Rockland Playwright Teaches Workshop at Sleepy Hollow Writers’ Center

Rockland County resident Angelo Parra, an award-winning playwright,will lead a six-week Playwriting Workshop at the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center in Sleepy Hollow beginning in mid-January.  The Chestnut Ridge resident, who wrote Playwriting for Dummies,  also teaches playwriting at SUNY Rockland. 

Parra wrote the acclaimed play with music, The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith, which ran Off-Broadway for more than a year.      

“Writing for the stage is easy:  just give two people opposing goals and write what they say to each other,” said Parra. “Well, maybe not quite that easy, but playwriting is definitely doable, exciting, and fun.”  

The Playwriting Workshop is open to beginners, who want to try scriptwriting for the first time, and for those who’d like to sharpen their scriptwriting skills. 

“We explore scriptwriting step by step in a supportive and relaxed environment,” Parra said.  

The workshop will end with a public reading of students’ scripts for an invited audience. 

The sessions will take place from 7 to 9 p.m. on Thursday nights for six weeks from January 16 to February 20.  For registration information go to http://writerscenter.org/index.html, click on Classes and Workshops.

Parra has theatrical production credits in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles and at the Penguin Rep Theater in Stony Point where he is also literary manager and at playhouses around the country. His The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith, was named among the “Top-Ten Off-Broadway Experiences” by the New York Daily News, and was nominated for a 2012 Lucille Lortel Award and a 2012 Off-Broadway Alliance Award.  

He has received two New York Foundation for the Arts Scriptwriting Fellowships, was named a Tennessee Williams Scholar, Sewanee Writers Conference in 2000 and is a member of The Dramatists Guild, the Actors Studio Playwrights/Directors Unit, and member emeritus of the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop.

The mission of The Hudson Valley Writers' Center is to advance the art and craft of writing by encouraging writers and readers at all levels to participate in and enjoy the literary arts.  The center, located in the historic Philipse Manor railroad station, offers classes, seminars, and workshops in poetry, essays, fiction, memoir, and scriptwriting.