WUSTL ImagesWriters dream of sharing their work with the world. The aspiring playwrights participating in Washington University’s A. E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival have two weeks to do just that.
The A. E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival is a two week long workshop hosted annually by the Performing Arts Department. This year, the festival started on Sept. 15, and it ends with a staged reading of the selected plays on Sept. 25 and 26 accompanied by an informal talk with dramaturge Michael Bigelow Dixon on Sept. 20.
Students of all majors who submit a play in the spring are eligible for the fall festival. This year, playwrights Lee Osorio, senior, Lauren Dusek, class of 2007 alumna, and Noga Landau, senior, were chosen by blind jury selection last spring to have their prospective plays, “Yelling Man,” “Intelligent Life” and “Chosen” workshopped during this year’s festival. “Intelligent Life” and “Chosen” are both full-length plays, while “Yelling Man” is a short play.
Every year, the University invites a guest to help with the workshop process. Sometimes the guest is a playwright; sometimes, like this year, the guest is a dramaturge. A dramaturge is an independent theater jack-of-all-trades who helps conduct research, make stylistic suggestions and give unbiased suggestions to the playwrights. Assistant dramaturge for the Festival, Sari Abraham, said of her job, “It’s management as much as it is artistic.”
This year, Dixon, named “America’s dramaturge” by playwright Lee Blessing and considered America’s best, will work with the student directors on their drafts.
According to Abraham, Dixon has worked with almost every living professional American playwright. His informal chat on Sept. 20, “Writing Outside of the Box: Taking the Process to the Streets” is described as focusing on “interactive writing through travel, interviews, community participation and collaboration.” The talk is open to all students, and will be held at the Hotchner Studio Theatre at 4 p.m.
The student playwrights are given a chance to hear their plays come to life with the staged readings. Actors read from the scripts to give the playwrights in training the opportunity to hear their plays aloud.
“Basically, the actors are tools,” said Abraham. There are no costumes and no sets. This gives the student writer ample room for revision.
One student will have the chance to have his or her play performed during part of the 2008-2009 season at Edison Theatre. Every other year, one student from the past two festivals has their work performed in full with Performing Arts Department faculty directing. The last A. E. Hotchner Festival play selected for full performance was “Highness” by Carolyn Kras, which opened as part of last year’s theater season.
Students who would like to view the world premieres of these new works are encouraged to check it out, as they might be viewing America’s next big playwright.
“It’s a really great opportunity, and I don’t think people realize it. It’s nice to see work by Wash. U. playwrights,” said Abraham.