Why Take a Playwriting Class?

Writing a play would seem to be one of the more solitary activities a person can undertake.

You sit at a computer. Alone.

You stare at the screen. Alone.

You invent people who don’t exist and then spend an alarming amount of time listening to them talk to one another.

Alone.

So why take a playwriting class?

Because despite appearances, theatre is not a solitary art form. And I don’t think learning to write a play should be a solitary activity either.

Writers Need Support

Writing is hard.

There are wonderful days when the characters seem to take over and you can barely type fast enough to keep up with them. And then there are the other days.

This is terrible.

I have no idea what happens next.

Why did I ever think I could write a play?

One of the great benefits of a playwriting class is discovering that every writer has those days.

A good class creates a community of people who understand both the pleasure and the occasional lunacy of trying to create something that didn’t exist before. They encourage you. They listen. They celebrate discoveries. And sometimes they simply remind you to keep going.

That matters.

Writers Need Accountability

Most of us are very good at finding reasons not to write.

There’s work. Family. Email. Laundry. The dog needs something. The refrigerator contains something that suddenly requires investigation.

A class creates a deadline.

By next Tuesday, I need ten pages.

That’s remarkably powerful.

The expectation that someone is going to read your work can get you back to the keyboard when inspiration has apparently left town without providing a forwarding address.

And pages accumulate.

Ten pages become twenty. Twenty become forty. Eventually, somewhat mysteriously, there is a play where previously there was only an idea.

Theatre Is Created in Community

Here’s the larger reason I believe in playwriting classes.

A playwright may begin a play alone, but a playwright can never finish the theatrical experience alone.

Theatre requires actors, directors, designers, technicians, producers, and ultimately an audience. Other human beings enter the work and discover things in it that the playwright couldn’t possibly have anticipated.

So why wait until production to invite other people into the creative process?

A playwriting classroom can become the first community surrounding a new play.

Someone reads a character differently than you imagined. Someone laughs at a line you didn’t know was funny. Someone asks a question that makes you realize an entire scene is missing.

The play begins talking back to you.

That’s when things get interesting.

Other Writers Can Save You From Your First Idea

There’s another benefit of writing in community that I think is particularly important for beginning playwrights.

Our first ideas are not always our most interesting ideas.

Sometimes they’re simply the ideas we’ve encountered before.

A character discovers an affair. Someone has a terminal illness. The villain turns out to have a heart of gold. The couple we knew would end up together…ends up together.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of those choices. Cliches usually become cliches because there is something fundamentally satisfying about them.

But what else might happen?

Put eight or ten writers around a table and suddenly one story can have twenty possible futures.

What if the character doesn’t leave?

What if the secret isn’t revealed?

What if the person we thought was the antagonist becomes the protagonist?

What if we’re actually writing the wrong person’s story?

The purpose isn’t to have other writers write your play for you. Quite the opposite.

Hearing many possibilities helps you recognize that you have choices.

And somewhere beyond the first, most obvious choice may be the strange one. The dangerous one. The funny one. The one that scares you a little.

The one that makes the play yours.

Don’t Write Alone

Ultimately, a good playwriting class isn’t simply a place to learn about dialogue, character, structure, conflict, or dramatic action.

It’s a place where writers learn how to become playwrights.

You write.

You listen.

You experiment.

You hear your work aloud.

You encounter other possibilities.

You go home and write some more.

Because theatre has always been an act of community.

Why shouldn’t the writing of it be one, too?

I teach playwriting in a variety of settings.  If you’re interested in signing up for a playwriting class, reach out to me at andrewblacksf@gmail.com