A scriptwriting workshop with Joan Tewkesbury
American Film Festival, StoryLab.Pro and Polish Screenwriters Guild together with Crew United and Filmmakers for Ukraine open call for participants for a workshop ‘Designed Obstacles, Spontaneous Response’ with a legendary writer and director, Joan Tewkesbury.
A scriptwriting workshop with Joan Tewkesbury
November 9th, Wednesday, 4 pm (CET), online
Call for participants has been closed
4-hour workshop Designed Obstacles, Spontaneous Response was created by Joan Tewkesbury to explore the development of character and story through spontaneous written response to assigned problems, situations, images, complications and possibilities. Its purpose: to unhinge caution, put aside logic and judgment and access ideas through seemingly random or arbitrary exploration. The work is very specific and designed to disrupt the author’s established pre-conceived ideas, patterns and defenses. Assignments deal with the discovery of making something from nothing and all work is handwritten in class and read aloud. Basically, it’s a scavenger hunt for the imagination – writes Tewkesbury.
Joan Tewkesbury began her career as a script supervisor for Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller then went on to write his feature films, Thieves Like Us and Nashville. In 1979 she directed Old Boyfriends (written by Leonard and Paul Schader) which was presented at Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. She has also written, directed numerous projects for cable and Network television: The Tenth Month, Acorn People, Cold Sassy Tree, Sudie and Simpson, Wild Texas Wind, the HBO's series The Stranger, On Promised Land, Elysian Fields and was a consulting producer for the CBS series, The Guardian.
For the stage she wrote, directed and choreographed Dance Card for the Oregon Ballet theatre, wrote and directed "Jammed" presented at the Edinburgh Festival and wrote, directed and produced Retrospective at the Manhattan Theatre Source in New York.
Ten years ago she developed a class, Designed Obstacles, Spontaneous Response which she has presented at Art Center, American Film Institute, Bard College, Chapel Hill, U.C.L.A., N.A.L.I.P., and various filmmaker labs and emersions through out the United States, Israel, Europe, and Japan.
She participates as a creative advisor for the Sundance Institute Native Lab, the Sundance Institute Directors and Screenwriters Lab and has created a Writers Forum at Los Luceros in Alcalde, New Mexico.
Her work has been honored by the Writers Guild, Humanitas, Golden Globes, the British Academy Awards, Cable Ace, Academy Awards best picture nomination for "Nashville" and the Los Angeles Critics award for best original screenplay.
