American University’s Professor of Theatre and established playwright, Caleen Jennings, will instruct a one-day workshop on the elements of playwriting and how to get your work seen.

Using the techniques she shared at the Kennedy Center’s Playwrights Intensive, Caleen’s exercises in this workshop will span various writing skill levels.

This workshop will focus on addressing “how to get started” in the Play-writing industry, and follow with “what to do” once drafts are in place.
After the workshop, Caleen will take time to discuss and review currently written works-so bring additional scripts for this special chance to work one on one with our visiting artist.

Training with Caleen is an opportunity you do not want to miss! Read below for more information about this teacher!

About the Instructor
CALEEN SINNETTE JENNINGS is an actor, director, playwright.
She is a Professor of Theatre in the Department of Performing Arts at American University in Washington, D.C. where she joined the faculty in 1989. Jennings teaches Acting, Directing, Playwriting, Voice & Speech, Acting Shakespeare, Theatre History, Children’s Theatre and 6 different courses in General Education. She also directs for main stage including productions of Othello, Richard III, Much Ado About Nothing, Measure for Measure, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In 2003, she received A.U.’s Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award and in 1997 she received A.U.’s award for Outstanding Scholarship, Research and other Professional Activities. She has been a faculty member of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Teaching Shakespeare Institute since 1994. She is a founding member of The Welders, a D.C. Playwrights’ Collective. Dramatic Publishing Company has published eight of her plays, and her work has appeared in seven play anthologies. In 2015, the Kennedy Center commissioned her to write a stage adaptation of Walter Dean Myers’ novel, Darius & Twig, which was produced at the Kennedy Center Family Theatre and did a national tour in 2017. Her play, Queens Girl in the World, did an extended run at Theatre J. in 2015. She was commissioned to write part 2, Queens Girl in Africa, for Mosaic Theatre in 2018. In May/June 2019, the two plays run in repertory at Everyman Theatre in Baltimore, Maryland. Everyman has also commissioned Caleen to write part 3 of the Queens Girl Trilogy, entitled, Queens Girl: Black in the Green Mountains, which will debut in 2020. Caleen was commissioned to write Hear. Eye. Stand for Roundhouse Theatre’s Teen Performing Company, which debuted in March 2019. Her work has also been produced by Imagination Stage, The Folger, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Horizons Theatre and The Source Theatre Company. Caleen has received five nominations for outstanding new play from the Helen Hayes Awards and play writing awards from the Kennedy Center and The Actor’s Theatre of Louisville. Jennings graduated from Bennington College with a B.A. in Drama, and received her M.F.A. in Acting from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Playwriting with Caleen Jennings