Stage and Screen Conference

VCFA

Writing for Stage & Screen

Conference  

June 11-17, 2010

 

CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION

Are you a playwright or screenwriter looking for a way to take your script to the next stage of development? Whether that means completing a first draft, or polishing a fully developed piece, this conference is for you.

Professional playwrights, screenwriters, and teaching faculty will help you hone your script writing, and provide instruction on all levels of craft. You will also be assigned to a small workshop group that meets daily under the guidance of a professional in your field, to discuss manuscript excerpts submitted by group members.

Every play or movie begins with the writer. This conference focuses on the knowledge and skills basic to writing well-crafted scripts. You’ll also hear from exciting guest speakers, attend movie viewings and discussions, and make contacts with others in your field.

An optional one-on-one critique of your full manuscript is also available (see below for details).

SCHEDULE

The conference opens the evening of June 11, followed by five full days of workshops, lectures, viewings, discussions, and lively “holding forth” sessions with noted guests. Departure is the morning of June 17.

LOCATION

The Vermont College of Fine Arts is located on an historic campus overlooking the capital city of Montpelier. See directions at: www.vermontcollege.edu

REGISTRATION

Complete and return the attached registration form. If you prefer to register on- line, go to: http://www.vermontcollege.edu/stage-screen or

http://guest.cvent.com/i.aspx?1Q,M3,1634ea5b-dc5f-4a25-a79d-8aca342c2eea

FEE

The registration fee of $1200 ($1100 for early registrants) includes all conference events, meals prepared by New England Culinary Institute, and a private dorm room. Registration is still open! 

WORKSHOP SUBMISSION

Manuscript excerpts for workshop critique are due by May 15. Send a scene(s) from your play or screenplay, 25 pages maximum, 12 point font (Courier New or Times New Roman preferred), with 1” margins in standard script/screenplay format. Your piece will be reproduced, along with those of others in your workshop group, and sent to each group member prior to the conference so attendees can prepare for workshop discussions. Workshop submission and materials are included in your conference registration fee. We strongly urge all attendees to take advantage of the workshop experience.

FULL MANUSCRIPT CRITIQUE OPTION

For an additional $200 fee you may submit a complete manuscript of one stage script or screenplay. The submission deadline is April 30. Your manuscript will be read and critiqued prior to the conference by a faculty member with whom you will have a one-hour private script consultation during the conference. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Morgan Irons
Writing for Stage & Screen Conference Coordinator
Vermont College of Fine Arts
36 College Street, Montpelier, VT 05602
(802) 223-7044
stage.screen@vermontcollege.edu

FACULTY & GUESTS

Our faculty and guests include professional screenwriters, playwrights, film producers, and teachers experienced in the craft of writing for stage and screen. See below for more information.

FACULTY & GUEST BIOS

Kit Golden – Movie Producer

Kit Golden was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture for producing the film Chocolat. She began her career in the Warner Brothers story department and went on to the Samuel Goldwyn Company. She began working with producer David Brown and has been involved with the development and production of numerous films including A Few Good Men, The Player, Watch It (Associate Producer), Kiss The Girls, The Saint, Canadian Bacon, Along Came a Spider, Deep Impact, and Angela’s Ashes (Associate Producer). Kit is also the Executive Producer of the TNT original film Framed starring Sam Neill and Rob Lowe. She is a graduate of New York University and a member of the Producer’s Guild of America. 

Diane Lefer – Playwright

Diane Lefer’s works for the stage have premiered in New York, Los Angeles, and places in-between. Full productions include Harvest (a selection from which was included in the Meriwether Press anthology, Scenes and Monologs from the Best New Plays), American Buggery (for which she wrote book, music and lyrics), Majikan, Interrogating the Power of Art, and Tell Me Which Way a Hanged Man’s Feet Will Hang. She has created several plays in collaboration with exiled Colombian theatre artist Hector Aristizábal, notably Nightwind which has toured the US, Canada, Europe, and India. Workshop productions include Pablo Escobar Packs His Bags for Heaven, Penalty Phase, and Refugium.

Diane was a co-founder and for three years served as an artistic director of Triumvirate Pi Theatre Company which, in its original incarnation, was dedicated to creating opportunities for multicultural, multiabled artists and audiences with fully accessible venues, captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing, and audio description for the blind. She has been a workshop facilitator at the 2005 International Conference on Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed, Assistant to the Coordinator and Assistant to the Producer of FITLA (the International Latino Theatre Festival), and Guest Faculty in Playwriting at the Orcas Island Writers Festival. As Vice Chair of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, she produced the organization’s 2000 theatre festival. Until the economic downturn led to end of the print edition, she was for many years a contributing writer to “LA Stage” magazine.

