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Writing for Stage and Screen

Introduction

Faculty

Applying

Boston has long been a well-known theater hub, and is fast becoming known as a home for independent film as well. Studying playwriting or screenwriting - or a mix of the two - at Lesley will allow you develop and deepen your craft with faculty mentors who are dedicated teachers as well as experts in their field.

Six credits per semester will be devoted to writing in your genre, both new work and revisions. The thesis will be a completed screenplay and treatment or a full evening of theater, which could be a full-length play or combination of shorter works. Students can also work in both genres to produce a multi-genre thesis.

For Craft & Reflection, in addition to the reading of actual plays and screenplays, students may also view plays or films and their Craft & Reflection papers may include responses to these as well as to the text on the page.

Interdisciplinary Studies options would include not only those available to students in other genres (courses, independent research, work in other forms of writing such as author interviews or review writing, etc.) but also options with a particular focus for dramatic writers: interning with a local theater company, making a short film, studying video production, acting or directing, or participating in local film or theater festivals.

Seminars and workshops will focus on craft issues specific to forms of dramatic writing, such as The Art of Dialogue and The Three-Act Structure. Publishing issues will address not only print opportunities but also topics such as securing a staged reading or workshop production, how to write a treatment, how to pitch, and other issues of interest.

Faculty

Jami Brandli, writing for stage and screen. Jami Brandli has had plays produced and/or staged in New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Detroit, New Mexico and Washington DC where she was accepted as a Visiting Artist at the Kennedy Center for their Playwriting Intensive (2006, 2007). In addition, she was also a contributing writer for both stage and screen for the Elliot Norton Awarding winning production of PS: Page Me Later.  She received a literature fellowship from SAC/Massachusetts Cultural Council and was a semi-finalist for the Eugene O'Neill Center (2007). Her play NORMAL was recently in the Smith & Kraus Anthology The Best Ten-Minute Plays, 2007, and she has more plays forthcoming in their 2008 anthologies.  In 2007, she served as the Chair of the Women in Film and Video/NE's screenwriting competition. Her short stories have been published in Salt Hill, Other Voices, and Memorious where her story, "Night Shift," has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, 2007.  Most recently, she was finalist for Disney ABC's 2008 Writing Fellowship. Jami is company member playwright at Moving Arts Theatre Company in Los Angeles, and is a proud member of The Dramatists Guild. Awards: Elliot Norton Award, Visiting Artist at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, SAC/Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowship Affiliations: Emerson College, UCLA Extension, Grub Street, The Dramatists Guild, Moving Arts Theatre Company, The Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights


Barry Brodsky, writing for stage and screen, is the author of published plays All Other Nights, The Twelve-forty, and The Surrender; produced plays also include The Boys of Winter, Patriotic Duty, King Street Mixup, After Shabbos, Late Truck, Miss Colleen’s Abortion, Stopwatch, Debating Malcolm, and The Last Interview; optioned screenplays include The Cantor and A Family Game. Barry is the coordinator of Emerson College's Screenwriting Certificate Program. He has been teaching Screenwriting at Emerson and at U.Mass-Boston since 1998. He has also taught Playwriting to high school, college, and adult education students in the Boston area since 1990.  Awards: Hollywood's Next Success Finalist Affiliations: Emerson College, University of Massachusetts, Boston Past Affiliations: Brandeis University


Kate Snodgrass, writing for stage and screen, is the Artistic Director of both the Elliot Norton Award-winning Boston Theater Marathon and Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott’s Boston Playwrights' Theatre. She is the author of the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville’s Heideman Award-winning play Haiku, and she has won two "Best New Play" IRNE Awards (Observatory, 1999, and The Glider, 2004, also nominated for the American Theatre Critics Association’s Steinberg Award). Acknowledged by StageSource in 2001 as a “Theatre Hero,” Kate is the National Chair of Playwriting at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival and a Playwriting Fellow with the Huntington Theatre Company. Awards: Elliot Norton Award, Heideman Award, IRNE award (twice), Dramatists' Guild Commendation. Current affiliations: Boston University, member of A.E.A., A.F.T.R.A., and the Dramatists' Guild. Past affiliations: MIT, Wellesley College, Suffolk University, ART Institute for Advanced Theatre Training, Boston College.


Applying to the Program

Information on applying to the program may be found on our application page.

 

 



 
updated 10/16/08 | 04:20 PM
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