A journey in storytelling and creative expression
About Emerge
Emerge is a five-month workshop series led by a team of professional teaching artists, inviting participants to use artistic exploration to nurture the storyteller inside each of us. No storytelling or performance experience is required, just the desire to develop your personal creativity and voice to better understand and express your own stories. Wonderlust welcomes people of all backgrounds and abilities, specializing in creating a safe, nurturing space for you to take risks and make discoveries together.
The cohort selected for this program will participate in live workshops, home zoom sessions, and one-on-one mentorship in creative practices, storytelling, poetry, movement, and performance. Halfway through the program, participants will choose one genre of storytelling they want to dive into in smaller group sessions. Those who wish to will have the option of developing and performing their own piece at a live cabaret performance dedicated to the work that emerges from this project. Wonderlust company members will be involved in supporting the classrooms and coaching those who would like help performing their final piece.
Why Emerge?
At Wonderlust we’ve met so many people with big stories inside of them and a strong impulse to share their story and access their own creativity. The Emerge program is designed to illuminate, excavate, and nourish that story inside of you waiting for the right setting to emerge, develop, and come into full form. Your story needs the right conditions and tools to be expressed, but it is already there. It is the thing that probably drew you to Wonderlust’s work in the first place, the opportunity to realize a new aspect of yourself, to share from your lived experience, and to cultivate skills and passions you’ve always wanted to explore more deeply.
Schedule and Cost
Emerge runs November 8, 2026 – April 5, 2027, meeting in person on a weekly basis at the Wonderlust studio in St. Paul and in zoom-based free-write sessions every other week. All gatherings will be weeknights and/or weekends based on everyone’s availability. (Part of the application process is letting us know when you are available.) The program takes place in three phases:
- Eight weeks of creative practices
- Four weeks of focusing on one genre in smaller groups
- Four weeks developing a piece of your own to perform in a cabaret night for an invited audience.
Tuition is $750, payable in three payments prior to each phase of the project. Sliding scale tuition also available for anyone who needs it.
Apply by filling out this form. No audition or writing sample required. Deadline to apply is October 25th. Notification of acceptance will be by October 30th.