Guided by Sean Kernan, breathe life into your writing through learning how to read expressively.

There are no available registration dates at this time.

Note: This workshop will be held in a live, online format utilizing the Zoom platform.
Class meets on Mondays & Thursdays, Feb 12, 15, 19 & 22 from 10am-12pm ET.

In this workshop, beginning and intermediate writers will have the opportunity to see their work portrayed in a deeper way by learning how to read expressively.

What you will learn:

  1. To really hear what we’ve actually written by speaking it aloud. 
  2. To really express the full impact of your work in a public setting.

In the first class, students will read/speak and record texts from their own writing and assigned pieces from literature (Shakespeare, Ginsberg, etc.), then hear responses from the class. 

Also, we’ll each tell the class a story about some meaningful event in their lives, extemporized, not written out. We’ll also listen to sources of great reading done at the highest level. We’ll watch parts of the BBC series, Playing Shakespeare. (Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Judy Dench, etc.).

The next work will take place between classes in one-on-one meetings with Sean working on their texts, as though rehearsing a play, exploring the vocal expression of emotional tone and meaning. Students will be encouraged to rework their own written pieces based on this work of listening.

Back in the next two classes, we’ll have each person read the texts on which they’ve been working, to see what is changing and what can go further. We’ll also listen to more recorded examples.

In the final class, students will read their pieces, then we’ll play back their original recordings to see what has changed. We will look at our own awareness of the qualities and effects of our writing by clarifying and speaking fully about the meaning of what we’ve written. 

We should leave the class with an experiential understanding of a great tool for finding/developing our voice, both spoken and written.

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Instructor: Sean Kernan

Sean Kernan is a widely-exhibited photographer, writer, film maker and teacher, and has focused deeply on an exploration of creativity in our photography and lives. He is the author of The Secret Books (with Jorge Luis Borges), Among Trees (with Anthony Doerr), Darrell Petit: In Stone, and Looking Into the Light, which explores creativity and photography. In recent years he has made several award-winning films: Crow Stories, The Kampala Boxing Club, A Mind of Winter, and The Visitor. His photography has been exhibited and published in France, Mexico, Egypt, Greece, China, Italy, Switzerland, Iran, Korea, and across the U.S. He has also collaborated with the dance company of choreographer Alison Chase on a theater/dance/multimedia work, Drowned that premiered at MASS MoCA. Clients include AT&T, Knoll, GE, Pratt and Whitney, New York Times, Smithsonian, Bloomberg, Harvard. He has taught and lectured at the New School/Parsons, Art Center Pasadena, Yale Medical School, ICP, and the University of Texas, and he has written for Communication Arts, Lenswork, and Graphis.

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