This Saturday, there’s a full day of Gothic creative events with your name on! Come to writing and art workshops, listen to authors presenting their work in author showcases, come and enjoy the day with us or just one session. All are welcome. You can sign up here.
Support the project here.
10 – 11 am – Thea Jean – Writing the Werewolf
In this interactive writing session, we will be exploring the concept of the werewolf and consider how to develop approaches to the topic. The aim of the session is for participants to feel they have strategies to write the werewolf monster in their own creative practice going forward. As a group we will be discussing the folkloric, as well as film / televisual, werewolf as inspiration, as well as taking a deep dive into the implications of the werewolf trope including transformation, gender, and disbelief.
11 am – 12 noon – Monstrous May Author Showcase
Come and hear from a selection of authors reading pieces that are all about monstrosity!
12.30 – 1.30 pm – The Improvised Gothic: Story-Telling and Story-making – Daru McAleece
This interactive session will explore story-making and storytelling both on an off the written page. There will be some activities shared with fun group story-making and poetry creation Ideas will also be explored for story generation, including use of the landscape, the senses and improvisation. Lastly, story-making with two short gothic films will be shared. Come and join in!”
3 – 4.30 pm – A Gothic Happening: Mindful, Meditative, Monstrous Pattern Making – Shiri Sondheimer
Come meditate on motifs. Perpetuate patterns. Do away with anxiety by combining Frida Kahlo’s mindfulness art and a variation on Kusama Yayoi’s infinity obliteration. All you need is paper and something to draw with! We’ll talk a little art history, run through some different iterations of gothic inspiration, and then spend the rest of the time creating. No prior experience or preconceptions needed.
5 – 6 pm – Choose-Your-Adventure – Sam Hirst
This session is a follow up to our session last time. Come and share your own choose-your-adventure story or come and play along!
6 – 7 pm – Writing the stories you know: Fairytales and the Gothic – Jude Reid
7 – 8 pm – Monstrous May Author Showcase
Come for some more stories and tales on the Monstrous!
8 – 9 pm – Historical Literary Adaptation into Other Mediums – Leanna Renee Hieber
Learn a few tricks of the trade of making compelling adaptations from extant sources into theatrical work or other mediums. A lively discussion, ranging from choosing through-lines to avoiding the pitfalls of becoming overwhelmed, will be followed by a brief workshop period. Using the most adapted literary work of all time, Dracula, as an example text, Leanna will not only discuss the adaptation process and options but allow time for attendees to play with the material themselves and see what new evocations and lenses emerge with an option to share as time allows.
This hour-long lecture will break down into an approximate 15 to 20 minute talk, 8 to 10 minute preparation/presentation of the workshop selection, 15 minute class work time, 15 minute sharing time and/or Q and A.
9 – 10 pm – Chat and Doodle – ‘trie blasingame II tentaclemade studios
Come and join us for a relaxing session of chatting and doodling. Just what it says on the tin!
Romancing the Gothic 