Plays & Screenplays Syllabus Rome 2017 Matthew Maguire dates tbd 4 credits
THEA 3760 L21 ENGL 3760 L21 COM 3760 L21
Truffaldino: "Ho volontà de veder come me riesce sti do servizi." (I want to see how I'll manage to serve two masters.) A quote from Goldoni’s play that speaks to the dual nature of our project!
In Rome students write a short play and a short screenplay. Once a week we will write in sites around Rome, such as the ancient ruins of the Baths of Caracalla and the Gardens of the Villa Borghese in the belief that immersion in The Eternal City, La città eterna, will inspire us to write great stories.
We will explore dual strategies for storytelling. What are the differences between writing for the stage and the screen? How do we tell stories in dialogue? How do we tell stories with pictures? How do we maximize the power of dialogue and pictures by combining them? Italian plays and films serve as scaffolds of craft and the sources of our writing vocabulary, including such masterpieces as Carlo Goldoni’s Il Servitore di due padroni, (A Servant of Two Masters, 1743), Carlo Gozzi’s L'augellino bel verde (The Green Bird, 1765), Federico Fellini’s film, Satyricon, 1969, and Lina Wertmüller’s film Pasqualino Settebellezze (Seven Beauties, 1975).
Sessions will be 1-4PM, 5 days a week, with rehearsal on the 5th day. Rehearsal is the forum when the writing generated during the preceding sessions is read out loud on its feet by the participants so that the writer can hear it in space.
Week 1 Relation of Language and Image Wednesday: What is the relation between the forms of stage and screen? What are the similarities and differences between playwriting and screenwriting? Introduction of our models in excerpts: Goldoni’s Il Servitore di due padroni, (A Servant of Two Masters, 1743) and Fellini’s Satyricon (1969). 2
Storytelling: What are the contrasts between narrative and dramatic forms? Exercise: First, write an idea for a play in short story form. Second, in dramatic form. Thursday: Writing in the Basilica of Santi Quattro Coronati. Friday: Rehearsal: sharing writing out loud in space. Saturday: Full showing of Satyricon and full reading of Il servitore di due padroni.
Week 2 Storytelling: Plot and Character Monday: The yin yang relationship of plot and character. Read Canto 1 of Dante’s Inferno as a model. Exercise: Conjuring Character; Extracting Plot from Character. Tuesday: Exercise: Earning exposition through conflict. Wednesday: Handout: the chapter, Detail, in James Wood’s How Fiction Works. Ask of each detail: does it tell a story? What is the difference between a detail in language and a detail in image? Exercise: Create a precise character detail for your play using Dante as a model. Thursday: Writing in the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla Visit the Bone Crypt, the Capuchin Crypt, beneath Santa Maria della Concezione. Read Sartre’s essay A Fine Display of Capuchins before the visit. (hand out copy in folder) Friday: Rehearsal
Week 3 Structure: Opening, Turning Point, Ending Monday: What are the craft elements of an opening? In the beginning everything is possible. Isolate the elements of craft in Dante’s opening. Exercise: Write Canto 1 as a play. Write Canto 1 as a screenplay. Tuesday: The Heart of Structure: The Turning Point; what is the hinge point in the arc of every dramatic structure? At the turning point what was possible becomes probable. Exercise in Causal Linkage: write a story about a character in nine events. Justify a seamless causal flow from first event to last. Wednesday: What Makes a Great Ending? What are the craft elements of an ending? In the ending what was probable becomes inevitable. Discuss the elements of an ending in the Wertmuller film, Pasqualino Settebellezze. In a strong ending a character makes a final defining choice. In Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters, Truffaldino must make a decision to confess his subterfuge to gain the hand of the woman he loves. Exercise: Structure your ending as a plot point, then as a poem, then an image. Thursday: Writing in the Basilica Santa Maria del Popolo. The power of the image: Observe and write from Caravaggio’s Crocifissione di S. Pietro and Conversione di Saulo. Continue writing in the Piazza dell Popolo. 3
Exercise: Write your ending as closure. Then write it as an arrival. Which has greater dramatic power? Are Caravaggio’s images closures or arrivals? Friday: Rehearsal. Read Turning Point scenes. Discuss the most constructive methods of offering response to fellow writers.
Week 4 Monday: Exercise: Rewriting. Hone the question of your play. Now rewrite a scene with the question driving the revision. Tuesday: Handout from Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium, the chapters, Lightness, and Quickness. Wednesday: Analyze Dante’s Cantos 32-34 as crises deepening. (Mandelbaum, p 293- 317) Exercise: Rewrite a scene as a deeper crisis. Increase conflict and complication. Exercise: Rewrite two alternative endings as arrivals. Thursday: Write in the Gardens of the Villa Borghese Exercise: Cascade of Questions. Why are you writing this play/screenplay? What questions are driving you? Write an infinite number of titles born of questions. Friday: Rehearsal:
Week 5 Monday: Readings of Plays
Tuesday: Readings of Screenplays
Wednesday: Departure
Grading: The factors in consideration beyond the quality of your writing include: reading the assigned texts and being prepared for discussion meeting the assigned deadlines for scenes and drafts degree of improvement quality of your critique of your peers willingness and ability to rewrite quality of final manuscripts quality of final readings meeting the time limit of the final reading
Good attendance and preparedness for work is essential for a class with a standard of excellence. You are required to attend every class. There are no "allowed" absences.
Other requirements: 4
• For each unit bring in the minimal number of copies you feel are necessary for your work to be read by the group. • You must write on computer so that rewriting becomes second nature. Hand-written material will not be read in workshop once we get into scene work.
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