Synopses & Reviews
Teaching Young Playwrights is a book for all teachers of writing, regardless of their theatrical experience. Gerald Chapman was the first artistic director of the Foundation of the Dramatists Guild New Playwrights Festival, having founded a similar festival at London's Royal Court Theatre. This book is the result of his work with those festivals and the workshops with children ages nine to eighteen he and his colleagues conducted in New York and elsewhere from 1981.
Informative and accessible, this book aims to get rid of many of the fears teachers and students feel when they are faced with the prospect of revealing themselves as completely as playwriting demands. While it offers an introduction to the elementary techniques of role-playing and improvisation, this is not a book on creative dramatics. The basics of creative drama in the classroom are designed to be used in the training of playwriting skills.
Playwriting involves several activities that Chapman groups under four headings: Reading, both aloud and silently; Talking, in discussion and in improvisation; Writing, individually and collaboratively; and Analyzing, as individuals and groups. These activities combined with the elements of dramatics can help students in a workshop situation work their way through the process of playwriting. by the processes of revision and rewriting, the students' work will evolve from drafts of improvisations to become final drafts that adhere to the conventions of drama and that realize the concepts of characterization and narrative structure.
To get students started, the first lesson begins with the Collaborative Writing Game; and all lessons include some writing, improvisation, and discussion. Through all of this Chapman discusses such facets of playwriting as dramatic action, point of view, characterization, the form of playwriting, topic choice, and evaluation and rewriting.
Synopsis
Teaching Young Playwrights is a book for all teachers of writing, regardless of their theatrical experience. This book is the result of Gerald Chapman's work with the Dramatists Guild New Playwrights Festival and workshops he and his colleagues conducted with children aged nine to eighteen.
Synopsis
Informative and accessible, it aims to get rid of many of the fears teachers and students feel when they are faced with the prospect of revealing themselves as completely as playwriting demands.
About the Author
Born and educated in England, Gerald Chapman began his involvement with play production at Cambridge University. In London, he was appointed to the Royal Court Theatre in charge of the Young People's Theatre Scheme and the Young Writers' Festival. He taught school, ran workshops, and organized the Young Playwrights' annual competition. In 1980 Chapman was invited by Stephen Sondheim to start a similar project in the United States. He founded and directed New York's Young Playwrights' Festival, which won a Drama Critics Circle Award in 1983. He also taught at New York University, worked in the New York City schools, and directed productions at the American Repertory Theatre, the Circle Repertory Company, and the Double Image Theatre. Gerald Chapmen died in September, 1987.Melissa Scott is winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Writer in 1986 and two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award (1995, 1996). She holds degrees from Harvard College and Brandeis University, and has published seventeen novels, including Dreaming Metal (Tor, 1997) and Night Sky Mine (Tor, 1996).
Table of Contents
How to Use This Book
Getting Started: Talking about Plays
Dramatic Action: Some Exercises
Teaching Empathy-The Key to Characterization
Improvisations
Writing Exercises
The Form of Playwriting
Evaluating and Rewriting
Teaching Playwriting and Writing
Topic and Genre-What are They Saying?
Why Teach Playwriting?
Conclusion.
Bibliography.