T453 – Playwriting I

May be taken for graduate credit.

If you like to write but have never before created anything for the
theatre, this course is designed for you.  Playwriting I concerns
itself with the shorter forms of drama.  By the end of the semester
you will have generated a one to two minute monologue, a ten-minute
sketch, and an original one-act play some 30 – 35 pages long.  You
will understand the underlying principles of dramatic construction,
and you will have a critical vocabulary sufficient to enable you
both to review productions and to assist in the constructive peer
evaluation of student works – in – progress.  Everyone will have at
least two and possibly three individual conferences with Professor
Reardon and his Graduate Assistant.  In all likelihood, the best
work generated during the semester will receive a public reading.
Try to come to the first class with two or three ideas you think
might be workable.