Theater Camp Writing Workshop (2026)

Theater camp has closed for 2026. An action packed eight days, full of theater games, stage combat, prop and set piece construction, costume design, more theater games, song and choreography, and a lot of playwriting.

We added the writing component after Covid, or rather, I did. I enjoyed leading a writing session for a different camp we were affiliated with in 2008 – the goal was poetry then, not plays, I had no idea what I was doing (I usually didn’t in those days, I was only forty after all) but the campers who responded to it went at it hard. Some kids love to write.

Some, however, would rather kick themselves in the face than write, and I respect that. And so, for our camp (collective our) I have insisted it be optional, presented opposite some other activity.

Most choose the other activity, which is fine. It’s preferable. This year it was at the same time as craft, and I had a dedicated crew of between four and eight for each one hour session – that was also different this season, an entire hour! And there was one period for high school aged campers, and another for middle school aged campers.

I had prepared prompt cards. We would create ten minutes of prompt-inspired free writing. Sometimes that would be followed by a debrief, or take another ten minutes to create dialogue inspired by the prompt. This was the challenge for the middle school aged campers, several of whom wanted to compose narrative. Creating action through dialogue was new to them.

As the days progressed, I would still offer prompts, but change up the assignment slightly – write a new short play based on your prompt-based free writing, or continue something you have already been working on.

They would ask, but can’t I write about -x- instead? And I would say yes. Can I work on something I was already working on outside of camp? And I would say yes. I had to remind them that this wasn’t school, I wouldn’t be collecting their notebooks, I wouldn’t ever be looking in their notebooks. They could write whatever they like. But I would continue encouraging them to write plays.

To that end I provided professional templates to follow, and we spent time talking about plays they had seen. I gave a brief description of the Aristotelian unities.

The last day, Thursday, we held an informal reading of their new works, with all of their peers as the audience. There were six or seven* short scripts, from the silly to sinister, and took volunteers from the entire assembly to stand and read and perform them to great appreciation and generous laughter.

Given the opportunity, I will expand on the material. It is challenging to develop a curriculum requiring this kind of deep focus when they are all sorts of variables that can be thrown at you. It’s a seven day workshop (six this year, really – we needed to catch up on props and sets on Wednesday) which has at times been forty-five minutes, then thirty minutes, and now an hour. Campers are asked to write for ten minutes then stop when some really want to keep going while others write for two minutes, get bored and start distracting their friends.

So, that’s a goal for next year, a more flexible lesson plan. But who wants to think about next year? Summer has only begun!

Five Hundred Days of Practice

What does it mean to write every morning? What is the significance of this daily ritual?

It means I begin the day thinking, in silence. Meditative. Thoughtful. I do not jump from sleep to the screen. I can process my thoughts, my dreams. I articulate. 

And because it is daily, my family, my children, respect that I have to do this.

It need not be creative, though it can be. It need not be productive, though it can be. It need not be anything, just three pages, thirty minutes.

And once I have set down my pen, then I can continue my day with the confidence that whatever else happens, I will have accomplished this one thing.

Three-Hundred and Sixty-Five Days of Practice

For one calendar year I have written my morning pages every single day, not missing a day. This morning, to celebrate, I share my exercise with you.

Morning Pages

Ritual is not what you do naturally. Waking up in the morning is not a ritual, nor is having breakfast. Ritual us not synonymous with routine, either. No, ritual is something you compel yourself to do, on a regular basis, something which does not come naturally, nor easy, but in doing so lends your life purpose, meaning, and hopefully, satisfaction.

For years, though not for all my years, I have tried to create a writing ritual. It happened less recently than you might imagine, but in the past five to ten years, I began rising at 5:00 am, so that I would have quiet, peaceful time alone, to write for thirty timed minutes.

Our gas fireplace was repaired in early 2016, and so the ritual during cold-weather months was simple. The fire. The coffee. The bathrobe. Thirty minutes, or three steno pages, whichever came first.

Around the same year, we had our deck rebuilt. And so warm weather months included its own ritual. The deck. The coffee. The robe. The birds and sky. Thirty minutes or three steno pages, whichever came first.

Then came the writing prompts and the one-page plays. What had merely been ritual had become a compulsion; when not doing something is harder than doing it. Once upon a time, for me, that was running. Finally, in my fifties, it is writing.

Social media apps get you hooked by awarding you for checking in every day. You have “streaks.” I keep track of how many days in a row I write my morning pages. Today is the 200th consecutive day I have written morning pages. Today I wrote about writing morning pages as my morning pages. Right now, I am typing that up.

One-Page Plays

The theme for this month’s issue of The Dramatist (magazine) is “About the Craft.” Not casting spells, mind you. This is about writing plays.

There’s a Q&A with Adam Rapp. Here’s one:

Q: Do you have a routine? A regular time when you write? 

A: With plays, I don’t have a set routine. I feel like I’m stowing away from the rest of my life when I’m writing a play, so a lot of it is stolen time, early in the morning or late when my mind isn’t focused on other things. A lot of long sessions. Sometimes an entire day just dissolves away. It’s pretty reckless, but I love the feeling like the play is holding me hostage.

And I thought, an entire day? Must be nice. I do not like feeling churlish, but it took long enough to realize how much I desire to just write plays all day long, and at the same time had to accept that that is simply a thing that will never happen for me.

I write in the morning. I wake up at five o’clock so I can write a half hour. Sometimes it’s a play, often it’s like a journal, and I hate that because that’s not what I got up early to do, write about me, but I have to write something and so solipsism it is.

I’ve tried writing prompts, but many of the books my wife has lodged on her bookcase are about emotional free-writing and just lead to more journaling. SO in desperation, last week I just Googled “writing prompts” and found the most most basic, clickbaity site, 365 Creative Writing Prompts which is like, write about food! Write about animals!

Why not. If it’s good enough for David Byrne.

So I have been faithfully following its lead, free-writing on the subject, but also writing a very short script inspired the subject. Every morning.

Last year, I was interviewed by Tyler Whidden for his Don’t Talk To Strangers podcast, for which he expressed interest in Guerrilla Theater Company and the entire concept of one-page* plays. In their manifesto of 1915, Italian Futurists state, “It’s stupid to write one hundred pages where one would do,” that it is unnecessary to play out an entire story of character and plot if your aim is simply to make a point.

Writing for You Have the Right to Remain Silent, I not only had to be constantly creating scripts to feed the beast, but I became attuned to thinking about writing, all day. To coming up with ideas.

While I haven’t returned to that state, just putting down my thoughts as dialogue every morning has been a refreshing break and mentally satisfying. And I have begun to post these at New Play Exchange.*

Read the first of these short plays, Welcome or Friends at New Play Exchange.

*The plays I have been writing are one written page. In script form they take a few pages. Don't give me a hard time.