Intro to Playwriting

About the Instructor

Laura Schellhardt is a Chicago-based playwright and adaptor. Her original works include Ever in the Glades, Digging Up Dessa, The Handbook, Light Years Away, Upright Grand, Air Guitar High, Auctioning the Ainsleys, The Apothecary’s Daughter, The K of D, Courting Vampires, Shapeshifter, Inheritance, and Je Ne Sais Quoi. Adaptations include The Phantom Tollbooth, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, The Outfit, and Creole Folktales. She is also the author of Screenwriting for Dummies. Schellhardt is a two-time Jeff Award nominee, a recipient of the AATE Distinguished Play Award, the New Frontiers Commission, the TCG National Playwriting Residency, the Jerome Fellowship, the New Play Award from ACT in Seattle, and a Dramatist Guild Playwriting Fellowship. She has participated in the SoHo Rep Writer/Director Lab, the Women Playwrights Festival at SRC, The Kennedy Center’s New Voices/New Visions Festival, The Bonderman TYA Symposium, The Ojai New Play Conference, The Denver Center New Play Summit, The Bay Area Theatre Festival, and the O’Neill National Playwright’s Festival among others. She received her graduate degree from Brown University, under the tutelage of Paula Vogel. Laura is a former Victory Gardens Resident Playwright and the MC-10 Playwrights Collective. She currently oversees the undergraduate playwriting program in the Department of Theatre at Northwestern University.