event, from 2005-08, where she oversaw the evaluation of 400+ new musicals per year and the curation of all festival selections. McLeod strove to make NYMF a productive and encouraging resource for emerging writers, meeting with semi-finalists personally, downsizing the number of selected shows to better support each show, and adding a Dramaturg Team to act as a smart, helpful sounding board for festival writers as they struggled to balance producing with rewrites. Before NYMF, she worked in the Creative Department of Jujamcyn Theaters under Jack Viertel and Rocco Landesman and evaluated scripts for literary departments all over New York, including Summer Play Festival, Miramax, NAMT and for Broadway director Jerry Zaks. She also directed several world premieres, including a multimedia adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s dark novella The Corn Maiden with Justin Swain; at NU, she directed Venus, co-produced by Steppenwolf Theatre Company, In Trousers, Mourning Becomes Electra and several new plays through “Master Clash,” the MFA Writer/Director short play festival she created with NU alum Greg Hundemer.  McLeod is currently at work on two new musicals and the utterly non-musical Untitled Ayn Rand/Alan Greenspan Project.

DATES/LOCATION
Saturday, August 20th through Wednesday, August 24th in Mt. Carroll, Illinois — 140 miles from the Chicago Loop, in northwestern Illinois.  The theatre’s address is 8215 Black Oak Rd, Mt. Carroll, IL 61053.

FEE
Timber Lake is offering the low registration fee of only $300 for five full, all-inclusive days.  $60 per day includes your lodging, all meals, workshops, private instruction, welcome reception and a ticket to Timber Lake PLayhouse’s production of The Spitfire Grill. A discount of $50 is available to members of The Playwrights Network (Chicago), The Playwrights’ Center (Minneapolis), the Dramatists Guild of America, The Playwrights Collective, students with a valid ID, and playwrights returning from previous TLP colonies.  (This fee is for shared cabins.  If you wish to secure a private cabin, the cost is $10 additional per day, or an additional $50 for the entire colony.)

APPLICATION PROCESS
Space is limited to 10 writers. To apply, please email a cover letter of interest and a 10 page writing sample (or completed script, if you have one) to TLP Artistic Director James Beaudry at:  jpbeaudry@timberlakeplayhouse.org

You will be notified upon acceptance and your fees will be due at that time to reserve your slot.  (Application may be waived by James Beaudry or Jess McLeod if either is already familiar with your work.  You may contact them if you seek this waiver.)

Fees should be mailed to:

Timber Lake Playhouse
Attn:  Playwrights Lab
8215 Black Oak Rd.
Mt. Carroll, IL  61053

Space is limited.  Applications are being accepted immediately!

For registration or more information,
contact James Beaudry
Phone: (815) 244-2044
E-mail: jpbeaudry@timberlakeplayhouse.org