Jennie Webb has been a guest lecturer at colleges including California State University Los Angeles, Los Angeles Valley College, Occidental College and Middle Tennessee State University. She has created public workshops including “Is This a Play? Pushing the Boundaries of What Belongs Onstage” for professional playwrights and writers of different genres. After 10 years as a professional publicist, she developed “PR 101: Getting Personal with Public Relations” for multi-level arts organizations, theater professionals and students embarking upon careers in the arts. More recently, she has appeared on numerous panels as a new play advocate and gender parity activist.
For the Academy of the Classics at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum she taught Shakespeare Text Analysis and Scansion to adults and teens. She developed “actor-friendly” methods of investigating Shakespeare’s plays with an emphasis on de-mystifying the language, emphasizing that specific word choices, rhetoric and rhythmic structure are not the enemy, but tools with which to discover character, achieve clarity and reach dramatic heights.
At Theatricum, she also taught Children’s Playwriting Classes and created and ran the company’s new play development program, Botanicum Seedlings, through which she led popular Dramaturgy Workshops.
For several years, Jennie taught Comedy Technique to professional actors in Los Angeles and Las Vegas with The Harvey Lembeck Professional Comedy Workshop, strengthening a performer’s choices regarding conflict and character through standard improvisational exercises.
She currently facilitates private workshops for playwrights and offers private dramaturgy sessions.
“Is This a Play? Pushing the Boundaries of What Belongs Onstage”
This workshop is designed for writers of any genre who’ve either toyed with the idea of writing a play, started a play and got stuck, or are just interested in exploring the possibilities, as well as playwrights who want to shake up their relationship with dramatic form and structure.
What makes us want to put a story on stage? How do we take advantage of the open space that is theater? Why do audiences need to invest in a character’s dramatic journey? What’s tricky about adaptation? How can writers clarify their voice to communicate their vision? And while there’s certainly a place for “well made plays” and traditional, Aristotelian structural demands (conflict, climax, resolution), let’s talk about the unique, collaborative nature of live theatre. And the fact that it sometimes cries out for breaking the rules and, perhaps, even investigating the potential of… multiple climaxes? (Yes, Aristotle was a man.)