A Play in Two Days 2017

Who: Hilary Bell
When:
Sunday 26 March and 2 April, 2017 10am-4pm
Cost:
Full price: $350; Member: $250; Conc Member: $210
Level:
Beginner and intermediate aspiring playwrights. As we will be starting from scratch, it is preferable to come prepared to write a new play rather than work on a pre-existing idea.

Do you write for the stage? Whether you’re just starting out or looking for a refresher, in this practical course multi award-winning playwright Hilary Bell will take you through the fundamentals of playwriting.

Beginning with writing games and exercises through which we build characters, conflict, narrative and structure, students will finish the weekend with a strong outline of a new play. In this outline, or scene breakdown, the protagonist’s arc is charted through the play and every scene’s existence is justified, its content clear. Students will gain an intimate knowledge of their characters as well as the world of their play, and life beyond the play’s beginning and end.

While we can’t write a whole play over two days, students will write a central scene – allowing them to see and hear how their characters behave, and generating energy for the scenes that precede and follow it, so that they can continue writing it in their own time.

Through discussion and workshopping of the students’ writing, Hilary will examine the elements of drama as they pertain to each individual project. Learning and understanding will come about through this practical application in the context of the students’ own work.

Learning Outcomes

  1. Learning how to overcome the fear of the blank page
  2. Gaining an understanding of the elements of drama
  3. Balancing right-brain creativity with left-brain craft and analysis.

Participant Requirements
Pen and paper

You may also be interested in:
Contemporary Playwriting Techniques with Timothy Daly 

About the tutor
Hilary Bell
’s plays have been produced nationally and internationally. They include The Splinter, Wolf Lullaby, Fortune, The Falls, The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Ruysch, Memmie Le Blanc and The White Divers of Broome, and adaptations of The Seagull and the film The Red Balloon. She collaborated with Lally Katz on The Mysteries: Genesis and with Paul Capsis on Angelas Kitchen. She also writes musicals, song cycles and opera, her collaborators including Phillip Johnston, Andrée Greenwell, Douglas Stephen Rae, Elena Katz-Chernin and Jim Sharman.

A graduate of the Juilliard, AFTRS and NIDA, Hilary has been the Tennessee Williams Fellow at the University of the South, and the Patrick White Fellow at the STC. She is the author of three children’s books: Numerical Street, The Marvellous Funambulist of Middle Harbour, and best-seller Alphabetical Sydney.

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