Here's the chance to exercise your inner playwrite! How does a writer create characters and conflict in scenes and stage directions with paper and pen? How do these words give direction to actors, stage managers, directors, and producers who bring the play to life before us, the audience?

Join renowned Derek Brown of Actorshop in London for a five-day workshop on playwriting in the Community Room of The Free Lance-Star building in Fredericksburg on May 20-24 from 7 until 9 pm. And the best part -- it's FREE! Drop in for one session or all five.

Fredericksburg Festival for the Performing Arts and The Rude Mechanicals are partners in bringing this very special opportunity to our community. Register today with Fred Franklin, Artistic Director of The Rude Mechanicals, at 540-371-3850 or with Fredericksburg Festival for the Performing Arts at 540-374-5040. Additional information about Derek Brown can also be found at FredFest.org.

Derek Brown is the Managing Director of Actorshop Ltd, which he founded when working as the Drama Advisor for the London Borough of Newham in 1985. He is also Co-Director and Executive Producer for Actorshop Productions which produces l8r, a health education series broadcast by the BBC. The series, which has been running for eight years, has been voted one of the three most creative children’s programmes by Broadcast Magazine and has won the Royal Television Society Education Award, the Basel-Karlsruhe Multimedia Award, and three BAFTA’s plus two further BAFTA nominations. (The BAFTA is the UK equivalent of the Academy Awards.)

Actorshop Ltd provides training and consultancy for both business and education in Britain, the United States, Hong Kong, and Tokyo and is one of the UK’s leading exponents of Forum Theatre. The Forum scripts are devised and written by Derek, and his company has won great acclaim for innovative work within education and two National Training Journal Awards in Partnership with HSBC for the Best Customer Service Training and Best Training Programme Delivered to Over 1,000 Attendees.

Derek has also created and managed several large events and programmes including seven international festivals of theatre-in-education, three London young playwrights’ festivals, a conference for six London boroughs at the ‘O2’ Stadium focusing on Creativity & Preferred Learning Styles and a national training programme for Creative Partnerships & Arts Council England developing creativity in schools with Learning Mentors . He delivers guest lectures at the Institute of Education, London Metropolitan University, the Central School of Speech & Drama, the National College for Leadership of Schools & Children's Services, and recently at Oxford University.

As a theatre director he has toured productions to many London venues including the Theatre Royal Stratford East, the Riverside Studios, the Donmar Warehouse and the Hackney Empire, as well as the Assembly Rooms at the Edinburgh Festival and has received an Arts Council bursary as a writer. He is also a member of the Visionary Committee for the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, and a board member of Talawa Theatre Company.

To find out more about Actorshop please go to www.actorshop.biz