The New School for Drama’s playwriting program prepares a select group of students to begin their artistic and professional careers as skilled dramatic writers for theater, film, and television. By the end of three years, playwrights have built a portfolio of produced pieces including a 10-minute play, several one-acts, a 60 - 75 minute play, and an industry presentation of a full-length. Additionally, students will have completed another full-length, a screenplay, and a sample television script. They will understand the artistic and pragmatic challenges of writing and rewriting, of working with actors and directors, and the process of guiding a play from first draft through production.
Each year, students take two four-hour writing courses, as well as additional classes in related subjects. The playwriting instructors, including Christopher Shinn, Michael Weller and Jon Robin Baitz, are all high-level professionals with intimate, practical knowledge of what it means to be a working writer in the theater and related disciplines. They teach not only the fundamental skills of the craft, but draw upon their wealth of experience to address the complexities and realities of belonging to both an artistic tradition and a rapidly-changing industry.
As with the other departments at The New School for Drama, the Playwriting program has a strong commitment to the exploration of emotional and behavioral truth, and an awareness and understanding of the range and depth of human experience.
We also believe that the best theater emerges from an intelligent and passionate fusion of writing, directing, and acting, and so put a high premium on gaining experience in the art and skills of collaboration. We are the only MFA program that integrates a regular, ongoing class with actors, writers, and directors for all six semesters.
Year One: The Well-Written Scene and The Short Play
Writing classes build methodically from the seeds of inspiration to the craft of the well-written scene, the 10-minute play, and collaboratively-inspired 15 minute pieces. Text analysis of classic and modern plays emphasizes the building blocks of the dramatic forms. Co-Lab is an on-your-feet initiation into the vocabulary and technique of collaboration, with resulting presentations at the end of both semesters.
Year Two: The One-Act and The Full-Length
The second year begins with the 20-minute play. Pieces are developed and critiqued in Writing and Co-Lab classes and presented at the end of the first semester. The second semester delves deeper into the process of rewriting as students work on longer one-acts, which are rehearsed in Co-Lab and produced at the end of the year. Students begin a year-long examination of the full-length play, culminating in finished drafts of original full-lengths by the end of Second Year.
In the Spring semester, students also take the first half of the screenwriting course, learning the fundamentals of screenplay structure and vocabulary.
Year Three: Plays in Production, The Screenplay, Television
Over the summer students finish the first draft of a new 60 - 75 minute play, which is developed in conjunction with a Thesis Advisor in the Fall and then given a full production in the Spring semester.
In the Fall semester, students complete their screenplays and begin a two-semester course in writing for television. This class moves beyond learning the basic television writing templates to include practical instruction about how a writers’ room works and the realities of executive producing and creating a new show.
Additionally, over the course of the year, students will be working on their second full-length play, which will be presented in reading or workshop form to the industry at the end of the Spring semester.
AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS
Over the past few years, current and recent graduates of the NSD playwriting program have been recognized and received awards for their outstanding work by theaters, festivals and competitions across the country, including:
Sam French Short Play Festival
The Alliance Theater’s Kenedra Competition
The O’Neill / Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival
ID America Festival
Old Vic, New Voices
The Royal Court Young Writers Programme