DRAM40370 Writing for the Theatre

Academic Year 2021/2022


The module will encourage and facilitate understanding of the specific invitations and demands of writing for performance, using exercises, impromptu workshopping, primary texts from established playwrights and analysis and discussion of student’s own writing. Attention will be given throughout to the fundamentals of dramatic engagement and structure, and, latterly, to the elements that can be usefully transferred from the stage to other, more visually-dominant media. The ability to make an audience care - about character, situation and outcome, will be treated as paramount.
There will be an emphasis on developing a considered, well-integrated perspective on the central theme(s) within each student's work. To this end, the student will be encouraged to create fully-realized characters that can credibly operate within the environment of the fictional scenario, and are developed to the best of their ability as distinctive, functional, complex and necessary figures in the drama.
The demands of adapting dramatic material, for screen and radio will be considered in passing given that a later module will address these in depth, but students will be given “priming” exercises to point up the potentialities and limitations of each of these media.
The overall aim is to bring the student to the point where they display fundamental understanding of, and ability to create, dramatic narrative with a strong empathetic, structural and thematic basis. By the time they turn their attention to related but distinct media (video, film, radio) they should be equipped to show appreciation of the distinct demands and challenges on offer, in pursuit of a fully realized performative blueprint.
In regard to foundational skills in writing for the stage, all elements of the play should feel both intentional and necessary. Aspects of genre, audience, location and time-frame will all be given consideration. The more practical elements of production such as funding, casting, direction and career development will also be addressed.
As postgraduates, the students have developed their own voice to some degree. It is important to respect and encourage this unique voice, and to explore its potential. To this end there should be a clear progression over the course of study and some strong evidence of the maturity and commitment necessary to continue writing and submitting completed work in a highly competitive market after the course is completed.

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Curricular information is subject to change

Learning Outcomes:



• Develop confidence and ability within their own writing style.
• Yet also be able to explore a range of approaches and registers as regards writing for performance, in a variety of media, and a grasp of their contexts and underlying principles.
• Demonstrate a sound understanding of dramaturgical structure and function, within and across scenes.
• Be able to collaborate effectively in a creative environment, and to offer discerning support for the work of others.
• Have the capability to initiate creative and interpretative projects setting goals that are attainable and challenging.
• Have developed the confidence to see projects through to completion, and to expose them to audiences and critics.
• Have a strongly heightened sense of the need to make an audience care about what they are seeing.
• Develop the ability to be bold and original in creative problem-solving.
• Gain an understanding and respect for the diversity of creative approaches.
• Benefit from the supports provided for individual aspirations and the realization of dramatic concepts.

Indicative Module Content:

Seminars- Provisional:
Wk 1. The empty page. The empty space. The creative role of fear/excitement.
Classroom protocols: constructive criticism - how to be a productive "critic"
What’s worth saying?
15-minute writing exercise based on random allocation of 1 prop, 1 location and 2 characters. Evaluation of “promise”
Situation and concept – dramatic impetus and immanence.
Beginnings. Texts: Anton Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard. Shelagh Stephenson, The Memory of Water .
For next week – verbatim discussion to be brought into class.
Wk 2. Where to begin?
Inspiration and perspiration. Sitting with the idea.
Phenomenological “waiting”, and beginning too soon.
Analysis of verbatim theatre exercise.
Limbering up: 15- minute writing exercise, "A strange thing happened in my town..."
The dramatic “hook”, and “holding the boards”.
Text: Excerpt from Ayckbourn: The Crafty Art of Playmaking plus You Tube clip.
For next week – altering the plan: deconstructing Ayckbourn’s Gameplan.
Wk 3. The primacy of Theme. How do you evaluate potential ideas?
Top-down (Aristotelan) and bottom-up (Dialogic) playwriting.
Governing premise, set and setting. The ties that bind.
Mental “modelling” – defeating expectation.
Text: Paula Vogel, How I Learned to Drive. Enda Walsh, Penelope
Exercise: creating a binding hypothetical.

Wk 4. “A voice comes to one in the dark. Imagine” (Beckett, Company)
Does voice determine character, or character, voice?
Multivocality and the mediatised cacophony
Excerpts from Paul Castagno: New Playwriting Strategies.
Exercise: Broken frames – register, slang, argot, “over- and under-specification” –
the Wikipedia-based adaptation.
Pinter, The Caretaker, Caryl Churchill, Top Girls

Wk 5. Monologue – words in a void / dramatic pretext.
The narrated now, the edited self. New research on our “storied brains”
Video and Radio monologues
Rona Munro, David Mamet, Samuel Beckett
Creating and populating the offstage universe.
Task – to write a monologue for an actor - Charlie Hughes – to be performed after the break.

Wk 6. The word become flesh – bodies in space, delivery in time.
Students will work with the actor in front of their peers to direct their short monologue.
Intonation, sound and silence, body-language, tempo and tension.
Drama without words – Charlie Chaplin, The Lion.
Comedy: fear, disgust, embarrassment.
Empathy and mirror-neurons. The audience - quasi-participatory “acts” and “the bodymind”.
Wk 7. Reflection on monologue as a form
Conor McPherson, This Lime Tree Bower, Online examples.
The confessional voice. Creating intimacy, crafting identification.
The merits and demerits of using monologue in longer play structure – “hitting pause”.
Wk 8. Dialogue 1.
Scene-work.
What constitutes a scene – “beats” and arc.
Keeping the “super-objective” in mind – eyes on the prize.
The web of implication and intention. Strindberg’s Miss Julie.
New research on “mentalizing”.
My Dinner with Andre: Wallace Shawn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckK_UCajjM
Wk 9 Dialogue 2
Cliff-hangers – the need to know.
Ending the scene on a question
David Hare Page Eight (film) Stacey Gregg, Override
Exercise: writing “open”, dynamic scenes
Mutual incomprehension, cross-talk and stratagems.
Task: draft of 5-minute play idea.

