Playwrights as Actors: Applying Piven Acting Techniques to Writing Effective, Playable Scenes

This class in playwriting fundamentals is for anyone of any level of experience who wants to learn about writing playable scenes. What a writer does in creating a scene is similar to what actors do in playing it: each looks to explore and reveal the connections between characters and to heighten not only the sense of a line of dialogue but also what the line is “doing” in the characters’ shared relationship.

In this class, we’ll apply Piven Techniques that actors have learned for playing scenes to the writing of short scene units or “beats” that actors will want to play. There will be brief home writing assignments each week to be read and discussed in class, and also actively explored and re-invented through class improvisation.