Building Portals Through Playwriting
Writer/Producer Kristiana Rae Colón guides this intimate cohort in visioning alternate futures through storytelling & empathetic characters.
Course Summary
The map to a new world is written by collective imagination. Writer and Producer Kristiana Rae Colón guides this intimate cohort in visioning alternate futures through storytelling and infusing characters with empathy and heart. Join us on a journey that includes generative writing prompts to start or continue a new play, mindful creativity to nurture your inner artist, and individualized feedback on your works in progress.
Sessions: 1-3:30P EST / 12-2:30P CST / 10A-12:30P PST
#1: 7/12/2025
#2: 7/19/2025
#3: 8/10/2025
#4: 9/6/2025
#5: 9/13/2025
#6: 9/20/2025
Kristiana Rae Colón
is a poet, playwright, actor, educator, Cave Canem Fellow, creator of #BlackSexMatters, and co-director of the #LetUsBreathe Collective. She was awarded the 2017 Best Black Playwright by The Black Mall. Past works include Good Friday (world premiere Oracle Productions, 2016), Octagon (world premiere Arcola Theatre, London, 2015; American premiere Jackalope Theatre, 2016), but I cd only whisper (world premiere Arcola Theatre, London, 2012; American premiere The Flea, New York, 2016). In 2013, she toured the UK for two months with her collection of poems Promised Instruments, winner of the inaugural Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize and published by Northwestern University Press. Kristiana is an alum of the Goodman Theatre's Playwrights Unit, where she developed her play Florissant & Canfield, which debuted at the University of Illinois-Chicago in February 2018. Her play Tilikum opened in June 2018 with Sideshow Theater and was the winner of Outstanding New Play at the ALTA Awards. She is a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists and one-half of the brother/sister hip-hop duo April Fools. She appeared on the fifth season of HBO's Def Poetry Jam. Kristiana’s writing, producing, and organizing work to radically reimagine power structures, our complicity in them, and visions for liberation.
I don't care what anybody says. Stick to the spirit of the play and you're doing it right. It's about embracing the spirit of the text instead of noodling some idea about things.
Suzan-Lori Parks
I don't care what anybody says. Stick to the spirit of the play and you're doing it right. It's about embracing the spirit of the text instead of noodling some idea about things.
Suzan-Lori Parks
