Kurt Vonnegut once said that “we have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” This workshop is devoted to the bravery one has to summon in order to (figuratively) cliff jump, and to how exhilarating and difficult wing-making can be under duress. There will be a discussion of techniques that jog play drive, which gently challenges inherited artistic protocols.
Jonathan Bernstein’s plays and musicals have been produced all over the country. Under the auspices of the Jerome Robbins Foundation, he is currently developing a new project titled Here in the Bright Colorado Sun, his second collaboration with Susan Misner. Before this, they premiered The Shape She Makes at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which won multiple Elliot Norton Awards. Directing credits include material at the Atlantic Theater Company, the Kennedy Center, Williamstown Theatre Festival, New York Stage and Film, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and many others. Bernstein has worked at New York’s City Center, Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage Theater, Roundabout Theatre, Public Theater, and 52nd Street Project. He produced the 2021 short film Bend, which won the top prize at the Lincoln Center’s Dance on Camera Festival. He is a professor of playwriting and script analysis in the graduate musical theatre writing program at New York University, and he serves as the artistic director of The Performing Arts Project, an international arts training not-for-profit for youth.