503Studio: Sarah Grochala

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503Studio Masterclass: The Politics of Form

When is a play political? What are the political messages carried by the dramatic form that you choose to use to write it? How can you create a play that articulates its politics through its form?

This workshop will look at the politics of dramatic structure. It will explain how to read the structures of a play for their politics. It will examine some alternative approaches to conventional dramatic structure and explore how playwrights can create alternative structures of their own.

Please bring an idea (it doesn’t have to be fully developed) for a play that you would like to write to the workshop.

Thanks to our Share The Drama scheme, we want to make sure those of you who are struggling in the current climate can still take part in our Writers Programme. While we prioritise anyone who is long term unemployed and/or claiming benefits, we’re also offering subsidies if you’re in financial difficulty as a result of the Covid-19 crisis.

To express interest in a bursary place through our Share The Drama scheme, please sign up here. If you would prefer to speak directly to a member of our team about your circumstance or to ask for more information about this scheme, please contact us.

If you have any access requirements, you can let us know here. If you would rather discuss any access requirements and how we can accommodate them prior to booking, please get in touch with us here.

Time: 7pm – 9.30pm

Running time of workshop: 2.5 hours – delivered online. Maximum class sizes are 14. A portion of spaces have been reserved for Share the Drama places.

To sign up for advanced booking for future iterations of the 503Studio: Writers Programme, please join the waiting list here.

Sarah Grochala’s plays include S-27 (Finborough, 2009; Griffin Theatre Sydney, 2010; #FinboroughForFree, 2020), which won the 2007 iceandfire/Amnesty International Protect the Human Playwriting Competition and premiered at the Finborough Theatre, London in June 2009. Between 2012 and 2016, she was an associate artist with the theatre company Headlong. She currently writes Dr Who audio dramas for Big Finish and runs the MA/MFA in Writing for Stage and Broadcast Media at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, whose graduates include Igor Memic, Vinay Patel, and Katherine Soper. Her book on playwriting and the politics of dramatic structure, The Contemporary Political Play, was shortlisted for the 2018 TaPRA Early Career Research Prize. Other books on theatre include The Theatre of Rupert Goold.