PLAYWRITING: MENTORING PROJECT
March 18-20 and September 16-18 (2 weekends) • Kaite O'Reilly

Fee: £625 (includes all tuition and full board and lodging on both weekends)
Everyone will have a single room.

This unusual course offers emerging  playwrights the rare opportunity of developing a new short play (30 minutes maximum) with guidance, tuition, and dramaturgical feedback over a six month period by award winning writer Kaite O’Reilly. It is designed for those who have already completed at least one short script and who are committed to developing a new play for live performance in a supportive but professional environment, working to deadlines.

The project will begin at a residential weekend course in Spring  (March 18 – 20)  where successful applicants will develop their idea for a new play with Kaite over a series of workshops, masterclasses and one-to-one ‘tutorials’.  Participants will be expected to arrive with a strong embryonic idea for their short play, which will be developed over the first weekend, with practical classes in storylining, creating consequential action, conflict, and complex, motivational characters, amongst other dramaturgical concerns.

The participants will then commit to delivering a first draft of their script to Kaite three months after this initial weekend. They will receive an in-depth reader’s report on the script by Kaite, with feedback on plot, structure, pace, character, style and theme, etc, with guidance on further development in the next draft. Participants will revise the scripts over a further three months and resubmit them prior to the final short residency in Autumn (September 16 – 18). The content of this intense workshop weekend will be structured around the submitted second drafts, responding directly to the emerging writers’ needs, offering tailor-made workshops and exercises to strengthen the scripts further.

Owing to the unique form of this course and the individual attention that will be given, there will only be 8 participants. If you wish to apply please send your booking form with a short writing history.

Kaite O’Reilly adapted the world’s oldest surviving play, Aeschylus’s PERSIANS, for National Theatre Wales in 2010. Directed by Mike Pearson in a celebrated site-specific production on Ministry of Defence land, it was coined one of the cultural events of the year by the national press. She has recently been awarded an Unlimited Commission, part of the Cultural Olympiad; and is working on a new play for Chol and Sheffield Theatres, also part of the cultural celebrations for the London Olympics in 2012.  She is an award-winning playwright and experienced mentor and tutor, who has developed writers in projects for the National Theatre/Tŷ Newydd, writernet/Soho/Graeae Theatre companies, Birmingham Rep, Aberystwyth Arts Centre and North West Playwrights, amongst others. She has taught playwriting and dramaturgy at postgraduate level at a variety of Universities internationally. She is an honorary fellow of Exeter University’s Drama Department, and a Fellow of ‘Interweaving Performance Cultures,’ Freie University, Berlin.  For further information go to: www.kaiteoreilly.com