White Pine 2024 nomination. Dora Mavor Moore Award, Best New Play nominee. Second City Award For Outstanding Comedy winner.
Booking Rates: $300 for one session, $450 for two, $675 for three, $900 for a full day (four sessions). Plus a travel fee of $0.50/km if outside Toronto.
Virtual visit fee: $200
Curtis Campbell is a novelist and playwright based out of Toronto. His novel Dragging Mason County is a nominee for the 2024 White Pine award, and was recently given a starred review by Publisher’s Weekly. Curtis performs drag and comedy under the name Alanis Percocet.
Presentations
Curtis Campbell is a novelist and playwright with years of experience in Theatre For Young Audiences and leading classroom workshops. He offers formal writing workshops, and less formal classroom talks about his work and about the craft of writing. His workshops are available for grade 6-12 and are adjusted based on the age bracket.
Grade 6-12
45-90 minute workshops
Dragging Mason County
Discussion of the White Pine nominated novel, and Curtis’ process while writing it. Discussion topics include LGBTQIA+ youth issues, friendship and chosen family, allyship, homophobia and transphobia, theatre and drag, managing mental health, managing anger, issues around social media,and gender expression.
Talk To An Author and Playwright
An engaging Q+A about the literary and theatre industries with a particular interest in discussing how students can begin developing, or continue developing their own artistic practice.
Writing Character Voice
A workshop on writing in the first person, how to develop the voice of your character, how to begin developing your writing style, and how to effectively critique your own work and other’s. Students will share their work
Self Editing
A practical workshop on editing for both fiction and non-fiction to produce more engaging writing.
Developing Comedic Voice
As an award winning comedy writer, I know a thing or two about writing effective pieces in a comedic voice. This workshop will involve a look at my own approach to comedy, and how I developed my own comedic voice. From there the students will write short comedic monologues before discussing what works about them, and how the students can take that writing further.
Playwriting
I am a working playwright and have ten years of experience creating plays in both the independent and professional worlds. This workshop will explore the basics of playwriting and teach students about the process of scene creation by having them write one of their own.
Dialogue
A practical workshop focussed on how dialogue works for both novels and plays, its use to convey character and plot, and how to develop dialogue consistent with the tone and style of the piece you are writing. Students will write and share work for discussion.
Writing About Ourselves
A workshop based around writing about yourself! In memoir, journal, fiction and nonfiction.
I believe that everyone is a writer. People often say that they have nothing to write about, but we all have the ability to write about ourselves. This workshop is about putting yourself on the page using memory, identity, geography, imagination and site-specific practices to show students that they are writers too.
These workshops can be performed in a single classroom, or with merged classrooms.
The ideal group for writing workshops would be smaller, but I can make larger groups work just as well if there are a few staff members present.
A microphone would be great to have if we are meeting in a gym or cafeteria.
Workshops will always change by school and group, so I’m happy to customize and adjust based on your needs.