Writing the Speculative Play

Catalog description

Speculative fiction is a supergenre that ranges from science fiction to fantasy, horror to magical realism, fairy tale to dystopian lit. They are imaginative and epic, and they lend themselves particularly well to the living, breathing world of the theatre. In this class, we will build, dissect, and write worlds that are not the one we live in. In the first half of the semester, we will imagine our plays' worlds as their own planet with their own rules of space, time, and physics. We will imagine the beings that inhabit our new worlds and ask ourselves how they interact, what they prioritize, and how they speak. We will engage with works like Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play and Wicked, as we attempt to discover what about our own world is illuminated when we look outside of it. In the second half of the semester, we will use our newly generated worlds to write and workshop speculative plays of our own. At the end of the course, students will have a finished one act play (30-50 pages). This class is open to all CMU students who are excited to lean into their imagination or are interested in creating plays in the speculative genres.