The Pataphysics Playwriting Workshops at The Flea Theatre are intimate, four-session intensives for new work and new ways of working. Named for Alfred Jarry's science of imaginary solutions, the workshops are a gymnasium for the writing brain--curious, particular, and rigorous. Students enter with blank sheets of paper, and leave with pages of notes, fragments, scenes, even entire plays unlike anything they would have written on their own.

The Pataphysics workshops are led by master playwrights who are known not only for a distinct and groundbreaking body of work, but also for their ability as teachers. In the first four seasons, instructors included Maria Irene Fornes, Mac Wellman, Jose Rivera, Erik Ehn, Karen Finley, Eduardo Machado Jeffrey M. Jones, Craig Lucas, Chuck Mee and Lee Breuer. The workshops are structured around the idea that whatever is most immediately interesting to a teacher will make for the most engaging class. Each workshop is unique, consisting of writing experiments, interesting talk, and the reading of original materials generated in class. They're an opportunity for writers, emerging and experienced, to challenge their own assumptions using strange muscles and surprising parts of the brain.

Each workshop meets four times over two consecutive weekends, from 10 am to 1pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Class size is limited to thirteen and admission is by application. The cost is $250. The Flea Theater runs these workshops at cost. Grants from The Dramatists Guild, The Flea Theater and private donations provide a limited number of scholarships for those who would not otherwise be able to attend.