Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

One Act Play Course

One Act Play Course.

I have already had several inquiries by members at WDC into taking the One Act Play Course. I find this reassuring because I was hoping to test it out in May on one or two real live students. The reason I am not hugely optimistic about the interest the course is likely to generate is because WDC is not exactly a bastion of the Theater.

Still, when I inquired into the position of teaching the course, I realized my own limitations. While I have written full length and one act plays, had them read on stage, entered them in contests and enjoyed moderate success and read books and attended classes on Drama I have never had one of my plays produced. So you can understand why I was not overwhelmed by my self importance and qualifications to serve as the “Dramaturge” at New Horizon’s Academy…Now actually this is a benefit rather than a liability because it got me looking beyond myself.

In the course of this research I happened upon a book called “The Playwright’s Process….Learning the craft from Today’s Leading Dramatists, written by Buzz McLaughlin. Buzz has all kinds of degrees and has held many prestigious positions in the craft. However, I was interested not so much in what I know, or what Buzz Knows but in what successful dramatists know. What was unique about Buzz’s book is that he didn’t hole up in some library doing research and write it, but that he got off his duff and went around and interviewed some of the top dramatists in the profession. The list is impressive and I will list the playwrights he talked to. Edward Albee, Lee Blessing, Horton Foote, Athol Fugard, John Guare, Tina Howe, David Ives, Romulus Linney, Emily Mann, Terrence McNally, Arthur Miller, Marsha Norman, John Patrick Shanley, Wendy Wasserstein, Michael Well and Lanford Wilson.

The course I developed is based upon those interviews. It is not what Percy Goodfellow thinks, or what Buzz McLaughlin thinks but what the most successful playwrights in the country think. And what they think was remarkably consistent and kept cycling back on the same themes…These themes are the lessons that guide the student in the writing the One Act Play which is the requirement of the course.

What I have added into the process are the nuggets of these themes in a given outline. This technique forces the student to insure the right ingredients are in the pot. While the culinary skills vary from chef to chef, just as writing skills do from author to author this insures that the principles at least are front end loaded. The course expands the given outline into characters, a story line and three scenes which the student must create…further the initial draft is completed halfway through the course which gives the process time to do a comprehensive second edit to really get the drama into some kind of shape.

I can speak from experience that a first draft of anything in literature is only the beginning of a long and convoluted process still to follow. Yet many feel when they get to the finish of a first cut they are approaching the end of the journey and when they discover they are not there yet, become discouraged and unwilling to devote the time and energy still needed to bring their creation to closure….Well a second edit isn’t exactly closure but it is much further along than a first draft and this course provides a second refinement iteration.

The link to the Introduction of the One Act Play Course is

Introduction to the One Act Play  (E) Introduces my course "The One Act Play" #1755910 by percy goodfellow