Writing Workshop Turned Drama at Tabor

The winter drama is always an anticipated event, but this year offers a special twist. The play being performed was written by Mark Howland’s creative writing class and features individual scenes created by each member of the class.

Following the spectacular musical Thoroughly Modern Millie, this year’s drama, The Workshop, is a smaller, more intimate event in the Black Box Theatre. The actors have been rehearsing all season to ensure an exciting and well-done production.

The normal format of Tabor’s creative writing class consists mostly of short story writing. Howland usually focuses heavily on dialog, pacing, and characterization. This year’s class, however, spent most of the semester trying their hand at playwriting instead. Then, after the winter season began and the scripts for the play were chosen, they transitioned back into short story writing.

When they began the semester, their main priority was to craft these scenes. As every member of the class was writing something different, they began with the idea that the only continuity would be that each scene would have a bench in it.

“We worked with this idea for a while,” says Nathalie Cavallo, who was a member of the class as well as an actor in the play. “But it got too difficult, so now the only similarity is that each scene includes a person sitting down.”

At the end of every week, students would submit their favorite scene that they’d written, and the class would read them aloud and decide which ones would work well as part of the drama. It took them a lot to get to this point though.

“We did a lot of editing both in class and on our own,” Cavallo says. “We’d do a lot of peer-work and had a lot of drafts for each scene.”

The biggest challenge, and the most interesting aspect of playwriting, is that it’s different from short story writing and is often unfamiliar to students.

“My acting background definitely helped me in this class,” said Cavallo, “because a lot of it was knowing what worked well on stage. The class also helped me become a better actor because I got a better idea of how the play is crafted.”

Cavallo saw both sides of the production, writing one of the scenes and starring in another.

“It was really cool to see people bring everyone’s stories to life,” said Cavallo. “They brought a whole new element to the stories we spent all semester on.”

Not all good stories necessarily translate well on stage, so a big problem was keeping all the jokes alive and making sure that the pacing was correct. All of these skills, however, translate well to short story writing. The ability to use effective dialog, create interesting scenes, and keep the story moving are all crucial to good short story writing. When the class transitioned back into writing short stories, they noticed a distinct difference in their writing skills.

            The Workshop, a string of unconnected stories, was directed by student Joslyn Jenkins and Donn Tyler, an English teacher. Students and faculty alike are looking forward to witnessing the amazing work of both the actors who brought the stories to life and the students who wrote the scripts.

By Madeleine Gregory

 

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