Stagecraft for Playwrights
Writing
Calling up-and-coming playwrights with no/minimal experience in performance or stage production! This unique, hands-on workshop is geared just for you.
New playwrights often write without understanding how their script can be staged. This is because they may lack personal experience in directing and performing plays. In this workshop, participants provide at a short script (10 A4 pages max, 12 hard copies) that they have written. With the help of theatre veteran, Verena Tay, participants direct/act out each script and in the process learn stagecraft, workshop their script and get a better sense of how to craft a stageable play.
Pre-Workshop Preparation
For Participants
- Please come dressed in loose, comfortable clothing so that you will not feel constricted while doing the various physical exercises.
- As long as you are in good general health and fairly mobile, you should be able to take part in the physical activities planned. The physical activities will be non-strenuous and do not require great athleticism or high levels of fitness.
- Please prepare a short play or extract of a play that you have written (max 10 A4 pages) that you would like to workshop during this course. Please make sufficient copies of this play for the number of actors involved within this play, plus an extra copy each for yourself and the course facilitator.
For Organisers
- Please make available a fair-sized room that can easily accommodate all the workshop participants and the facilitator (seated in a circular formation). Please make sure that any other tables and chairs are stored against the wall or outside the room so that the participants have space to move freely about the space when they do the various exercises.
- Please provide a large whiteboard and pens.
- Please make copies of handouts that will be emailed to prior to the workshop. The handouts are to be given to the participants at the end of the workshop.
About the Facilitator
A Singaporean writer, editor, storyteller and theatre practitioner, Verena Tay has published a short story collection, Spectre: Stories from Dark to Light (2012), and three play collections, and edited various fiction anthologies, including the bestselling Balik Kampung series of short stories published by Math Paper Press. She possesses three Masters: English Literature (National University of Singapore, 1993); Voice Studies (Central School of Speech and Drama, London, 2005); and Creative Writing (City University of Hong Kong, 2015). Since 2005, she has been helping people to improve their communication skills and has taught voice, speech and presentation skills, storytelling and creative writing.