Creative Impulse Studio: The Process of Writing for the Stage

Catalog description

In this studio course, the vectors of pure creative impulse will hold sway over the process of writing for the stage, as we write ourselves into unknown territory. Students will be encouraged to set aside received and preconceived notions of what it means to write plays, or to be a writer, along with ideas of what a play is "supposed to" or "should" look like in order to locate their own authentic ways of seeing and making. In other words, disarming the rational, the judgmental thinking that is rooted in a concept of a final product and empowering the chaotic, spatial, associative processes that put us in immediate formal contact with our direct experience, impressions, and perceptions of reality. Emphasis on detail, texture, and contiguity will be favored over the more widely accepted, reliable, yet sometimes limiting Aristotelian virtues of structure and continuity in the making of meaningful live performance. Readings will be tailored to fit the thinking of the class. We will likely look at theoretical and creative writings of Gertrude Stein, George Steiner, Mac Wellman, María Irene Fornés, Adrienne Kennedy, Mircea Eliade, Kristen Kosmas, Richard Maxwell, and Roland Barthes, as well as work that crosses into visual art realms and radical scientific thought from physicists David Bohm and F. David Peat. The course will be conducted in workshop fashion, with strong emphasis on the tracking and documenting of process. Open to Advanced Undergraduates (juniors and seniors). Playwright’s Workshop