Joining a playwriting workshop with the Royal Shakespeare Company

As part of the University of Birmingham’s collaboration with the RSC, I was invited to attend attended a theatre writing workshop led by the RSC writer in residence, Zoe Cooper. 

When I saw the session being advertised to students, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to brush up on my writing skills that I had been neglecting for a while. 

Stepping out of my comfort zone

I had never done playwriting before (having only had experience in screenwriting as an undergrad) so I was not sure what to expect, but I was looking forward to stepping out of my comfort zone and trying something new.

Sitting in a studio in the European Research Institute, we first discussed our favourite plays. Prima Facie seemed to be the most popular of the bunch.

Theatre is more than performance

I think people have a perception that theatre is just a performance, but there is a lot more that goes into a play than just the actors, director and stage. In groups, we broke down the various roles that have to be undertaken to ensure a play can run smoothly. Some roles are more obvious than others, on our collective lists we had lots of stage manager and lighting technicians come up, but Zoe also asked us to consider job roles like marketing managers, publicists and front of house. All jobs that might not seem obvious to theatre, but without them the theatres would not be able to run smoothly.

It was interesting to look at theatre in a new light. It wasn’t what I was expecting to discuss going into this workshop, but it was very interesting.

We also analysed different stage directions. This included looking at how the writing of the directions might tell us what the story is about and who the characters might be, without the actors ever saying anything. It was fascinating to see people’s different interpretations on the texts and to hear Zoe talk about the parts of the text we might have missed or overlooked; that were actually more important than we thought.

Signal fires

Our writing challenge started with fire. We were asked to think about what we associate fire with, I thought about barbeques, lit cigarettes, candles and fire breathers.

We began to turn our thoughts on fire into stage directions, using the analysis tasks we’d been given earlier in the session. Then it became a monologue, thinking about our character and how they might exist in the stage directions. I found it challenging as I am used to writing for screen and can focus on details at a more micro level, so creating something with a stage in mind was new for me.

What I learnt from the session

It was a really interesting experience, and I learnt a lot from Zoe Cooper. It was great to hear about her experience writing in the RSC and it really reframed how I look at theatre. I found her discussion on job roles within theatre really interesting and it made me more interested in looking at a career in theatre after I graduate.