Please note that this will be an IN-PERSON event. 

The Guild's Education Committee is planning a week’s worth of online events November 9 - 13, all centered around the topic of stage directions! 

To whet your appetites for that week of programming, we are kicking things off with an in-person event, hosted by the Guild’s Northeast Region Council member, and chair of the Education Committee, Stephen Kaplan.

Stage directions are some of the most overlooked—and most frequently ignored—words a playwright writes. So how do we make them impossible to ignore? This interactive workshop invites dramatists to rethink stage directions not as technical instructions, but as an essential part of their voice and storytelling.

Through lively examples and hands-on exercises, we’ll explore how great stage directions can shape rhythm, reveal character, land a joke, create theatrical possibility, and protect moments that matter without telling directors and actors how to do their jobs. We’ll look at when specificity is essential and when giving collaborators room to play can make the work stronger. Participants will experiment with making their own directions more active, playable, concise, surprising, and unmistakably theirs, leaving with practical tools for writing stage directions that actors and directors won’t want to skip.

This event may be recorded to share at a later date.  In-person capacity is limited, please RSVP to reserve your seat.