In the series “Student Voices,” current students write about the reasons they chose Hampshire and how our educational model works from their perspective.
As a creative writing concentrator at Hampshire College, I have taken a lot of writing classes, and one of my favorites was a playwriting course I took during my first year.
Over the course of the semester, we read several published plays and held spirited in-class discussions about them. Our conversations about these plays helped us to inform our own work. In addition to reading plays, we regularly handed in short scenes we had written. Towards the end of the semester, we were required to write a one-act (approximately 30-minute) play.
As with all creative writing classes at Hampshire, playwriting courses involve workshopping; each student submits a piece for the class to read, and receives an in-depth critique from their peers. In the class I took, everyone submitted a one-act play and had fellow classmates perform a few scenes from it. This was a good way to hear our work read aloud and get thorough feedback. It was also inspiring to experience others’ projects shaping and evolving.
As a playwriting student, there are numerous opportunities to see your work performed. For example, I submitted one of my short plays to a Hampshire playwriting festival and got to see it acted out in front of an audience. Many Hampshire students write and direct their own plays, which are often presented in either of Hampshire’s two black box performance spaces.
If you are interested in studying playwriting in college, I can recommend Hampshire as a place to do so. The available playwriting courses can help you get constructive criticism on your work, and the school provides students with the opportunity to share their plays with the community.
Sounds great, but what about some lectures on playwriting – how it’s done, how to construct a play – in terms of structure, and for a submission? Are there things like these in the course? Thanks!
Hi William! I can only speak for the one playwriting course I took, but as far as I recall we were not lectured on how to format a play for submission. In general, Hampshire classes are more based on discussion than on lectures. Classes typically involve students holding a conversation and giving each other feedback, with discussions being led by the professor.
The class I took was more focused on us learning how to write compelling dialogue, stories and characters than on the more technical aspects of playwriting. Of course, it was a beginners’ playwriting course, so maybe in more advanced courses there is more information about formatting and submitting plays. Hope that answers your question!