Summer at the Library: Artist-in-Residence Workshops: “Creating in Color” with Roundabout Theatre Company

Join The New York Public Library and Roundabout Theatre Company's Artist-in-Residence for 10 sessions of artistic workshops!

The workshops will be held in person at Harlem Library.

Join multi-hyphenate artists, Vickie Tanner, and Jennifer Varbalow, curate artistic workshops designed to spark the creative process. Craft and create your own story, essay, monologue, play, song, poem, speech, and/or theatrical performance pertaining to BIPOC identity: past, present, and future. We will explore primary sources from the Harlem Library and the production, Home at Roundabout Theatre Company, as well as various social justice movements and art movements, as inspirational spark points. In the following intergenerational workshops, participants will collaborate to create their own pieces exploring various artistic techniques which will culminate in communal sharing. 

Essential Question: How are artists inspired by social movements, environment, and circumstances in creating art?

Free tickets to see Roundabout shows will be available, please see Library staff for more information. Supplies are limited.

START DATE: April 29, 2023

END DATE : July 15, 2023

IN-PERSON WORKSHOPS: Mondays starting at 3 PM

10 Workshop Sessions

Artist-in-Residence dates:

• Monday, April 29th from 3pm-4:30pm
• Monday, May 6th from 3pm-4:30pm - Please REGISTER HERE for May Sessions
• Monday, May 13th from 3pm-4:30pm
• Monday, May 20th from 3pm-4:30pm
• Monday, June 3rd from 3pm-4:30pm - Please REGISTER HERE for June Sessions
• Monday, June 10th from 3pm-4:30pm
• Monday, June 24th from 3pm-4:30pm
• Monday, July 1st from 3-4:30pm - Please REGISTER HERE for July Sessions
• Monday, July 8th from 3pm-4:30pm
• Monday, July 15th from 3pm-5pm – Community Sharing

Space is limited | Registration is recommended but not required.  Register above with your email address. Walkups will be permitted as space accommodates.

Learn more about this year's Roundabout Productions

Doubt A Parable John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award®-winning Best Play has blazed back to Broadway starring Academy Award® and Tony nominee Amy Ryan and Tony winner Liev Schreiber. This “excellent new revival, directed by Scott Ellis, affords the pleasure of watching two supremely good actors going toe to toe” (The Wall Street Journal). “Ryan and Schreiber are electric on Broadway” (Entertainment Weekly). The fireworks begin as the exacting principal of a Bronx Catholic school—feared by students and colleagues alike— suspects improper relations between a charismatic priest and a student. She’s forced to wrestle with what’s fact, what’s fiction, and just how far she’ll go to expose what she sees as the truth. As the New York Post says, “It keeps the audience guessing and second-guessing through the play’s famous final line.

Home In the Tony Award®-nominated play The New York Times calls “an uplifting folk ballad about the pure in heart,” Cephus Miles has the whole world in his callused hands—until his sweetheart Pattie Mae goes off to college and marries another man. Originally staged by the Negro Ensemble Company in 1979 and featured in the first year of Roundabout’s Refocus Project, Samm-Art Williams’ Home is a muscular and melodic coming-of-age story that gives voice to the unbreakable spirit of all Americans who have been searching for a place to belong. Kenny Leon (A Soldier’s Play) directs.

Learn more about our Artists-in-Residence

VICKIE TANNER, Actor/Writer/Producer

Theatre credits include: Rhythms of Being/Dorrance Dance, Joyce Theatre, STOMP (NYC and Europe), TANTALUS (Denver/British tour with Dirs. Peter and Ed. Hall) and TWO DAYS (Donald Margulies with Lisa Peterson at Long Wharf). Her solo play, RUNNING INTO ME has played in New York at 59E59 Street Theaters, La Mama, Cherry Lane Studio Theatre, Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe, Irondale Theatre, in L.A. at Whitefire Theatre and at Edinburg Fringe Festival, Underbelly, Cowgate. Film credits include: Home (a Netflix short, Dir. Ellie Foumbi), Paris is in Harlem, Acts of Worship, Drop Back Ten, No Way Out and The Apology. Television: Kaleidescope (Neflix), STOMP Out Loud, Wonderland (TV series, Dir. Peter Berg), Law and Order SVU, NYPD Blue and One Life to Live. Vickie is the creator, co-writer and producer of ONE CUCKOO, a web series pilot, which has screened at Lift-Off New York and Harlem Film Festivals. One Cuckoo was also a SAG Indie Award finalist and received a partial scholarship for Stowe Story Lab 2021. She is a master teaching artist with Park Avenue Armory and Roundabout Theatre Company and director of the Brooklyn Youth Company with Manhattan Class Company. Vickie is currently attending Stony Brook University as an MFA student in filmmaking and working on a new short: Karen Valentine. www.VickieTanner.com

JENNIFER VARBALOW (she/her) is a Set Designer in NYC. She has designed  for Strike Anywhere, Bryant Park, Drilling Company/Shakespeare in the  Parking Lot, MultiStages, JACK, NYMF, Broadway Bound Festival, New York  Deaf Theatre, Resonance Ensemble, The Workshop Theater, Ensemble  Studio Theatre, Pulse Ensemble Theatre, DR2 Theatre, Queens Theatre in  the Park. During the pandemic she has applied her skills to the Reverb  Festival, the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, designing dancing mailboxes for Get  Out the Vote campaigns. Jennifer is a Master Teaching Artist with  Roundabout and an Adjunct Professor at Citytech. She has a MFA from  Brandeis and a BFA from Rutgers University. Jennifer is also a member of  Local USA 829.

About Roundabout Theatre Company

Roundabout Theatre Company celebrates the power of theatre by spotlighting classics from the past, cultivating new works of the present, and educating minds for the future. A not-for-profit company, Roundabout fulfills that mission by producing familiar and lesser-known plays and musicals; discovering and supporting talented playwrights; reducing the barriers that can inhibit theatergoing; collaborating with a diverse team of artists; building educational experiences; and archiving over five decades of production history. Learn more about  Roundabout Theatre Company.