Playwrights Practice: Playwriting Made Easy
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Brief Introduction
Self-guided. Write, edit and workshop original short plays. Examine and change your life. Train the playwright in you!Description
Playwrights Practice: Playwriting Made Easy
"The act of playwriting feeds the soul unlike anything else in the theatre arts." ~Unknown
This is a comprehensive course designed to teach aspiring playwrights the methods and skills necessary to create their own short stage plays from idea inception through polished final draft execution. Seasoned writers will benefit from the online table reading component as well as the lectures, allowing a chance to review technique as well as hear and garner constructive criticism of short works. We will reference and study theatrical masterpieces as examples.
Playwriting is about the journey of the play. That journey offers you the chance to change your life through examination. It enables you to take a problem and look at it in ways you may never have considered before. This can, in turn, present previously unseen options to you.
Herein, I offer to you the shortcuts, methodologies and creative insights taught to me during the first semester of MFA-level playwriting in Carnegie Mellon University's Dramatic Writing program. These fuzzy memories have been married to a myriad of professional tips, tricks and secrets I've learned through the experiments, successes and failures of both myself and fellow alum during our journey into the businesses of theater, film and television.
If you follow this course through from beginning to end and execute all of the readings and exercises, you will be armed with the tools necessary to transform yourself into a short-form playwright of note while becoming a better writer and a more thoughtful human being.
You will learn about short play structure, writing formulas, various types and levels of dialogue creation, managing character expectations, managing audience expectations, rising tension, avoiding cliche, and proper stage play format ... and in the process of practicing you will develop your own personal writing style and flare.
If you complete the instruction provided along with the assignments and optional online table reading, you will complete this course with a minimum of:
1) one ten-minute play with feedback via workshop, and
2) the foundation necessary to prepare you to write your first full length stage play for the purpose of winning notoriety, influencing people, mastering advanced structure, applying for a possible residency, or submission to short-form playwriting competitions.
This course is dedicated to the memory of my playwriting mentor, Milan Stitt, February 9, 1941 to March 12, 2009 (The Runner Stumbles).
Requirements
- Requirements
- With Library Access, you can read the 4 (Four) Plays discussed in course lectures for free. These plays are: Tennessee Williams, SUMMER & SMOKE; David Mamet, AMERICAN BUFFALO; Harold Pinter, THE CARETAKER; Samuel Becket, HAPPY DAYS. To the best of my ability, I do try to cover these plays in the following lectures with enough depth that, even if you are unable to read the play itself, you will still benefit from the concepts presented in the lectures. Please don't take that statement as permission to not read the assigned plays: you will benefit far more from the lectures if you have knowledge of the actual dialogue created by the playwrights in each work.
- You should have access to some sort of portable audio recording app/device, as well as a small notebook, a pen and a pencil.
- You should have access to a computer and/or a word processor (programs like Final Draft or Movie Magic Screenwriter are industry standards and preferred; free alternatives are suggested in the course).
Knowledge
- Implement the methods and skills necessary to create your own short stage plays from idea inception through polished final draft execution, ready for contests, readings and workshops.
- Master short stage play structure.
- Workshop your play via moderated online table readings with other playwrights.
- Discover formulas, shortcuts, methodologies and creative insights to help jumpstart your journey as a playwright.
- Identify and overcome major flaws found in both new and professional writers today.
- Understand what makes an idea right for theatrical exploration (versus cinematic exploration or literary exploration).
- Study and master the art of nuanced dialogue creation.
- Manage character and audience expectations.
- Create and manipulate rising tension.
- Uncover tips and tricks to help you avoid cliche in your writing.
- Demonstrate and duplicate proper stage play format.
- Enable you to examine and change your life through playwriting.
- Valuable feedback provided if you paid full price for this course. No feedback will be provided to anyone who purchases this course at a discounted rate.
Jack Sullivan
4.1 Raiting
Playwrights Practice: Playwriting Made Easy
- 4.1
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Self-guided. Write, edit and workshop original short plays. Examine and change your life. Train the playwright in you! Playwrights Practice: Playwriting Made Easy...
