THE ART OF PLAYWRITING: PLAYS, POETRY, POLITICS AND PROPHECY

A Crash Course in Poetics - the Theory and Practice of Making Things

Teacher: D. W. Jacobs. Co-founder of San Diego Repertory Theatre. Author and director of R. Buckminster Fuller: THE HISTORY (and Mystery) OF THE UNIVERSE.

A playwright, like a shipwright, builds a structure for others to step into… to venture out on either a pleasure trip or a voyage of exploration. Where does your work want to take you? Where do you want to take an audience? Is there a specific cargo you want your play to carry? How do the winds of past, present and future drive your play along? Can we choose to steer our way through those energies or will we be blown about like dust?

Through specific writing exercises and an in-depth study of a range of works from theatre, film, poetry, and scriptures (from the East and West), this workshop will excavate and evaluate the underlying structures that trigger the imagination and shape a writers ideas for presentation on the stage. Students will study a range of approaches to structure, from poetry to Hollywood storyboarding, from Aristotle to the anti-Aristotelians, while practicing exercises and developing work that draws on the writer's own intuitions about past, present and future.

Students will be expected to write between class sessions. Each student will also be asked to read one poem per day, one play per week, study one film each week, and read one book on dramatic theory.

This work will get you started on a new play, or take you a big step forward on one of your plays in progress. It is designed to help you establish, reestablish or reinforce the daily practice of being a writer.

D. W. Jacobs has taught this format with great success for three years running at the Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco, home of the Bay Area Playwrights Festival.

Time: Every Thursday.

12:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Place: The Studio at North Park

3800 30th Street

San Diego, CA 92104

619-295-2773 for more information and to register

www.thestudioatnorthpark.com

Price: Only $350 for 28 hours of instruction over 8 weeks!