Writing from The Heart: Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks: _Make Sure

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.

Monday, January 8, 2018

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks: _Make Sure_ by Clara

Hi Clara!

You worked very hard on rewriting this play. It is tighter; every scene pushes the premise forward; and the play ends in a delightful turnabout. Your strongest points are an ear for dialogue as spoken in the streets (as opposed to poetic dialogue) and a sense of humor, both of which I found absent in your other play, Birth Days.

Make Sure verges on theatre of the absurd. It is a comment on the tension between authority and the individual (or the individualist). The only suggestion I can make at this point is perhaps link each artwork in the gallery to a particular playwright or a play (as you did the first installation with Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. That would add a dimension to the parallelism you are drawing between theatre and visual art.

This play seems more reading-ready to me than your other play.