The Course

Playwrighting is an art and craft. In English the word ‘play’ applies to both forms of playing (imaginativeplay, games, sports etc., and drama. In Old English it also means applause).The word ‘wright’ is also an Old English term for a craftsman or builder. Play and wright combine to indicate a person who has ‘wrought’ words, themes, images and actions into a dramatic structure and form to embed meaning in what we call a play (The homophone with write is incidental here). So, the playwright is also a maker. But what are they making?  

Shakespeare wrote “All the world’s a stage”, and dramatist commissioned to write a play script, is required to ‘wright’ human experience in one form of other to engage us in the world. As playwrights of human experience, therefore, we need to know how to select stories/materials that offers content that has significance, enacted in a Site, with a Centre,and concerns the sequencing of dramatic action.  The same also applies to anyone who structures and facilitates a TiE programme or Process Drama, where we playwright the material we are exploring with the participants to shape and access its meaning in the moment. And the same too can be said in relation to leading/directing a devising process for children or young people. To do this effectively we need to develop the self-spectator, become an empathic watcher and a dramatic engineer.