Spring’s Awakening: Reflective Writing Workshop

Discover the power of reflective writing inspired by visual art and poetry guided by playwright and teaching artist Mary Hall Surface. Inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s Almond Blossom and poetry by Mary Oliver, explore the lessons that the season of spring offers us when we slow down, look closely, and reflect. Designed for writers of all levels, the workshop invites you to look outwardly at paintings and poetry and to look inwardly through writing. These reflections can become fertile ground for memoir and poetry as well as for personal growth and spiritual direction.

Mary Hall Surface is a playwright, director and teaching artist who presents writing workshops through the Smithsonian Associates, the National Gallery of Art, and museums nationwide. She is the founding instructor of the NGA’s popular Writing Salon, as featured in The Washington Post. She leads workshops for educators as a National Teaching Artist for the Kennedy Center and was a six-summer faculty member of Harvard’s Project Zero Classroom. A nine-time Helen Hayes Award nominee, including four for the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play, she received the 2002 Outstanding Director of a Musical for her Perseus Bayou. Her plays have been produced across the US, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and Canada, including eighteen Kennedy Center productions. She is the proud founding artistic director of DC’s Atlas INTERSECTIONS Festival, where she curated over 600 all-arts performances and events from 2009–2015.

Registrants will be sent information with a Zoom link on May 15. Registration is free for this ONLINE event, with an option to pay what you wish (select the option in the drop-down).

Photo: Vincent van Gogh, Almond Blossom, 1890, oil on canvas, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).