Seminar (play)

Seminar
Logo of the production
Written by	Theresa Rebeck
Characters	Leonard Kate Martin Douglas Izzy
Date premiered	20 November 2011
Place premiered	John Golden Theater New York City
Original language	English
Subject	A series of writing seminars.
Genre	Comedy
Setting	Present day; New York City

Seminar is a Broadway play by Theresa Rebeck. It played, on Broadway, at the Golden Theater. Alan Rickman originated the lead character, Leonard. The production premiered on November 20, 2011 and closed on May 6, 2012.Jeff Goldblum replaced Alan Rickman as Leonard on April 1, 2012. The Broadway production was directed by Sam Gold and features original music by John Gromada.

Set in present day New York City, Seminar follows four young writers—Kate, Martin, Douglas, and Izzy—and their professor, Leonard. Each student has paid Leonard $5,000 for a ten-week writing seminar to be held in Kate's Upper West Side apartment. As tensions arise and romance falls, they clash over their writing, their relations, and their futures.

The play was mostly well received. Ben Brantley of The New York Times criticized some script elements, but praised Rickman's acting: "This mélange of feelings, magnificently orchestrated by Mr. Rickman, is arrived at after Leonard has only glanced at the first couple of pages of a vast manuscript. But ... I felt an authentic rush of pleasure and the exhilaration of being reminded that in theater, art comes less from landing lines than [from] finding what lies between them."

Elysa Gardner of USA Today called Seminar an "enriching study". David Rooney of the Hollywood Reporter found Seminar "tight, witty and consistently entertaining, acquiring more muscle as the layers are peeled back to reveal both the scarred humanity and the numbness beneath Leonard’s soured exterior."

Seminar was nominated as Best Play by the Outer Critics Circle and the Drama League, but did not earn any Tony Award nominations.

Seminar opened at San Francisco Playhouse on May 3, 2014, and received outstanding reviews from the local press. The role of Leonard was played by Charles Shaw Robinson.