SETC Playwriting Webinars
Four free sessions on aspects of writing, developing and staging plays. Registration is required. Each webinar is one hour, followed by time for Q & A and networking. Moderated by interest group facilitators D.W. Gregory and Sheri Wilner-Deering.
Registration
Click Here to RegisterCharacter First
SEPT. 27
7 – 8.30 p.m
With Sheri Wilner-Deering
Playwright and co-facilitator of SETC's Playwriting Interest Group; director of MFA Playwriting at Pace University in New York City.
F. Scott Fitzgerald once said: “Character is plot and plot is character.” For playwrights, this means we shouldn’t preconceive our plots without first developing an extremely thorough and deep understanding of our characters, whose choices and actions will create the plot of our plays. In this webinar, we’ll analyze some of theatre’s most memorable characters, and do some playwriting exercises designed to help us understand our characters as well as we understand our closest friends. This knowledge makes plotting one’s plays infinitely easier, as a keen sense emerges of how each character responds to the play’s events and what strategies they’ll use to fulfill their needs and achieve their objectives.
Adaptation and the Love of the Craft
DEC. 13
7 – 8.30 p.m.
With Justin Maxwell
Playwright, Professor and Chair of the Department of Language and Literature at LSU New Orleans.
Adaptation is about love: Love of content, love of craft, love of genre. Adaptation can help us take the things we love and explore them with a newfound intimacy. Adaptations can help beginners hone their craft and help unestablished writers sell their work. It can help experienced writers connect with new methodologies. It’s a great way to start writing. It’s a great way to grow as a writer. We’ll ask a lot of bonding questions: Why adapt something from one genre to another? How do we pick what to adapt? What is source material to us, and why do we want to work with it? We’ll spend time with the slippery-yet-empowering transition when the adaptation becomes our own artwork!
Writing the South: Place, Voice, and Regional Imagination
JAN. 24
7 – 8.30 p.m.
With David Beach
Playwright, director, educator, Vice Chair of Playwriting with SETC
What does it mean to write from, about, or in conversation with the South without reducing the region to stereotype, nostalgia, or a single story? This webinar will invite playwrights to think about place as more than setting, as a force that shapes language, conflict, memory, identity, history, and theatrical possibility.
How To Submit So Your Plays Get Produced –
MAY 16
7 – 8.30 p.m.
With Stephen Kaplan
Playwright and educator, winner of the SETC’s Innovative Playwriting Instruction Award, Northeastern Regional Representative for the Dramatists Guild National Council and Chair of the DG Education Committee.
This workshop is designed to inspire writers to market their work more effectively. You hear it all the time: the only difference between playwrights that have been produced and playwrights that haven't is that produced playwrights get their work seen by the decision-makers. That translates to submissions and networking, a daunting task we'd like to simplify. This workshop covers resources for finding opportunities, tips for easier submission, success stories from cold calls, and networking.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Sheri Wilner-Deering
Sheri Wilner-Deering is co-facilitator of SETC's Playwriting Interest Group. She is currently Director of MFA Playwriting at Pace University in New York City, and has taught at numerous other colleges and universities including Boston College, NYU, Vanderbilt, and Florida State University. Her plays include Kingdom City, Relative Strangers, Bake Off, Father Joy, A Tall Order, and Hunger and have been presented at La Jolla Playhouse, The Old Globe, Guthrie Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Signature Theatre (DC), Williamstown Theatre Festival, O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference, Bucks County Playhouse, 24 Hour Plays, Old Vic/New Voices, and many others. Her work has been widely anthologized and published by Dramatists Play Service, Dramatic Publishing Company, Samuel French, Smith and Kraus, and Playscripts.com. Playwriting awards include a Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship, two Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellowships, and two Heideman Awards, granted by the Actors Theatre of Louisville.
Justin Maxwell
Justin Maxwell is a professor and Chair of the Department of Language and Literature at LSU New Orleans. He teaches playwriting in the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans and is the drama judge for the Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival. Justin’s play Exhausted Paint: The Death of Van Gogh ran at theSapaceUK during the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, after three nights in NYC at 59E59 Theatre. Then it ran in New Orleans in October of 2025. His playwriting book The Playwright’s Toolbox is out from Applause Books / Bloomsbury. His play An Outopia for Pigeons is out from Original Works Publishing, and Your Lithopedion is out from Next Stage Press. His prose appears in numerous journals, including Theatre/Practice, Contemporary Theatre Review, American Theatre Magazine, and others.
David Beach
David Beach is a playwright, director, and educator whose work explores place, memory, identity, family, and the stories communities tell about themselves. He is Professor of English and Theatre at Radford University, where he teaches writing, literary theory, playwriting, screenwriting, and linguistics. He serves as Vice Chair of Playwriting for SETC and Region 4 National Playwriting Program Chair for the American College Theatre Festival.
Stephen Kaplan
Stephen Kaplan:
Selected awards and productions: National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere: Tracy Jones (Finalist: ScreenCraft Stage Play Contest, B Street New Comedies Festival, Trustus Playwrights Festival); Long Drive Home (Theatre Aspen Solo Flights); Un Hombre: A Golem Story (Winner: Barbour Award; Finalist: Gulfshore Playhouse New Works Festival, Jewish Plays Project, Wild Imaginings Epiphanies; Development: NJ PlayLab); Branwell (and other Brontës) (Semi-Finalist: O’Neill); Community (Finalist: Seven Devils; Road Less Traveled National Residency, Semi-Finalist: Premiere Stages, March Forth Productions); Exquisite Potential (Theatre Ariel, Dezart Performs, Project Rushmore; Winner: NJ Playwrights Contest, Finalist: Woodward/Newman Award, Semi-Finalist: Seven Devils); A Real Boy (59E59 Theatre, Last Act Theater, This Is Water Theatre and Semi-Finalist: PlayPenn, Ashland New Play Festival, Dayton Playhouse FutureFest and MTWorks’ Newborn Festival); una casa/a home (Finalist: Landing Theatre’s New American Voices Reading Series, Route 66 Theatre’s New Play Development Program, Rorschach's Magic in Rough Spaces). SPACE at Ryder Farm. MFA: Point Park University. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, serves as Northeastern Regional Representative for the DG National Council and as the Chair of the DG Education Committee. For more information visit www.bystephenkaplan.com
About the moderators
D.W. Gregory
D.W. Gregory is co-facilitator of the SETC Playwriting Interest Group. She is a playwright and teaching artist, best known for RADIUM GIRLS. She is also the winner of the SETC’s Charles M. Getchell New Play Award for her comedy, A THING OF BEAUTY. www.dwgregory.com
Sheri Wilner-Deering
Sheri Wilner-Deering is co-facilitator of the SETC Playwriting Interest Group. She is currently Director of MFA Playwriting at Pace University in New York City. Her work has been widely anthologized and published by Dramatists Play Service, Dramatic Publishing Company, Samuel French, Smith and Kraus, and Playscripts.com.