Playwriting: A Pedagogy of Transmutation

Abstract

The pedagogy of playwriting may be one of the great mysteries of all arts training. In fact, many playwriting teachers and playwright practitioners have posited that playwriting cannot be taught. One can teach the craft, they say, but the art is either present in the writer or it is not. George Pierce Baker, the noted teacher of playwriting, begins his seminal work, Dramatic Technique, with this common saying: “The dramatist is born, not made.” A few pages later Baker goes on to say, “I wish it distinctly understood that I have not written for the person seeking methods of conducting a course in dramatic technique. I view with some alarm the recent mushroom growth of such courses throughout the country” (Baker 1919, iii–v). William Archer, Baker’s contemporary, goes a wry step farther in Play-Making: A Manual of Craftsmanship:

There are no rules for writing a play. It is easy, indeed, to lay down negative recommendations—to instruct the beginner how not to do it. But most of these “don’ts” are rather obvious; and those which are not obvious are apt to be questionable. It is certain, for instance, that if you want your play to be acted, anywhere else than in China, you must not plan it in sixteen acts of an hour apiece; but where is the tyro who needs a text-book to tell him that? (Archer 1960, 3)

I’m becoming more and more convinced it isn’t a question of old and new forms. We have to write not thinking of forms at all, write because it springs feely fom our inner being.

Treplev in The Seagull by Anton Chekov