Writing from The Heart: Dramaturgy for Theatreworks Singapore

Writing from The Heart

"Writing from The Heart" is a workshop on creative writing, creative drawing, and creative drama. There are three available versions of this workshop: one for beginners on the secondary, tertiary, and graduate levels, and another for practitioners. A third version of this workshop is designed as an outreach program to disadvantaged and underserved audiences such as the disabled, the poor and the marginalized, victims of human trafficking, battered women and abused children, drug rehabilitation center residents, child combatants, children in conflict with the law, prisoners, and gang leaders. This third version incorporates creativity and problem awareness, conflict resolution, crisis intervention, trauma therapy, and peacemaking.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Dramaturgy for Theatreworks Singapore

Hajar's Play: "Shadow & Bright"

Dear Hajar,

I was waiting to encounter this type of play--I knew that this form would crop up from one of the portfolios sooner or later.

Plays classified under Theater of the Absurd, such as those of Eugene Ionesco, are typical in First-World countries that are advanced in science and technology.

Your play is unique in that it is:

--a statement written from the perspective of ethnicity and a need for you to be a voice in the wilderness
--a commentary on technology, the environment, and the world's fate within a galactic context
--an interplay of parts of the human psyche.

The play you have chosen to write is difficult to develop primarily because your characters are not "human beings" but personifications of "ideas". Difficult, but not impossible.

I will not discourage you from writing in verse because I love your poetry and the way it serves as dialogue.

Here are the things you need to work on:

1. The action is not dramatic. You need to define and demonstrate the conflict between characters. In this play you have no choice but to show the conflict happening onstage.

2. It is the characters who should be threatening to one another--not the situation they are in.

3. Avoid subtlety if it only creates ambiguity. Otherwise the audience won't know what is going on and will easily get bored.

4. Do not walk into the trap of writing an absurd play that will come across as a schizoid work. Always be clear, always be assertive.

At this point I need to know how vivid your visualization of your play is. You will enjoy this exercise: Sketch the set and the costumes of your characters, scan them, and send them to me as attachments.

Also, draw a storyboard of your play delineating the major action and blocking of performers.

As for your revised manuscript, please, send it to me by e-mail as a Word document attachment.

This is a fun play with a serious message. Go for it!