Teatro Vivo Presents Writing For Performance Master Class With Panza Monologue Playwright Virginia Grise

Writing for Performance Master Class with Panza Monologue playwright Virginia Grise Presented by Teatro Vivo at Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center. Drawing from a long tradition of artists that identify and transform language on all levels, this writing intensive series explores how memory, images, emotion and stories live in the body. A focus on writing for performance though no acting or performance experience is necessary. Open to artists of all experiences and disciplines. Dress comfortably. Bring several pens and a new journal. Fee for the workshop is on a sliding scale and includes a ticket to the Panza Monologues performance. Virginia Grise From panzas to prisons, from street theatre to large-scale multimedia performances, from princess to chafa, Virginia writes plays that are set in bars without windows, barrio rooftops, and lesbian bedrooms. Her work has been produced, commissioned and developed at the Alliance Theatre, Bihl Haus Arts, Company of Angels, Cornerstone Theatre, Highways Performance Space, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights' Center, Pregones Theatre, REDCAT, Victory Gardens, and Yale Repertory Theatre. Her play blu was a recipient of the Yale Drama Series Award and was recently published by Yale University Press. Her other published works include The Panza Monologues, co-written with Irma Mayorga, (University of Texas Press) and an edited volume of Zapatista communiqués titled Conversations with Don Durito (Autonomedia Press). She is a member of the Women's Project Playwrights Lab, a recipient of the Princess Grace Award in Theatre Directing, The Playwrights' Center Jerome Fellowship, and was a finalist for the Kennedy Center's Latina/o Playwriting Award, Alliance Theatre's Kendeda Award, and the LARK Play Development Center's Playwrights of New York (PONY) Award. In addition to showing people her panza in college cafeterias, classrooms and conference halls, she has performed both nationally and internationally at venues including the Jose Marti Catedra in Havana, Cuba and the University of Butare in Rwanda, Africa. As an activist she has facilitated organizing efforts among women, immigrant, Chicano, working class and queer youth. Virginia has taught writing for performance at the university level, as a public school teacher, in community centers and in the juvenile correction system. She holds an MFA in Writing for Performance from the California Institute of the Arts.