Alex Lewin ’94 hosted afternoon playwriting workshops for students Sept. 24-26.

The Perry S. Goldman Playwriting Workshop taught students playwriting skills as a part of preparing for the Harvard-Westlake Playwrights Festival.

Later in the year, the festival will feature student-written plays, and one of the goals of the workshop was to help students prepare to submit plays for that purpose.

“My main goal for this workshop is just to jog these student’s creativity, and get them to understand that they can actually write a play. It’s not a foreign language,” Lewin said. “Through these workshops, I also want to help students shut off the part of their mind that makes them calculate, and allow them to just create.”

Lewin has been writing plays since he was a student at Harvard-Westlake, and has completed eight full-length plays, including “The Envelope” and “The Near East.”

He has also written five one-act plays and two screenplays.

Some of his work has been performed in theaters such as the La Jolla Playhouse and the Alliance Theatre.

Besides writing, Lewin has taught four similar workshops and spoken at multiple seminars throughout his career.

“I actually wrote my very first play here at Harvard-Westlake, and my teacher Ted Walch was a huge contributor to my decision to become a playwright,” Lewin said, “It really is an honor and privilege to be able to teach here.”