October 6 – Saturday from 2:00
to 4:00 PM
Cost: $10
Giving Voice: A Theater Writing Workshop
Social justice begins with giving voice.
Writers and non-writers are welcome in the safe and warm atmosphere
of this workshop where we will
explore what makes a good monologue dramatically satisfying, and
how it
can be used on its own, or as part of a larger theater piece. We
will take time
to write and to reflect. If you are working on a monologue, please
bring it
with you, or come start a new one. Personal and issue-oriented
writing is
welcome. The workshop is presented by Irene O’Garden, nationally
recognized, award winning author, poet, and playwright from Minneapolis,
and New York City. Irene is the author of Little Heart,
the play about
Corita Kent’s life and work, making its Midwest Regional
Premier
as part of the Bright Bird exhibition and collaborative project
with Theater B, Presentation Sisters, People Escaping Poverty Project,
and the Spirit
Room Gallery. The project is designed to bring new voices in our
community into the human rights and social justice dialogue, and
to
reinvigorate those already in the work. |
IRENE O’GARDEN is again included in Who’s Who of American
Women, in the 2007 edition. Her critically-acclaimed play, Women
On Fire, starrring Judith Ivey, was twice extended and played
to sold-out houses Off Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre. It was nominated
for a 2004 Lucille Lortel award for Best Solo Show, and is published by
Samuel French. Two of its monologues are published in Best Women’s
Stage Monologues 2004. Her new play, Little Heart,
won her a Berilla Kerr Playwriting Fellowship and was awarded full development
at the 2005 New Harmony Play Project. The play has had readings in New
York and at Harvard and will be read in Los Angeles in early March.
O’Garden’s writing is anthologized with Eleanor Roosevelt, Maya Angelou,
Gloria Steinem and others in The Greatness Of Girls (Andrews
McMeel) Included is an excerpt from her book, Fat Girl, which
describes how she came to peace with food and body after a decades-long struggle.
Harper San Francisco published it in hardcover with her drawings, and O’Garden
has performed it throughout the US and Canada.
O’Garden won the Gold Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Best Book Award 2004 for
her latest children’s book,The
Scrubbly Bubbly Car Wash (Harper). Her first children's book, Maybe
My Baby, (Harper) has sold over 80,000 copies.
Irene’s poetry is found in literary journals and anthologies such as CALYX, College
English, Skylark, The Rockford Review, Whiskey Island
Review, She has taught poetry workshops at New York City schools (including
Trinity and Wadleigh) as well as schools in the Hudson Valley, and has presented
at Children’s Literature Conferences at NYU and Vassar College. Poets and
Writers has awarded her several grants for poetry performance throughout the
Hudson Valley. She has also performed her poetry at the Bowery Poetry Club, Nuyorican
Poetry Café and with actress Ruby Dee as one of four “Exceptional
Women Poets” at The Player’s Club in Manhattan. Irene has been awarded
several residences at artists’ colonies throughout the country, most recently
at The Millay Colony.
She lives joyfully with John Pielmeier, her husband of twenty-nine years. Most
known for his play “Agnes of God,” John also writes movies for television.
They make their home in Garrison, New York. Please visit www.ireneogarden.com.
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