MFA Thesis in Playwriting

Catalog description

This is a semester-long, comprehensive class where students are expected to utilize all the tools they have developed in the previous three semesters of study to complete an original, full-length work. Students are required to come into this class with a draft of the play, preferably one developed in Advanced Playwriting or Goldberg Masterclass in Playwriting, that they will work on and complete over the course of the semester. Students who did not take Advanced Playwriting/Goldberg Masterclass must come into the class with a full-length play that they have written somewhere else. As much as continuing to work on a full-length play, this class is about developing a rewriting practice; a process for students to assess their own work, determine to what degree the draft matches or does not match their ideal vision for the play, and from there, use that assessment to help devise a plan for how to make their play match their ideal vision. In the course of the semester this class will explore a number of tools to aid that process of assessment and rewriting, including the use of actors and directors in context of developmental readings.