Diane has studied with Luis Alfaro, the late Augusto Boal, Hirokazu Kosaka, Ruth Maleczech, Leon Matell, Chuck Mee, Alyssa Ravenwood, John Steppling; Roy Hart Theatre of France, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

She has taught in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts since 1986 and is the author of several books, mostly recently California Transit, which received the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. She has adapted some of her own short stories for the stage and turned some of her plays into fiction.

Tom Mangan – Movie Producer

Tom Mangan is a graduate of the University of New Mexico and received an MFA from New York University’s Graduate Film Program. He produced his first film, Suffering Bastards, in his final year at NYU. He has since produced or executive produced a number of films including: Framed (TNT Network 2003) starring Rob Lowe and Sam Neill; Tumbleweeds (winner of the 1999 Sundance Film Festival Filmmaker’s Trophy) starring Janet Mcteer (Academy Award nominee for Best Actress and winner the Golden Globe Best Actress); Sunburn starring Cillian Murphy; The Jack Bull (HBO) starring John Cusack; Colin Fitz, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1998, Captive starring Stanley Tucci; and Watch It (MGM) starring Peter Gallagher and Tom Sizemore. 

Tom also founded Post Productions Inc., a company providing accounting and supervisory services for film projects needing assistance in the post-shoot editorial phase of movie making. Post Productions has worked with more than fifty studios and on independent film projects. The company was involved with Martin Scorsese’s Casino, Lasse Hallstrom’s Chocolat and Shipping News, David Mamet’s Oleanna and American Buffalo; as well as originals such as King’s of Comedy, Wit, Naked In New York, Beautiful Girls, Basquiat, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Smoke, and Blue in the Face. 

An adjunct professor at NYU, Tom has taught film production for the last five years in both the undergraduate and graduate departments.

Tom has also co-written several screenplays: Spring Break Chain Gang (currently under option to Mark Lipsky), Nutty Professor, Coming to America, The Member-Guest (with Clint McCown, currently under option to David Brown and Kit Golden), A Few Good Men, The Verdict, Driving Miss Daisy, Chocolat, and The King of Fun.

Clint McCown – Screenwriter, Novelist

Clint McCown has worked as a screenwriter for Warner Brothers and as an actor with the National Shakespeare Company. Two of his plays have been produced, and his adapted screenplays of his novels The Member-Guest and War Memorials are in development with River One Films. Clint is also a nationally recognized fiction author and poet who teaches in the creative writing program at Virginia Commonwealth University, as well as in the Vermont College of Fine Arts Low-Residency MFA program.

Twice winner of the American Fiction Prize, Clint McCown has published three novels (The Member-Guest, Doubleday; War Memorials, Graywolf Press and Houghton Mifflin; and The Weatherman, Graywolf) and has recently completed a fourth, Haints. He has published three volumes of poetry, Sidetracks, Wind Over Water, and Dead Languages. He has received the Germaine Breé Book Award, the Society of Midland Authors Award, the S. Mariella Gable Prize, an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great Writers designation, and a Distinction in Literature citation from the Wisconsin Library Association, along with three Pulitzer Prize nominations (twice in fiction, once in poetry). In journalism, he received the Associated Press Award for Documentary Excellence for his investigations of political corruption and Organized Crime. 

Gary Moore – Playwright

Gary Moore is a playwright whose credits include: Long Lankin’s Curse (a new full-length play); Burning in China (a dramatic monologue set in China during the Tiananmen demonstrations of 1989, which has been staged more than twenty times, including a performance at the John Drew Theater in East Hampton, New York, in 1994); Beaver Falls (full-length play produced by Lost Nation Theater, Montpelier, Vermont, January-February, 2003 and the recipient of an Artist Fellowship in Theater from the Vermont Arts Council); and The Great Emancipator Meets the Monkey King (a bilingual one-act rap opera performed for an audience of 1700 in Shanghai in 1988; this drama about freedom, the first live performance of rap music in the People’s Republic of China, anticipated by four months the Tiananmen demonstrations of 1989; it was presented in the San Diego area at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts in February and March 2009, in connection with the Lincoln Bicentennial and the twentieth anniversary of Tiananmen). Gary was also the screenwriter for Valley Forge, a documentary film narrated by Henry Fonda in 1973 and winner of the Golden Eagle award of the U.S. Department of State, as well as prizes at film festivals in Australia, Sri Lanka, and Iran. His stage monologue, Burning in China, was optioned for film by Academy Award nominee Caleb Deschanel.

