Richard O'Reilly

Scenecraft: The Art of Hearing Voices

Any prose benefits from sharpening the tools most often associated with playwriting: monologue, dialogue, and silence. Whether the example is the compelling presence of the monologue in the radio work of NPR's Ira Glass and David Sedaris, the sharp stylized dialogue in the films of Mike Leigh, the comic outrageousness and vulgarity of Sarah Silverman, the naturalistic street smart sweep of David Simon's The Wire, or the wry poignant humor in the stories of Lorrie Moore, modern prose leans heavily on theatrical lessons of how people speak to each other and to themselves. The class will include looking at these examples as a bridge to generative writing. Using gossip, dreams, photographs, listening to voices reading aloud, writing in the room, and working collaboratively, interdisciplinary experiments will be undertaken to create different modes of dialogue and monologue. Working with actors and performing, the class will make writing that steps off the page and into the mouths of real and imagined people. This workshop welcomes makers from performance, sound, design, or any other forms.

This class will focus on students' artistic works that are nearing completion and/or production. These projects can include plays, film scripts, podcasts, poetry chapbooks, books of essays and beyond. After reading and discussing students' existing works in progress, we will select one piece for each student to focus on and complete. We will hear from local theater producers, recording engineers, playwrights and publishers. We will read interviews with artists including playwright August Wilson, radio producer Ira Glass, novelist Margaret Atwood and cabaret performer Justin Vivian Bond. The class will end with a presentation of the finished works.

This course includes some of the best ingredients of research, close reading and the eye of working between prose, playwriting and storytelling toward professional practice. We will examine prose works and career practices of Edward P. Jones, Nancy Mairs, Nin Andrews, Dylan Thomas, Maria Irene Fornes, Wallace Shawn, Anton Checkhov and Suzan-Lori Parks, taking them apart to study language, rhythm and clarity in completion. What are the blood and bones that carry the work? Where are the surprises, lessons and insight to be found in these pieces? How is conflict and plot created and resolved? How did they succeed in the profession? Once we have explored these published works, we will begin making new work of our own, leaning into the lessons gleaned. We will begin, complete and perform new work in this class! Recommended for short story writers, playwrights and those working in personal essays.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.