ENGL 203-01, Introduction to Dramatic Writing, Fall 2008

Abstract

In this playwriting workshop, you will read several contemporary plays and will write a variety of scenes and exercises culminating in a complete one-act play to be performed in a staged reading at the end of the semester. To get to this end-of-semester goal, we will study several contemporary plays with a keen eye toward narrative structure—how dramatic writing is created and manipulated—in addition to reading a practical text to put our collective vocabulary on a common level to help us discuss these contemporary plays as well as your own. More specifically, we will keep an eye toward how different playwrights deploy a narrator-figure while others explore a documentary-like approach to telling a story and what this means for the audience’s understanding of the overall story and theatrical experience.