Why should I take a course?
Trevor Griffiths, speaking at a conference at the Barbican in 1997 on political theatre, suggested that playwrights are not born, but made -- made by the temper of their times. There are those would have us believe that writers spring, god-like, fully formed and that you cannot teach dramatic writing. Ideas, life experiences and personality, all which contribute substantially to the individuality of a writer's voice are very difficult to teach, but issues of craft, form and career management can be taught. It is unlikely that you will succeed at the latter without the former, but that which can be taught has been found, on the whole, to be useful to writers, and courses are now an increasingly accepted part of the rich dramatic writing culture which Britain currently boasts.
In the last five to ten years there has been a steady proliferation of courses in writing for performance, some which are university accredited, or include writing for performance as an element within an overall degree. These can take several different forms. Here we have concentrated on classifying programmes with access uppermost in our minds. Where access is open, a course will be included in this section. Within Higher Education, we have listed M.As or postgraduate diplomas (for example, Birmingham University's M.A. in Playwriting Studies) or in which playwriting can be a major option of study (for example the M.A. in Theatre Arts at Goldsmiths' College), BAs for undergraduates which are performance writing specific (: the B.A. in Performance Writing at Dartington College of Arts); B.A.s in dramatic studies which include playwriting as a module within an overall degree course; diplomas which are not part of a BA or MA course but which are university accredited.
Within these definitions there are still all kinds of variation possible. The Northern School of Film and Television runs courses specifically designed to develop writers working within an increasingly competitive and commercial market; the emphasis at other institutions like Manchester Metropolitan University is on exploring the possibilities of cross-art form collaboration and the potential of live or performance art. |
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