Some of our greatest playwrights — Thornton Wilder, Edward Albee, and Suzan-Lori Parks, to name a few — began their careers writing one-act plays.
Contrary to what its name implies, a one-act play is not a play without an intermission, but a play that runs around twenty to forty minutes in length. Since one-act plays contain all the hallmarks of traditional full-length plays — structure, plot, conflict, characters, setting, action — an investigation of this form serves as a way to more deeply understand how plays work, whatever their form or length.
If you long to be a playwright but the task of creating a new full-length play overwhelms you, then this is the course for you. Experienced playwright and seasoned playwriting teacher Aaron Ricciardi will carefully lead a cohort of writers through the process of beginning, churning out, and polishing a complete work of drama. We will look at great examples of this form, and each writer will leave with a brand-new, complete one-act play, which they will have gotten to workshop in its entirety at least once. By the end of the course, we hope that writers will be eager to keep writing plays, perhaps a full-length play in our upcoming New Play Generator course.
Enrollment is limited to 15 students.
