Guild Hall Classes
Guild Hall is offering two extended workshops likely to entice aspiring playwrights and comedians out of their hibernal comfort zones. Playwriting: Process and Projects, which will begin Monday, is a seven-week workshop designed to encourage creativity, explore how stories emerge, and prepare for production.
Led by Bill Burford, a producer, director, and educator who has developed projects at venues from Galveston, Tex., to Brooklyn to the East End, the class will encourage any type of character-based piece for the stage, including plays, operas, dance, puppetry, and physical theater. The workshop will conclude with a final reading of the participants’ work to an invited audience in Guild Hall’s theater.
Improv 1, a six-week program that will begin Tuesday evening, will focus on the fundamentals of improvisation. Exercises and games will develop the basic skills of improvisation and collaboration, encouraging a new sense of spontaneity, imagination, and confidence.
The workshop is open to anyone 21 or older, and no experience is necessary. It will be conducted by Tina Jones, who has performed as an actor at theaters across the country and studied at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, an improvisational training center. Sessions will be held Tuesdays from 6 to 8 p.m. through Feb. 25. The cost is $120, $100 for members.
French Thriller
HamptonsFilm’s Now Showing series of films currently in theaters will screen “Les Miserables,” a French thriller that takes place in Montfermeil, the same Paris suburb where Victor Hugo set his novel, on Saturday at 6 p.m. at Guild Hall. Directed by Ladj Ly, it follows Stephane, a new member of the neighborhood’s anti-crime squad, who finds himself thrown into a tense immigrant community that is near the breaking point.
“Ly shows command of staging and shooting throughout, simulating documentary form while maintaining a tight grip on narrative coherence,” wrote Glenn Kenny of The New York Times, who added that the film’s “day in the life” structure recalls Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.” Tickets are $15, $13 for members.
Bay Street Stand-Up
All-Star Comedy will return to Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor tomorrow at 8 p.m. Presented in partnership with Joseph Vecsey (Optimum’s “The Unmovers,” Netflix’s “Father of the Year”), the show will feature sets by Ken Krantz (Sirius XM Radio, New York Comedy Festival), Sergio Chicon (Gotham Comedy Live, “Seeing Other People”), and Dawn B (Mixtape Comedy Show, Real Deal Comedy Jam).
Tickets are $30 in advance, $40 tomorrow.
