The Fundamentals of Playwriting at East West Players
Instruction with Prince Gomolvilas
Dates: Tuesdays beginning September 27 – November 29, no class on October 4 & 18 | 7:00PM–10:00PM
Fee: $425 (ACTS members $400)
Location: St. Frances Xavier Chapel
Designed for playwrights of any experience level—from novice writers who want to give theatre a try, to longtime dramatists who want a refresher on fundamentals of craft, to writers from others genres who are interested in switching forms—this eight-week course explores the basic building blocks of playwriting. Students will learn (or re-learn) how to write engaging monologues and dialogue, build compelling characters, construct effective scenes, and create sound structure. Writing exercises will help playwrights generate new text and gain a deeper understanding of their own work, and weekly reading assignments of relevant plays and group outings to productions around town will round out the workshop experience. By the end of the course, students will have developed the premise, the characters, the outline, and the first portion of a full-length play, as well as complete short plays and a number of exercise-inspired scenes that could become part of something larger. This course is also a community.
Prince Gomolvilas is a Thai-American playwright. His plays include Big Hunk o’ Burnin’ Love, The Theory of Everything, and the stage adaptation of the Scott Heim novel, Mysterious Skin, all of which have been produced by East West Players. His work has also been staged around United States, as well as in Canada, Singapore, and the U.K, He has received new-play commissions from South Coast Repertory and TheatreWorks, and he has had his work developed at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Center Theatre Group, La Jolla Playhouse, The Lark Theatre Company, and Ma-Yi Theatre Company. He received the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild/Julie Harris Playwright Award, International Herald Tribune/SRT Playwriting Award, PEN Center USA West Literary Award for Drama, and East West Players’ Made in America Award. He received his MFA in Playwriting from San Francisco State University. He is the Associate Director of the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California, where he is also an Assistant Professor in Writing.
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