Writing for Stage and Television with Will Arbery & Dorothy Fortenberry

Join playwrights and television writers Will Arbery (Heroes of the Fourth Turning, TV’s “Succession”) and Dorothy Fortenberry (Partners, TV’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”) for a salon-style conversation about writing for stage and (small) screen, faith, doubt, and the search for meaning in art, moderated by novelist and theologian Tara Isabella Burton (Here in Avalon, Self-Made).

A salon on writing about faith, doubt, power, and possession with two of the American stage’s most exciting young voices, Will Arbery and Dorothy Fortenberry.

Will Arbery’s play Heroes of the Fourth Turning premiered at Playwrights Horizons in 2019 and was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist, OBIE winner, Lortel winner, and New York Drama Critics Circle Award winner. It was named one of the best plays of the year by The New York Times, Vulture, Time Out, and more. Corsicana premiered at Playwrights Horizons in 2022 and was a New York Times Critics Pick. Evanston Salt Costs Climbing premiered at The New Group and was the subject of a feature in The New York Times Magazine. His plays are available from TCG Books and Concord Theatricals. Other plays include: Plano (Clubbed Thumb), You Hateful Things (NYTW Dartmouth Residency) and Wheelchair (3 Hole Press). He was the recipient of a Whiting Award in 2020. TV: Succession and Irma Vep. His work has been featured in The Paris Review. He’s currently under commission from Manhattan Theatre Club, Audible, and The Met Opera.

Dorothy Fortenberry is a playwright, screenwriter, and essayist. Her plays include: Partners (Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, Humana Festival), Species Native to California (IAMA Theatre), Good Egg (Red Fern Theatre), Caitlin and the Swan (The Management), Status Update (Center REPertory), and Mommune (Chalk Rep). As a television writer and producer, she has worked on Extrapolations (Apple TV+), The 100 (the CW), and The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu) for which she received multiple Emmy nominations, the PGA Award, and two WGA Awards. She also writes essays for publications including Commonweal and The Los Angeles Review of Books, and likes to talk on podcasts. She is the 2021 laureate of the George W. Hunt, S.J., Prize for Journalism, Arts & Letters for outstanding work in the category of fiction writer or dramatist.

Tara Isabella Burton is the author of the novels Social Creature, The World Cannot Give, and the forthcoming Here in Avalon (S&S, January 2024) and the nonfiction books Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World and Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashian. She has written on religion and culture for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and more.

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