Gary has written and lectured on the life of Abraham Lincoln, and frequently uses Lincoln as a character in his creative works.  In addition to his Lincoln-themed plays Long Lankin’s Curse and Burning in China, he has written a number of Lincoln performance poems and the recently-completed novel Abe Ascending, which is represented by the literary agency of Zachary Shuster Harmsworth.  He has lectured on Abraham Lincoln in the U.S., Canada, Turkey, and the People’s Republic of China.    Gary is Academic Dean at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, in Montpelier, Vermont. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild.

David Paterson – Playwright, Screenwriter

An award-winning playwright and screenwriter, David Paterson has penned over two dozen plays, twelve of which are published through Samuel French. His works have been performed throughout the world and he is the only playwright ever to have three plays premier on the New York City stage in one month.

In 2005 David ventured into the world of film. He adapted his play Finger Painting In a Murphybed into a screenplay and produced it. As Love, Ludlow the film premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival to rave reviews; “Another Sundance Treasure!” Roger Ebert reported. David sold the film to The Sundance Channel, Starz Channel, and Warner Home Video. His second feature, a film adaptation of Bridge to Terabithia, was released in the Spring 2007 by Walt Disney Pictures and went on to become one of the most successful releases of 2007. His film short, Open Air, starring Munich’s Lynn Cohen, was in the 2009 film festival circuit, and was screened at such prominent festivals as East Lansing, Sedona, and The Palm Beach International Film Festival. David is currently in production for two feature films, Piece of the Sky and The Great Gilly Hopkins, which began shooting in June 2009.

An Adjunct Professor of screenwriting of NYIT of Manhattan, and a Film Advisory Board member for the Savannah and Big Apple Film Festivals, David has served as a panelist for numerous film festivals in the U.S. and abroad, and is in great demand as a guest speaker at colleges and Universities. Recently he lectured at Palo Loma University in San Diego and American University in Washington D.C.

Katherine Paterson – Novelist

Katherine Paterson is the author of more than 30 books, including 15 novels for young people. She has twice won both the Newbery Medal and the National Book Award. Her books have been published in 25 languages and she is the 1998 recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Medal given by the International Board of Books for Young People. At the 200th anniversary of the Library of Congress in 2000, she was named one of America’s Living Legends, and in 2006, she was the recipient of the 5 million Kronor Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, given by the Swedish government, and in 2007 was the recipi-ent of the NSK Neustadt Award. She is currently Vice-President of the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance www.thencbla.org. Her latest novel, entitled Bread and Roses, Too, was awarded a 2007

Christopher Medal. A picture book, The Light of the World, was published in early 2008. She has collaborated with Stephanie Tolan and Steve Liebman on three plays with music, Bridge to Terabithia, The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks, (based on books she has written), The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (based on the book by Beatrix Potter) and an original Christmas musical, Good King Wenceslas. She and Tolan’s latest collaboration is Surviving the Applewhites, based on Tolan’s Newbery Honor book by the same name. Her one-act play, The Billionaire and the Bird, appears in the collection, Acting Up.

Two of Katherine’s best known novels have been adapted by screenwriter David Paterson: The Great Gilly Hopkins (currently in pre-production) and Bridge to Terabithia (Walt Disney Pictures, 2007).

Peter Riegert – Actor, Movie Maker

Actor, screenwriter, and film director Peter Riegert made his Broadway debut in the musical Dance with Me. Other Broadway credits include The Old Neighborhood, An American Daughter, The Nerd, and Censored Scenes From King Kong.

Peter’s notable feature film credits include Animal House, Crossing Delancey, Local Hero, Chilly Scenes of Winter, Oscar, The Mask, Traffic (which won him the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by the Cast of a Theatrical Motion Picture), and How to Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog. Riegert’s television roles included Cpl. Igor Straminsky in two episodes of M*A*S*H, the crooked New Jersey State Assemblyman Ronald Zellman in The Sopranos, and defense attorney Chauncey Zeirko in multiple episodes of Law and Order. He starred opposite Bette Midler in the television adaptation of Gypsy, was featured in the HBO drama Barbarians at the Gate, appeared in the final episode of Seinfeld, and the television movie Back When We Were Grownups.

