(BASKING RIDGE, NJ) -- American Theater Group (ATG), in partnership with the Sieminski Theater, will collaborate to offer a Summer Theater Workshop for adults and high school and college students. The program will instruct students on using their own "lived experiences" to develop personal short plays. The workshops will be made possible thanks to a Somerset County 2026 Local Arts Program Grant.
Led by actor, playwright and Emmy Award nominee Jason Odell Williams, the workshops will be free of charge, open to the public, accessible to all and will teach the craft of playwriting as well as the fundamentals of theater producing.
They will foster intergenerational learning by transforming the lived experiences of the students into 10-minute plays, culminating in a staged reading of their original pieces performed by other members of the workshop.
“These workshops will offer students a unique hands-on guide to the art of playwriting, character creation, and stagecraft through group writing exercises,” stated ATG Producing Artistic Director Charlotte Cohn. “As students read and discuss their work with each other, they will gain a deeper understanding of how theater is developed and produced.”
The six-week interactive workshop series will run from July 27th through August 30th, with classes meeting on Mondays from 1:30pm – 3:30pm at the Sieminski theater located at 8000 Fellowship Road. The final presentations will take place at 2:30pm on Sunday, August 30th. Participants can register for the workshop by emailing [email protected] or calling 908-580-3892.
“This generous Somerset County grant will also expand our venue’s programming and access, while simultaneously fulfilling our long-range plan to establish the Sieminski Theater as a co-presenting house, one which develops original works,” noted Sieminski Theater Executive Director Patricia Yannotta.
Jason Odell Williams is an Emmy-nominated writer and producer as well as an award-winning playwright and novelist. His play Church & State was nominated for Best New Play by the Off-Broadway Alliance and L.A. Ovation Awards and won the 2019 Henry Award for Best Play. It ran for over 100 performances off-Broadway at New World Stages and went on to have over 80 productions and counting nationwide.
His other produced plays include: Destroying David, Handle with Care, On the Market, Baltimore in Black & White, Someone Else, America in One Room, and Make ’Em Laugh – a play for high schools which has had over 30 productions in three years. Most recently, Williams co-wrote a new musical called The Sound (Semi-Finalist, 2025 National Music Theater Conference at the O’Neill Theatre Festival) with his collaborator, Charlotte Cohn, and composer Christian Douglas. It had a full production at CenterStage at the JCC Rochester in May 2026.
The Sieminski Theater is located on the scenic campus of Fellowship Village at 8000 Fellowship Road in Basking Ridge, NJ. This beautiful, 257-seat state-of-the-art theater boasts an innovative design that exudes professionalism while maintaining an intimate ambiance.
American Theater Group (ATG), founded in 2012, produces new and classic works primarily by American playwrights with an emphasis on the development of new works and the reimagining of undeservedly neglected older ones. It also provides quality arts-in-education initiatives, including its New Works/New Voices playwriting program for high school students and its PlayLab program for BIPOC and queer playwrights.
