LYME — Are you a writer who has always wanted to see your work come to life on the big screen? Do you have a movie or series idea inside you just burning to get out? Then Lyme Public Hall (LPH) is here to help you …
The Lyme Public Hall and Local History Archives Board of Directors hosts Oscar-nominated screenwriter Janet Roach (Prizzi’s Honor, directed by John Huston) who will present a screenwriting seminar in October and November.
The seminar will comprise a series of six, two-hour sessions on screenwriting at the hall, starting Oct. 16, and meeting weekly on Mondays from 6 to 8 p.m. through Nov. 20.
Emphasis will be on participants’ work and involve weekly writing assignments with personal feedback. Newcomers to screenwriting will be welcome as well as others who have been writing for some time, produced or not.
Enrollment will be limited to 12 students. The cost for the program is $100 for LPH members and $125 for non-members.
This seminar was offered last spring and was completely booked with a waiting list; Roach has agreed to offer a second session for those, who were unable to attend the first session.
Reviews from participants in the previous session included:
The sessions were great fun as well as impactful … Janet’s approach to teaching was inspiring and her tales of Hollywood, its structure and its inhabitants, were priceless. – R.E.
Thank you again for the excellent writing classes. I was awed by [Janet’s] encyclopedic and analytic knowledge of movies … My big takeaways were (1) use action in place of verbal exposition (2) create protagonists who keep things moving (3) maintain conflict. I learned that conflict and associated antagonists need not be just bad guys – J.F.
Roach, who was profiled recently in New London’s The Day, grew up in Old Lyme and started her writing career in journalism. She was a producer/writer at 60 Minutes and worked with Bill Moyers at CBS News and for Public Television before morphing into a screenwriter.
She also taught screenwriting at Columbia University’s Graduate School of the Arts for nearly 20 years. She now lives in Lyme, writes for Estuary Magazine and is working on a memoir as well as new film project.
The Lyme Public Hall is located at 249 Hamburg Rd. (Rte. 156), Lyme.
To enroll in this class, contact [email protected]