Wk 10. Tighteners – “suspending” and suspense.
The dramatic control of Time. Marlowe’s Faustus
The remembered present. Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Susan Hill, The Woman in Black, Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape, and other excavatory riddles.
Tempo, rhythm, frequency.
The exposition trap.

Wk 11. Adaptation. The Woman in Black.
Sections from the novel, the stage-play and the film.
One-act plays – first reading/response session
Empathy. "Tighteners".
Writing is re-writing - the editing process
Creative discovery /self-mining
Kill your darlings

Wk 12. One-on-one response to short play draft.
Keeping the elements in focus – using blueprint from,
Smiley. S., Playwriting: The Structure of Action (2005)

Student Effort Hours: 
Student Effort Type Hours
Seminar (or Webinar)

24
Specified Learning Activities

76
Total

100
Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
Seminar-led work.
Writing, revising work and responding and offering feedback to other students 
Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 
Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Open Book Exam Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade
Assignment: Initial draft, leading to one-on-one response, and final submitted play (50%) Unspecified n/a Graded No

50
Continuous Assessment: Classroom participation and in-class writing exercises, which will take place in every
Session. (50%)
 Unspecified n/a Graded No

50

Carry forward of passed components
Yes
 
Resit In Terminal Exam
Spring No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 
Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Feedback for students on all assessments will happen at the end of the exam period.

Seminars- Provisional:
Wk 1. The empty page. The empty space. The creative role of fear/excitement.
Classroom protocols: constructive criticism - how to be a productive "critic"
What’s worth saying?
15-minute writing exercise based on random allocation of 1 prop, 1 location and 2 characters. Evaluation of “promise”
Situation and concept – dramatic impetus and immanence.
Beginnings. Texts: Anton Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard. Shelagh Stephenson, The Memory of Water .
For next week – verbatim discussion to be brought into class.
Wk 2. Where to begin?
Inspiration and perspiration. Sitting with the idea.
Phenomenological “waiting”, and beginning too soon.
Analysis of verbatim theatre exercise.
Limbering up: 15- minute writing exercise, "A strange thing happened in my town..."
The dramatic “hook”, and “holding the boards”.
Text: Excerpt from Ayckbourn: The Crafty Art of Playmaking plus You Tube clip.
For next week – altering the plan: deconstructing Ayckbourn’s Gameplan.
Wk 3. The primacy of Theme. How do you evaluate potential ideas?
Top-down (Aristotelan) and bottom-up (Dialogic) playwriting.
Governing premise, set and setting. The ties that bind.
Mental “modelling” – defeating expectation.
Text: Paula Vogel, How I Learned to Drive. Enda Walsh, Penelope
Exercise: creating a binding hypothetical.

Wk 4. “A voice comes to one in the dark. Imagine” (Beckett, Company)
Does voice determine character, or character, voice?
Multivocality and the mediatised cacophony
Excerpts from Paul Castagno: New Playwriting Strategies.
Exercise: Broken frames – register, slang, argot, “over- and under-specification” –
the Wikipedia-based adaptation.
Pinter, The Caretaker, Caryl Churchill, Top Girls

Wk 5. Monologue – words in a void / dramatic pretext.
The narrated now, the edited self. New research on our “storied brains”
Video and Radio monologues
Rona Munro, David Mamet, Samuel Beckett
Creating and populating the offstage universe.
Task – to write a monologue for an actor - Charlie Hughes – to be performed after the break.

Wk 6. The word become flesh – bodies in space, delivery in time.
Students will work with the actor in front of their peers to direct their short monologue.
Intonation, sound and silence, body-language, tempo and tension.
Drama without words – Charlie Chaplin, The Lion.
Comedy: fear, disgust, embarrassment.
Empathy and mirror-neurons. The audience - quasi-participatory “acts” and “the bodymind”.
Wk 7. Reflection on monologue as a form
Conor McPherson, This Lime Tree Bower, Online examples.
The confessional voice. Creating intimacy, crafting identification.
The merits and demerits of using monologue in longer play structure – “hitting pause”.
Wk 8. Dialogue 1.
Scene-work.
What constitutes a scene – “beats” and arc.
Keeping the “super-objective” in mind – eyes on the prize.
The web of implication and intention. Strindberg’s Miss Julie.
New research on “mentalizing”.
My Dinner with Andre: Wallace Shawn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckK_UCajjM
Wk 9 Dialogue 2
Cliff-hangers – the need to know.
Ending the scene on a question
David Hare Page Eight (film) Stacey Gregg, Override
Exercise: writing “open”, dynamic scenes
Mutual incomprehension, cross-talk and stratagems.
Task: draft of 5-minute play idea.

Wk 10. Tighteners – “suspending” and suspense.
The dramatic control of Time. Marlowe’s Faustus
The remembered present. Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Susan Hill, The Woman in Black, Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape, and other excavatory riddles.
Tempo, rhythm, frequency.
The exposition trap.

Wk 11. Adaptation. The Woman in Black.
Sections from the novel, the stage-play and the film.
One-act plays – first reading/response session
Empathy. "Tighteners".
Writing is re-writing - the editing process
Creative discovery /self-mining
Kill your darlings

Wk 12. One-on-one response to short play draft.
Keeping the elements in focus – using blueprint from,
Smiley. S., Playwriting: The Structure of Action (2005)

Name Role
Dr Ashley Taggart Lecturer / Co-Lecturer