Laura Schellhardt is a Chicago based playwright and adapter. Her original works include Air Guitar High, Auctioning the Ainsleys, The Apothecary's Daughter, The K of D, Courting Vampires, and Shapeshifters, among many others. Adaptations include The Phantom Tollbooth, The Outfit, and Creole Folktales. She is also the author of Screenwriting for Dummies. She’s a two-time Jeff Award nominee and recipient of the AATE Distinguished Play Award, the New Play Frontier’s residency, 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 Paula Vogel. She’s a former Victory Gardens Resident Playwright and current member of Walkabout Playwrights Collective and she oversees the undergraduate play Schellhardt oversees the undergraduate playwriting program in the Department of Theatre at Northwestern University.  

Key Takeaways

• We all hold many identities and their salience changes with time and context

• Privilege can be an obstacle when you’re not aware of it but it can be a tool to empower others

• What you practice grows stronger, especially with how you talk to yourself and others

• What and how you give your attention is one of your most powerful tools 

• Effort > outcome and process > product

• There’s a difference between safety and comfort and it is important to learn and grow in discomfort

• Authenticity is a series of choices based on your values and intentions

• Take yourself seriously but hold yourself lightly

• Make connections not impressions

Guest’s Media Recommendations:

• The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How To Decolonize the Creative Classroom by Felicia Rose Chavez (book)

• Creative Acts for Curious People by Sarah Stein Greenberg (book)

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Find Guest’s work:

• https://communication.northwestern.edu/faculty/laura-schellhardt.html

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For more of Michael’s work, visit our website www.incognitotheplay.com or follow us on Instagram @incognitotheplay

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Thanks to Ned Doheny for providing our podcast music! You can find him and his music on Spotify.

Editing and co-production of this podcast by Emma Yarger.

Email info@incognitotheplay.com with questions or comments about the show!