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Event
Anthony Clarvoe
As a playwright, novelist or poet you know how difficult it is to master the demands of the full-length formand how often the most inspired idea, the most cogent story line, the most interesting characters and dialogue cannot sustain the full two hours to the finish line. You've been in the theater and experienced the second act crash. You are well aware that carrying a story, its themes and the lives of its characters, clear to the finish is a challenge even many produced playwrights struggle with.
Mastering that form requires the acquisition of skills, techniques, some endurance training and a few tricks of the trade.
Enter Anthony Clarvoe, a 25-year veteran playwright who has won commissions, awards and multiple productions for full-length plays ranging from two-handers to big-cast epics. Over ten weeks Anthony will share methods and techniques that will enable you to carry your project through to its conclusion and give you the perspective to know when you're done.
You'll participate in exercises to help get you past the challenges at each stage of writing (first draft, rewriting and honing the structure). You'll learn disciplines and habits of mind that will help you discern how to maintain the spine of your play and keep you going through the months and years of a writing life. You'll increase your stamina and raise your game through a class experience that is challenging, passionate and down-to-earth.
In pursuit of the refined full-length play, the class will cover a number of these sample topics:
* Genre is your friend, or When to ask world literature for directions.
* How to spot your play's protagonist and carry that forward.
* The image set: your play's DNA and how it replicates.
* Four levels of structure.
* To everything its arc.
* Fun with causality: amazing tricks your raw material can do.
* How your first act writes your last act and vice versa.
* The joys of rewriting.
* Act Four out of Five, or the Slough of Despond.
* Ways to end: the 11:00 number.
* Now that you're done, you can start: from script to production
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:
Anthony is a veteran playwright and Bay Area native who recently, very happily, returned home to San Francisco. His plays include the award winning Pick Up Axe, The Living, Let's Play Two, The Brothers Karamazov, Ambition Facing West, Ctrl+Alt+Delete and The Art Of Sacrifice are published by Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. While living and working in the Bay Area he received the Will Glickman, Bay Area Drama Critics' Circle and Dramalogue Awards and an American Theatre Critics Awards Citation for Pick Up Axe, as well as the Stavis Award from the National Theatre Council as the promising playwright of the year. Since then he's been roaming the country, writing plays and raising a family. He has received a dozen commissions from South Coast Repertory, the Mark Taper Forum, Playwrights' Horizons and others; fellowships from the Guggenheim, McKnight, Jerome and Irvine Foundations, National Endowment for the Arts, TCG/Pew Charitable Trusts and Kennedy Center/Fund for New American Plays; the Berrilla Kerr Award in recognition of his contributions to the American theater; and critics' awards from LA to New England. His play Show and Tell recently played to rave reviews in San Francisco in a production by the newly formed Symmetry Theatre Company.
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LocationThe Julia Morgan Center for the Arts
2640 College Avenue
Berkeley , CA 94704
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: No |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: No |
| Wheelchair Accessible: No |
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Contact
Attendees
Name Withheld
Oakland, CA United States
Apr 18, 2011 7:13 AM |
Name Withheld
berkeley, CA United States
Apr 17, 2011 7:53 PM |
Name Withheld
Santa Rosa, CA United States
Mar 19, 2011 9:41 PM |
Name Withheld
Berkeley, CA United States
Mar 18, 2011 8:05 PM |
Name Withheld
Alameda, CA United States
Mar 04, 2011 1:34 PM |
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