performance workshops
Gaybones Productions is offering TWO workshops for Trans/Gender-Nonconforming and LGBTQ performers, led by writer-performer Maddox Pennington.
WORKSHOP 1: Acting Workshop for Trans and Gender-Nonconforming Performers
Description: This four-week workshop is for beginners and early career actors who will be assigned a monologue or short scene to learn and present at a culminating showcase. Whether you'd like to play a role you wouldn't typically be offered or want an audition-ready piece for your portfolio, In a collaborative, safe space, we'll undertake text study and performance practice, supported by guest performers from the trans and nonbinary communities.
Dates: 3/23, 3/30, 4/6, Showcase: 4/12 @ Lyric Hyperion, The Joy Who Lived Festival (March 31-April 27)
Last day to register is March 16. Scholarships available.
WORKSHOP 2: LGBTQ Writing and Performance Workshop
Description: A co-production with the LA Get Down Festival and The Joy Who Lived Festival. In this writing and performance workshop, participants will identify and develop 3-5 minute personal narratives via creative writing prompts and brainstorming activities (Week 1). In Week 2, you'll apply various revision strategies and receive feedback from peers and guest facilitators. In Week 3, you'll have a chance to rehearse your piece with an emphasis on finding confidence, authenticity and audience connection.
Dates: 4/6, 4/13, 4/20*, Showcase 4/25 @ 8pm, Greenway Court Theatre, LA Get Down Festival (April 2025)
Last day to register is April 1. Scholarships available.
As part of The Joy Who Lived Festival, our space rental fees and promotional costs are covered by our crowdfunding supporters and producing partners to facilitate the creation of Trans/GNC art and community. Your tuition goes directly to the workshop facilitators, which helps us keep offering opportunities like these and cover participant scholarships.
about your facilitator
Maddox Pennington (he/they) is the Creative Director of the Trans Conversation Project and Gaybones Productions. He has most recently worked with LA's Native Voices as a playwright and actor; his short play "Reparations ATM" will be included in this year's Festival of Short Plays in April. His work has been read in the 2023 T/GNC Reading Festival, the Theater Viscera Podcast, Off-Off Broadway NYC’s FRIGID Queerly Festival, the Moving Arts MADLab, the Native American Media Alliance TV Writing Fellowship, and the inaugural Creative Nations First Storytellers Festival in Boulder, CO. Last year they directed Marilyn Monroe in the Desert with Premiere the Play Podcast. As a writer and director, his plays with majority nonbinary/trans casts have won awards at the Hollywood Fringe Festival (Love Chicken, Annex).
Maddox has taught creative and college writing at Columbia University, American University, and the University of Southern California, where he is currently an Assistant Professor offering first year and advanced writing courses with themes from Native Studies, Queer Studies, Disability Studies, and Society and Technology.