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How to Direct a PlayMaster ClassIn-Person

Whitney White

Wednesday, Dec 18, 2024

9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m

Third Party Films

Third Party Films is an award-winning production company in New York City. We produce dynamic, creative documentaries for cinema, television, and beyond. Our films have played in festivals around the world, winning an Emmy and multiple Special Jury Awards at Sundance.

In this master class, director Whitney White will walk participants through her entire directorial process, from script research and analysis, to working with playwright and producers, to costume and set design, to casting and her approach to rehearsing with actors. Serving as the master class’s case study will be a play White is currently directing, Bess Wohl’s Liberation, which will open at the Roundabout Theatre Company in February. (Liberation explores a meeting in 1970 when six women—strangers—gathered in a basement gymnasium at their local community center, determined to shake up their lives and the world around them; fifty years later, one of their daughters tries to piece together what the hell happened.)


THEATER, FINE ARTS, PERFORMING ARTS

Whitney White

Whitney White is an Obie and Lilly Award–winning director, a Tony Award nominee, and a recipient of the Susan Stroman Directing Award. Her directing credits include Jaja’s African Hair Braiding on Broadway; The Secret Life of Bees at The Almeida; Soft, which received a Lucille Lortel nomination for outstanding direction; On Sugarland, which received Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk nominations for outstanding direction; What to Send Up When It Goes Down at The Public, Playwrights Horizons, BAM, Woolly Mammoth, and America Repertory Theatre; The Amen Corner at Shakespeare DC; Our Dear Dead Drug Lord at Second Stage/WP Theater; and For All The Women Who Thought They Were Mad at Soho Rep. Her writing credits include Semblance (New York Theatre Workshop), Definition (Bushwick Starr), and Macbeth in Stride, for which she won an Elliot Norton Award for best musical performance (American Repertory Theatre, Under the Radar Festival at The Public Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Philadelphia Theatre Company). Whitney is a Rolex Arts Initiative protégé, an associate artist at the Roundabout, and an associate director at Shakespeare DC. Recently, she was a writer on Boots Riley’s upcoming show, I’m a Virgo.