Have you ever wondered how a play makes its way from the written page to become a fully-staged performance?
It starts, of course, with a story. A tale to tell.
In my case, I had an idea about what would happen if two blokes got stuck in a lighthouse.
I decided to write a play. It soon became apparent that playwriting was harder than it looked, so I booked on to a playwriting course for beginners.
Learning the Ropes
Studio Salford runs playwriting courses under the WriteForTheStage banner.
Each course runs for ten weeks and finishes with the opportunity to see and hear your work being performed in front of a real audience.
The courses, when we are not in lockdown, are hosted by Mike Heath in The Kings Arms, Salford, a pub with several theatre spaces. It's also the virtual home of the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival every July.
My Intro experience
In the summer of 2017, six of us turned up for the Intro playwriting course with varying degrees of experience.
I sat next to a guy who had already written over 100 pages for his play about the second world war. I only had 15 pages drafted for my play which I had decided to call The Lighthouse.
No worries.
Mike explained that this course would allow us to complete the first ten pages of our plays. That’s all, just ten pages.
My First 10 Pages
And over the next three months, that’s exactly what we did.
We played games, wrote exercises and learnt the basic structure for playwriting.
Our characters developed clear objectives and were presented with obstacles to overcome.
The pages started to come alive.
Find out about Juliet-Tango Productions
Read all about my new theatre company, Juliet-Tango Productions here, and Like my Facebook page.
Blog written by Johnny Temple