By Courier, based on a short story by O. Henry, marked Peter’s debut as a screenwriter and film director. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Live Action Short Film and won him the Festival Award for Best First Feature at the Marco Island Film Festival. He also wrote, directed, and starred in the full-length feature King of the Corner.

Nina Shengold – Playwright, Screenwriter, Anthologist

Nina Shengold won the ABC Playwright Award and L.A. Weekly Award for Homesteaders, and the Writers Guild Award for her teleplay Labor of Love, starring Marcia Gay Harden. Other TV writing credits include Blind Spot, starring Joanne Woodward and Laura Linney, and three other movies-of-the-week.

Nina’s short plays, including the seven-play evening Finger Foods, and the ensemble drama War At Home (both published by Playscripts Inc.), have been produced around the world. With Eric Lane, she has edited twelve theatre anthologies for Viking Penguin and Vintage Books, most recently Laugh Lines: Short Comic Plays. Her novel Clearcut (Anchor Books) was selected as one of 2005’s Best Books by the Seattle Post Intelligencer. She is Books Editor of Chronogram magazine and writes for Poets & Writers and other publications.

Nina has been a teaching guest artist at SUNY Ulster and a guest lecturer at Bard College, Vassar College, the Woodstock Film Festival, and Equinoxe International Screenwriting Workshop, among others.

Steve Stettler – Theater Director

Steve Stettler serves as the Weston Playhouse Theatre Company’s Resident Producing Director, guiding the theatre’s artistic and strategic growth from its year-round office in Weston. His Playhouse directing credits include Floyd Collins (Moss Hart Award Winner, Best Production in New England), A Number and the fall tours of David Copperfield and Metamorphoses. Steve has directed regionally (Denver Center, Portland Stage, Merrimack Rep, McCarter Theatre), in New York (Circle Rep, Theatre Row) and internationally (including the Norwegian state theatre in Oslo). A former Artistic Director of the Obie-winning TNT/The New Theatre of Brooklyn and a longtime instructor of acting for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Theater Institute, Steve is a site reporter for the National Endowment for the Arts, an adjudicator for the Vermont State Drama Festival and American College Theatre Festival, and has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Vermont Arts Council. Steve has been involved with readings and workshop productions of many developing stage scripts.

Robert Vivian – Playwright, Novelist

Robert Vivian’s monologues for men and women have been published many times in The Best American Monologues and twenty of his plays have been produced in New York City. He adaptation of Ibsen’s Ghosts, written for Studio Arena Theatre, ran in the winter of 2006. Vivian’s essays, stories, plays, and poems have been published in Harper’s, Georgia Review, Glimmer Train, Another Chicago Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, Massachusetts Review, Ecotone, Cross Currents, and many others. His first book, Cold Snap As Yearning, was published in 2001 and won the Society of Midland Authors Award in nonfiction and the Nebraska Center for the Book Award. His first novel, The Mover of Bones, was published in 2006. His second novel, Lamb Bright Saviors, will be published in 2010. These novels, as well as the forthcoming Another Burning Kingdom, are part of the Tall Grass Trilogy.

Dana Yeaton – Playwright

Dana Yeaton is the recipient of the Heideman Award from the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville and the “New Voice in American Theatre” award from the William Inge Theatre Festival. His play Redshirts was produced by Penumbra Theatre in Minneapolis, and Round House Theatre in Washington, DC, where it was nominated for a Charles MacArthur Outstanding New Play or Musical Award. His full-length drama Mad River Rising received the Moss Hart Award from New England Theatre Conference. Midwives, his adaptation of Chris Bohjalian’s best-selling novel, has been produced professionally and at colleges around the country. His plays in print include Midwives, Mad River Rising, Alice in Love, The Big Random and Helen at Risk.

Dana has received three fellowships in playwriting from the Vermont Arts Council. His plays have been developed at the Shenandoah International Playwrights Retreat, the New Works Festival at Perry-Mansfield, the Clarence Brown Theatre, New Voices for the Theatre (Richmond, VA) and others.

His critical works have appeared in American Poetry Review, New England Review and Contemporary Authors. Yeaton founded the Vermont Young Playwrights Project and is the editor of Blasts From The Future, an anthology of ten-minute plays by Vermont high school students. He teaches dramatic writing at Middlebury College.

Dana’s latest work is My Ohio, a musical for two performers, with music by Los Angeles composer Andy Mitton. The show is scheduled to premiere in April of 2010 at Vermont Stage Company in Burlington, Vermont.

Please be aware that our guests and faculty are working professionals

and their conference participation is dependent on availability.

Cancellations and substitutions are possible.