Summer at the Library: Artist-in-Residence Workshops: “Movement and Storytelling in Theatre” with Roundabout Theatre Company

Join The New York Public Library and Roundabout Theatre Company's Artist-in-Residence for eleven sessions of artistic workshops!

The workshops will be held in person at Grand Concourse Library.

Join us for artistic workshops designed to spark the creative process. Teaching Artists, Chris Bell and Yadira De La Riva will guide participants in creating their own piece of original theatre through storytelling and performance. By exploring the world of plays, participants will dive into storytelling and ensemble building to begin to create their own original piece of community theatre.

We will be kicking off this exciting program with theatre games centered around Roundabout's production of Home, where participants will recreate scenes from this moving coming-of-age story reflecting on identity, belonging, and the exploration of self. In the following  intergenerational workshops, participants will collaborate to create their own plays and designs exploring various playwriting techniques which can culminate in an original theatrical production.

Free tickets to see Roundabout shows will be available, please see Library staff for more information. Supplies are limited.

START DATE: May 6, 2024

END DATE : July 29, 2024

IN-PERSON WORKSHOPS: Mondays starting at 4 PM

11 Workshop Sessions

Upcoming Artist-in-Residence dates:

• Monday, May 6 from 4pm-5pm
• Monday, May 13 from 4pm-5pm
• Monday, June 3 from 4pm-5:30pm - Register here for June sessions
• Monday, June 10 from 4pm-5:30pm
• Monday, June 17 from 4pm-5:30pm
• Monday, June 24 from 4pm-5:30pm
• Monday, July 1 from 4pm-5:30pm - Register here for July sessions
• Monday, July 8 from 4pm-5:30pm
• Monday, July 15 from 4pm-5:30pm
• Monday, July 22 from 4pm-5:30pm
• Monday, July 29 from 4pm-6pm (final sharing)

Space is limited | Registration is recommended but not required.  Register above with your email address. Walkups will be permitted as space accommodates.

Learn more about this year's Roundabout Productions

Doubt A Parable John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award®-winning Best Play has blazed back to Broadway starring Academy Award® and Tony nominee Amy Ryan and Tony winner Liev Schreiber. This “excellent new revival, directed by Scott Ellis, affords the pleasure of watching two supremely good actors going toe to toe” (The Wall Street Journal). “Ryan and Schreiber are electric on Broadway” (Entertainment Weekly). The fireworks begin as the exacting principal of a Bronx Catholic school—feared by students and colleagues alike— suspects improper relations between a charismatic priest and a student. She’s forced to wrestle with what’s fact, what’s fiction, and just how far she’ll go to expose what she sees as the truth. As the New York Post says, “It keeps the audience guessing and second-guessing through the play’s famous final line.

Home In the Tony Award®-nominated play The New York Times calls “an uplifting folk ballad about the pure in heart,” Cephus Miles has the whole world in his callused hands—until his sweetheart Pattie Mae goes off to college and marries another man. Originally staged by the Negro Ensemble Company in 1979 and featured in the first year of Roundabout’s Refocus Project, Samm-Art Williams’ Home is a muscular and melodic coming-of-age story that gives voice to the unbreakable spirit of all Americans who have been searching for a place to belong. Kenny Leon (A Soldier’s Play) directs.

Learn more about our Artists-in-Residence

CHRIS BELL (He/Him) holds an MFA (Case Western Reserve) and BS (Lamar) in dance and because he likes camping and the beach, a BS in Geology. He currently makes work with the feath3r theory, a dance/theater/media company under the direction of Raja Feather Kelly who he also works with as an associate choreographer on the musicals Teeth (Playwrights Horizons) by Anna K. Jacobs and Michael R. Jackson and Eighty-Sixed (2ndstage). Recent projects include choreographing Jelly’s Last Jam at Long Wharf Theaterand performing in The Absolute Future (NYU Skirball), Wednesday (NY Live Arts), The Kill One Race (Playwrights Horizons), The Met Gala, and Mute Swan a one ‘demi-god’ show in collaboration with Theater in Quarantine and LaMaMa written by Pulitzer-prize finalist Madeleine George. His company chrisbelldances (CBD) has presented work nationally including presentations at the Men in Dance Festival (Seattle), Ohio Dance Festival, and Colorado University and across NYC including evening length works at Dixon Place, Gibney Dance Center and Triskelion Arts. CBD is proudly Queens based and is an inaugural member company of the Queensboro Dance Festival, an organization which presents free and low-cost performances in community spaces and theaters across Queens County. CBD was the first dance company in residence at the Cherry

YADIRA DE LA RIVA (she/her) is a playwright, actor and educator from El Paso, Texas/Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and alumna of UC Santa Cruz and New York University. She is the author of border themed  plays including Tilling the Soil, La Gran Via and One Journey, a one woman show exploring US/Mexico border identity. One Journey  toured throughout the U.S. and along the U.S./Mexico border. Her  recent collaborative and acting credits also include: Zoongoro  Bailongo (New York Children’s Theater), Papo’s Variety Store (LATEA  Theater), La Negra (BRIC), La Noche de los Alebrijes (One Blue  Cat|Art Vallarta), Alonzo (2019 New York Latino Film Festival),  Carla’s Quince (The Voting Project), Nero (Kyoung’s Pacific Beat) and  Shared Sentences (Houses on the Moon). As an educator, she has  taught theater-making and storytelling with diverse communities,  non-profits, universities, and cultural centers throughout the U.S.  and internationally. Yadira is dedicated to liberating storytelling and  thrilled to join Roundabout's Teaching Artist Community!  www.yadiradelariva.com 

Roundabout Theatre Company celebrates the power of theatre by spotlighting classics from the past, cultivating new works of the present, and educating minds for the future. A not-for-profit company, Roundabout fulfills that mission by producing familiar and lesser-known plays and musicals; discovering and supporting talented playwrights; reducing the barriers that can inhibit theatergoing; collaborating with a diverse team of artists; building educational experiences; and archiving over five decades of production history. Learn more about  Roundabout Theatre Company.