Find out how plays are made and embark on the process of writing your own! In this module you will develop practical and creative skills in playwriting and also critical skills in exploring the strategies and processes involved in making your own work both as individual playwrights and collaboratively. The module aims to expose students to different techniques and strategies of the playwriting craft, while at the same time encouraging them to play with and break “dramaturgical rules” in search for their individual styles as writers.
You will be exposed to both traditional dramaturgical forms and ways of thinking rooted in cause and effect logic and the theatre of the fourth wall, on the one hand and to nonlinear writing based on principles of montage, borrowing, association and intuition, on the other. Constituent elements of the dramatic text such as plot, action, conflict character, dialogue, space/time and ways in which they function within different dramatic structures will be explored. In this process of learning the craft of playwriting you will have the opportunity to explore your own stories, the relationship of your work (and that of others) to a wider socio-cultural framework and context and to search for your own voice as a writer.
You will learn in various mode: through reading and analysing the works of others, through writing exercises, script development workshops, discussions and feedback sessions.
AIMS:
The module will assist you in:
1) producing a playwriting portfolio, that will include short writing exercise pieces developed in the first half of the term
2) write a short collaborative play -- as theatre is a collective effort after all
2) writing your own full-length play
3) understanding the key features of dramatic structure and how to shape them creatively by learning the basic skills of playwriting craft
3) understanding you own practice as a playwright in dialogue with other writers and within your own context