Adaptation: Writing and Staging

1 Unit · Undergraduate

This is a course in the fundamentals of adapting an existing, non-dramatic text (such as a novel, short story, memoir, non-fiction of all kinds, poetry, etc.) into a theatrical event. We will focus on all the issues involved in moving a story from one mode of address to another: direct and indirect discourse, voice, the implied author, compression, how time works differently for the reader vs. the spectator, and narrative and what to do about it; as well as replacing text with image, inventing dialogue, and staging the impossible. Some texts will be assigned, but primarily students will work with print texts of their own choosing. Students will have many small exercises in both writing and staging; and work towards a ?big project? ? the completion of a significant part of their own adaptation. The course could be of interest to anyone interested in directing or creating plays from non-dramatic source texts.