Level Up Services
Script Lab and Playwright Development Services
Our Level Up script services provide intensive, one-on-one guidance from Resident Playwrights and are available to all experienced writers. Network Playwrights who participate in Level Up services may become eligible to submit for a Saturday Series staged reading or apply to join the Resident Playwright program.
Script Lab
Receive comprehensive feedback on a complete draft from one of Chicago Dramatists accomplished Resident Playwrights and Alumni whose work has been professionally produced off- and on Broadway, across the nation, and internationally. You choose your reviewer and how you want to receive feedback. Your Script Lab begins with you defining your goals and any specific areas you’d like addressed and includes comprehensive feedback on character, plot, theme and ideas, voice and producibility. In addition, each of our playwrights brings their experience, craft and unique approach to theatre making to the discussion and feedback they provide. It’s an exciting process, sure to equip you to advance your script to the next level.
Second Look
If you’ve used the feedback received in your Script Lab and completed a revised draft, you can get a Second Look from your Script Lab Playwright at half the price of a full review. Scripts must be submitted within two months of receiving your Script Lab review.
Script Intensive
If you are somewhere between a new idea and a full draft, you may choose to work one-on-one with a Resident Playwright on one or more projects in any stage of development. Together, you and your Resident Playwright will discuss ideas, review text, and address opportunities for development whether it’s scene work, in-depth character enhancement, finding an ideal structure or a combination of focus areas that clarify your vision, provide feedback for next drafts and point you towards completed work.
Kimberly Dixon-Mays
Joshua Fardon
Jenny Magnus
Cassandra Rose
Susan Lieberman
Reginald Edmund
Table Reads and Workshops
Our Table Reads and Workshops off the opportunity to gather a cast on your own or hire from our database and read or work a script under the guidance of a Resident Playwright in our Russ Tutterow Theatre. Collaborating with your RP, you’ll decide the goals for your four-hour session. Do you want a directed reading? A chance to gain feedback and rework scenes live? An opportunity to improvise around key concepts? Your Resident Playwright can bring direction, dramaturgy or a host of play development and rehearsal techniques to your workshop reading, all enlivened with the special magic of our storied black-box theatre.
Development Coaching
Some of our most successful and seasoned Resident Playwrights and Alumni are also highly experienced at coaching and mentoring developing artists. Through our Development Coaching service, you can receive one-on-one guidance to help you forge an artistic life that meets your definition of success. Need help clarifying your creative direction and goals? Want to craft accountability and action plans? Wondering how professional playwrights overcome creative blocks, procrastination and self-doubt? Our Development Coaches can help. Or maybe you’ve reached a certain level of success, but you want to go further, and you need everything from a personal development plan to the keys to launching your work in your theatrical community and on to Broadway. Our Development Coaches have the experience, the insight and the commitment to your success to help you on your way.
Development Coaches
Kimberly Dixon-Mays
Joshua Fardon
Jenny Magnus
Susan Lieberman
