It’s workshop season!
Spring 2023 Generative Writing Workshops at Louis Place
Each season, we invite guests whose work aligns with the vision of our community to lead horizontal, generative writing and thinking sessions. Guest workshops are recorded and made available in our archive for writers who are part of our community at Louis Place.
We offer a limited number of spots in each workshop to writers who not part of aLP at a sliding scale rate of $25-$65 per session. Follow the links below to register, or email community@atlouisplace.com to gift a workshop to someone else (or if you have trouble signing up).
︎︎︎ Stirring da Roux with Sharon Bridgeforth ︎ REGISTER︎
︎︎︎ Our Voices Are Important with Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo ︎ REGISTER︎
︎︎︎ Conjurations: A New Lab for Writing with Tisa Bryant ︎ REGISTER︎
︎︎︎ ALTAR No. 1: ATEN with Daniel Alexander Jones ︎ REGISTER︎
“Stirring da Roux”
SHARON BRIDGFORTH
February 22, 2023
4pm PT / 5pm MT / 6pm CT / 7pm ET
4pm PT / 5pm MT / 6pm CT / 7pm ET
About this workshop
The goal of this workshop is to deepen our ability to fully embody and manifest our artistic vision by doing the work of unearthing/examining/and articulating our identities-cultures-memories-families, histories-dreams, and the socio-political realities of our lives.
Participants will be asked to:
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Share their identities: race(s)/ethnicities, genders, sexualities, class, family histories, cultural/spiritual traditions, etc.,
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Examine the personal as political
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Explore art as a vehicle for social justice
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Practice trusting their instincts
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Explore the relationship between art and their lives
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Consider the relationship between spirit and art
Participants will be invited to respond to writing prompts and share their writing. We will explore the creative process, virtuosity, improvisation, innovation, the art of being present, and deep listening.
“I believe that through the act of sharing our stories: of opening, of being present while being vulnerable, of revealing who we are/where we come from/what we dream…of trusting ourselves enough to push beyond limits of what we think we know, of following the roads that the right questions can take us on - strengthens our capacity to hear and see one another, to hold space for each other, to connect more authentically, be better artists, to create the lives we most want to live. Ultimately, sharing our stories is an act of generosity and compassion.
These are things we do to be of greater service. To be ourselves more fully. To Heal. We do this even if it scares us.” —Sharon Bridgeforth
About Sharon Bridgeforth
A child of the Great African-American Migration, Sharon Bridgforth came of age during assassinations, riots, civil rights, Black power movements, and Soul music. She strives to queerly/embody the unbending dignity, commitment to community, self-determination, and Love of Black cultures that was modeled for her.
A 2023 United States Artists Fellow and 2022 Winner of Yale's Windham Campbell Prize in Drama, Sharon Bridgforth is a writer that collaborates with actors, dancers, singers, visual artists and audiences to install moving soundscapes of her ritual/jazz texts. Her work is featured in Dr. Omi Osun Joni L. Jones's book, Theatrical Jazz: Performance, Àṣẹ, and the Power of the Present Moment, Volume 110, No. 4, Winter 2022 of The Yale Review, Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature edited by Ana-Maurine Lara and drea brown, Mouths of Rain an Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought edited by Briona Jones, and the creative contribution section of Feminist Studies Volume 48 Number 1 honoring 40 years of This Bridge Call my Back and But Some of Us Are Brave! curated by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Sharon's new book, bull-jean & dem/dey back (53rd State Press 10/2022) features two performance/novels that will be produced by Pillsbury House + Theatre in Minneapolis 2022/2023.
A New Dramatists alumnae, Sharon is a 2020-2023 Playwrights’ Center Core Member, a 2022-2023 McKnight National Fellow and has received support from The Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, Creative Capital, MAP Fund, and the National Performance Network. A touring artist since 1993, Sharon’s work has been featured at: New York’s SummerStage Festival; Rites and Reason Theatre’s Black Lavender Experience at Brown University, The New Black Festival at The Lark, Pillsbury House + Theatre, The University of Texas at Austin’s John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies and Links Hall. Sharon’s dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/Home - a Creative Capital project - launched in Minneapolis, MN May 2018 in partnership with Molly Van Avery, City of Lakes Community Land Trust and the Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association. dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/Performance Installation premiered at allgo in Austin, TX in August 2018 and dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/The Show premiered at Pillsbury House Theatre in Minneapolis, MN in June 2018, and is streaming on Twin Cities PBS (Episode #131).
Our Words Are Important
LUKAZA BRANFMAN-VERISSIMO
March 16, 2023About this Workshop
“Language is Magic” - Johanna Hedva
How do you write the words that speak to the dreams and power of your work? Do your words echo our voice? Do you fill your mouth with questions in the ways I am doing now, to ask for more clarity? How can we collectively craft words that whisper loudly and sing in expansive ways? In Our Words are Important, Lukaza will invite participants into creating new ways of sharing words. Exercises that may become seeds for future work, ingredients for closely examining our mother tongues, sketches and tests of an alphabet we will craft together. Bring your favorite writing/sketching materials & paper of your choice, tools that give you power and a song/book/magazine/video/etc. that reminds you that your words are important.
About Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo
Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo (they/them/Lukaza) is an artist, activist, educator, storyteller & curator who lives/works between Lisjan Ohlone Land [Oakland, CA] and Powhatan Land [Richmond, VA]. With roots in storytelling, Branfman-Verissimo’s work is informed by their commitment to craft and community, engagement with society, and interest in preserving and broadcasting B.I.Q.T.P.O.C. stories.
Their work has been included in exhibitions and performances at Konsthall C [Stockholm, Sweden], SEPTEMBER Gallery [Kinderhook, NY], EFA Project Space [New York City, NY], Leslie Lohman Museum [New York City, NY], Yerba Buena Center for the Arts [San Francisco, CA] and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive [Berkeley, CA], amongst others.
Their artist books and prints have been published by Endless Editions, Childish Books, Press Press, Sming Sming, and Night Diver Press, and most recently, with Printed Matter Inc.
Conjurations: A Lab For New Writing
TISA BRYANT
March 29, 20234pm PT / 5pm MT / 6pm CT / 7pm ET
About this Workshop
In an appropriation of the science lab, this workshop is a space for conjuring radical new types of writing too nascent for intense critique sessions, but ripe enough for generative explorations of process, breaking new ground in an existing project, or waking up writing muscles through fresh forms of play. Our resources flow through vast channels and are recombinant, spanning a wide variety of eras, cultures, tongues, lands, intuition, and influential works from across the arts and our own archives. In our 90 minutes together, maybe some old habits will change shape, boundaries get redrawn, or repertoires will expand, but definitely some good thinking, scribbling and sharing will get done. Of course, some of these experiments may fail beautifully, but that is part of the point.
About Tisa Bryant
Tisa Bryant (MFA, Brown 2004) makes work that often traverses the boundaries of genre, culture and history. Unexplained Presence (Leon Works, 2007), her first full-length book, is a collection of original, hybrid essays that remix narratives from film, literature, and visual arts and zoom in on the black presences operating within them. An excerpt from her novella, [the curator], was published by Belladonna Books in 2009, in a companion volume with writer Chris Kraus. She is also the author of the chapbook, Tzimmes (A+Bend Press, 2000), a prose poem collage of narratives including a Barbados genealogy, a Passover seder, and a film by Yvonne Rainer. She is interested in archives, hybrid forms, mythologies, ethnicity and innovation, the interdependence of experimental and conventional fiction, cinematic novels, and ekphrastic writing.
Bryant’s writing has appeared in Evening Will Come, Mandorla, Mixed Blood, in the ‘zine, Universal Remote: Meditations on the Absence of Michael Jackson, and in the catalogues and solo shows of visual artists Laylah Ali, Jaime Cortez, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, and Cauleen Smith. She is co-editor, with Ernest Hardy, of War Diaries, an anthology of black gay male desire and survival, from AIDS Project Los Angeles, which was nominated Best LGBTQ anthology by the LAMBDA Literary Awards. She is also co-editor/publisher of the hardcover cross-referenced literary/arts series, The Encyclopedia Project, which recently released Encyclopedia Vol. 2 F-K
Altar No. 1: ATEN
DANIEL ALEXANDER JONES
April 13, 2023
4pm PT / 5pm MT / 6pm CT / 7pm ET
REGISTER︎
About this workshop
Using his transdisciplinary project, ALTAR NO. 1: ATEN, as a point of reference, Daniel Alexander Jones will lead workshop participants through a meditation and a series of writing exercises. Participants should, if possible, Zoom in from a comfortable, quiet place without distraction and have at hand several sheets of paper and at least two envelopes to fit them.
About Daniel Alexander Jones
Daniel Alexander Jones exemplifies the artist-as-energy worker. His wildflower body of original work includes plays, performance pieces, recorded music, concerts, music theatre events, essays, and long-form improvisations. He explores the esoteric and the everyday through his own distinctive dramaturgy. Jones’s critically-acclaimed pieces include Radiate (Soho Rep and National Tour; Black Light (Public Theater, Greenwich House Theatre, American Repertory Theatre, Penumbra Theatre); Duat (Soho Rep); An Integrator’s Manual (La MaMa, etc. and Fusebox Festival).
REGISTER︎
About this workshop
Using his transdisciplinary project, ALTAR NO. 1: ATEN, as a point of reference, Daniel Alexander Jones will lead workshop participants through a meditation and a series of writing exercises. Participants should, if possible, Zoom in from a comfortable, quiet place without distraction and have at hand several sheets of paper and at least two envelopes to fit them.
About Daniel Alexander Jones
Daniel Alexander Jones exemplifies the artist-as-energy worker. His wildflower body of original work includes plays, performance pieces, recorded music, concerts, music theatre events, essays, and long-form improvisations. He explores the esoteric and the everyday through his own distinctive dramaturgy. Jones’s critically-acclaimed pieces include Radiate (Soho Rep and National Tour; Black Light (Public Theater, Greenwich House Theatre, American Repertory Theatre, Penumbra Theatre); Duat (Soho Rep); An Integrator’s Manual (La MaMa, etc. and Fusebox Festival).
Jones has recorded six albums of original songs as his alter-ego, Jomama Jones. Daniel’s current project, www.aten.life, significantly expands his digital media presence. He has been a part of arts communities in New York City, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Austin, Boston, and Los Angeles, where he bases his practice.