Finding Your Voice: Two Writing Seminars for Teens

Acclaimed playwright and director, Michael Oatman, will be teaching a teen workshop at Shore Cultural Centre beginning August 20th.

Do you have a story waiting to be unleashed on the world? Chances are that you do. Maybe you want to write for the stage or screen or add your voice to social justice issues. Perhaps you want to write the best college application essay you possibly can. Whatever your goal, learning to tell a story well is a valuable skill that benefits life and work.

Starting in September, two workshops will be held at Shore Cultural Centre for high school students interested in writing. The first seminar, The Story Inside, is a 4-week seminar led by Kristine Kelly, PhD., lecturer in the CWRU Department of English. In this seminar, teen writers will practice, create, and share stories that balance writing for pleasure with purposeful writing for work or study. The exercises will range from brief memoirs to essays for college applications. This seminar runs Saturdays, September 7th through the 28th, from 3:00-4:00 p.m. Cost for this seminar is $ 40.00, and there is an opportunity to apply for a scholarship towards the fee.

The second seminar, Birth of Imagination: Playwriting Workshop for Teens, is open to those who will be entering 9th through 12th grade. The series will run from August 20th to September 13th on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6-7pm, with rehearsals on September 18th and 19th, performance on 20th. The workshop is led by Michael Oatman, Cleveland-born playwright, actor, and director. Oatman earned an MFA in Playwriting from CSU in 2008. He has served as Playwright-in-Residence at Karamu Theater where he is only the second person to hold this position. The first was Langston Hughes. Oatman has taught at schools and directed productions throughout the region. His workshops for this seminar focus on learning about the major parts of a story, plot, rules of youth writing, and rewriting. Cost for this seminar is $45.00, and scholarships are available for this workshop as well.

Both workshops are part of the “Telling Our Stories” series and are supported in part by the residents of  Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture. Complete registration information including scholarship information, for each of these workshops, can be found at www.shoreculturalcentre.com/programs or call 216-289-8578. Shore Cultural Centre is located at 291 E. 222nd Street, Euclid.