THE ADVANCED COURSE 2021 - 2022

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We're now running two blocks of dates for the Advanced Course:

ADVANCED COURSE 1

Open only to writers who have done the FOUNDATION or INTERMEDIATE COURSES.

The dates, all on Fridays, 10am - 5.30pm, are as follows:

Friday October 8th, 2021

Friday November 5th, 2021

Friday December 3rd, 2021

Friday January 14th, 2022

Friday February 11th, 2022

Friday March 11th, 2022

Friday April 15th, 2022

Friday May 13th, 2022

Friday June 3rd, 2022

Performance workshop

Saturday, May 21st, 2022

ADVANCED COURSE 2

Open only to writers who have done the FOUNDATION or INTERMEDIATE COURSES.

Friday October 15th, 2021

Friday November 12th, 2021

Friday December 10th, 2021

Friday January 21st, 2022

Friday February 25th, 2022

Friday March 18th, 2022

Friday April 29th, 2022

Friday May 27th, 2022

Friday June 10th, 2022

Performance Workshop

Saturday, June 4th, 2022

COST

10 x all-day sessions taking place one Friday per month from 10.30am to 5.30pm.

(65 hours in total)

Course Fee: £2250

HOW IT WORKS

Writers on the Advanced Course are actively looking to get their work read or staged,
either live or online. Each individual writer will be aware of Arts Council opportunities
for R&D, opening up ways to find collaborators for their plays or to seek out the right theatre, competition or agent. John will help each one of the group of six to find the appropriate route to future production.

Classes run from 10.30 to 6.00pm for one Friday per month and one Saturday Performance Workshop in May.

There are 6 WRITERS on the Advanced Course. This is to allow sufficient time for each writer to talk through their current play during the afternoon of each day-long session.

All writers are encouraged to share their work with the whole group before each monthly session.

Writers begin the Advanced Course with a further or final draft of the full-length play that they wrote in the Foundation or Intermediate Year, and go on to write a new play over the course of the year.

There is strong emphasis on reading current plays and, through doing so, facilitating each writer to make an educated choice as to what kind of play he or she wants to write. This reading list will change each year but here is the current one that each writer is following:

READING LIST 2020 - 2021

Note: The Advanced reading list changes annually.

FRIDAY OCTOBER 9

OEDIPUS REX Sophocles/Oliver Taplin

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 6

Theme – THE ONE-PERSON PLAY

THE ENCOUNTER Simon McBurney

YOU CAN SEE THE HILLS FROM HERE Mathew Dunster

FLEABAG Phoebe Waller-Bridge

random debbie tucker green

VIA DOLOROSA David Hare

FRIDAY DECEMBER 4

Theme – THE TWO-HANDER PLAY

LAMPEDUSA Anders Lustgarten

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG by Suzan Lori-Parks

BLACKBIRD David Harrower

ELEGY Nick Paine

THE EVENTS David Greig

FRIDAY JANUARY 15

Theme – CLASS

SWEAT Lynn Nottage

THE FLICK Annie Baker

THE PITMEN PAINTERS Lee Hall

CONSENT Nina Raine

THE YORK REALIST Peter Gill

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 12

Theme – THE FAMILY

ON THE SHORE OF THE WIDE WIDE WORLD Simon Stephens

A LONG DAYS’ JOURNEY INTO NIGHT Eugene O’Neill

FENCES August Wilson

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY Tracy Letts

THE HUMANS Stephen Karam

FRIDAY MARCH 12

Theme – POLITICS

INK James Graham

A VERY EXPENSIVE POISON Lucy Prebble

STUFF HAPPENS David Hare

THE OCTOROON Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins

ONE FOR THE ROAD Harold Pinter

FRIDAY APRIL 16

Theme – SOCIAL CHANGE

SLAVE PLAY Jeremy O Harris

THE CHILDREN Lucy Kirkwood

OIL Ella Hickson

ESCAPED ALONE Caryl Churchill

GOOD PEOPLE David Lindsay-Abaire

FRIDAY MAY 14

Theme -- THE PLAYS WE MISSED

This month, we look at plays suggested by the writers during the course.

SATURDAY MAY 29

Performance Workshop

FRIDAY JUNE 4

ALL-DAY FEEDBACK ON THE WORK OF EACH WRITER IN THE GROUP

"This course is the real deal. I would highly recommend it to any developing playwright. Above all, you benefit from John's extensive industry experience as a playwright, director and teacher, which he uses skilfully to provoke growth in each individual writer."

Amy Hailwood, participant 2018/20

"I am loving this course. John manages to be warm, enabling and challenging in the best way. He sees potential and uses all his creativity and experience to help us write with freedom and to be critical and curious about the form itself."

Penny Boreham Saban, participant 2018/21

Bursaries

available!

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