I’ve been teaching introduction to playwriting at MIT for many years. It never gets old. Because wherever we are in our writing, as professionals or students, we are always facing a blank page. Every new beginning is simultaneously fraught with danger and risk and full of excitement. I take my job seriously. I have a detailed syllabus, lesson plans and assignments that crescendo in their level of complexity, but I also teach my students to play. Perhaps it would be more exact to say that I encourage them to play; I exhort them, push them, and invite them to play. I even tell them that I will reward them for playing and taking chances. I believe that we learn more and have more fun with glorious failures than tepid successes.
My students are from Bangladesh and Russia, from Palo Alto and New York City, from Orlando, FL and Westwood, MA. One freshman is an aerospace and physics double major and is also a professional magician. Yes, you read that right: Prestidigitation. Other students’ majors (many of them double) include Astro Physics and Russian, Chemistry and Physics, Linguistics, Mathematics and Materials Engineering, Aeronautical Engineering and Computer Science.
At the end of every semester I give my students one final assignment. It took me awhile as a teacher to come up with this assignment, but I now know that this is the most important assignment of the year. I ask them to read through all of their work for the semester (they write one ten-page play or scene a week) and write a one-page self-assessment, addressing any or all of the following questions: What were your goals coming into the class? Did you meet them? Exceed them? Do you have new goals upon leaving the class? Did you develop a writing practice? Did writing every week change the way you write and think about writing? Did reading and seeing plays impact your own writing and if so, how? What surprised you about playwriting? What surprised you about your own writing? Did you struggle? Did you have fun? Did you take risks?
I wanted to share a few quotes from my students’ self-evaluations. So here’s to beginners and beginner’s mind and showing up and facing the blank page, the courage to dare to be foolish, the courage to attempt what seems impossible. And the joyful rewards of play.
“Walking into the class I definitely never thought I’d end up writing puppet shows about sheep and llamas.”
“The fact that this class emphasized playfulness and experimentation really helped it not be so intimidating…. This gave me the freedom to write something a little silly, but a lot of fun.”
“Of all the writing classes I’ve taken, this has been the only one to have a weekly deadline. I found this extremely helpful in banishing writer’s block.”
“Writing every week was quite difficult initially, but once I realized that no idea was too silly to pursue, it became significantly easier. After that it became a playground I went to once a week to create whatever suited my fancy.”
“Through my plays I explored my ethnic identity, my understanding of God, and even my “craze” about shoes. I went out of my non-risk-taker comfort zone. I delved into the playing of playwriting.”
“Sometimes I still get nervous about having others judge my writing, especially when I’ve become emotionally invested in whatever characters I’ve created, but for the most part it’s been a real confidence booster. Apparently my inner critic is wicked harsh, harsher than I realized.”
“Being required to write a new play every week has definitely forced me to be less worried and critical of my first drafts and has helped me overcome the dreaded blank page. I’ve noticed in my other classes that I’ve become more capable of getting my thoughts down on paper quickly without constantly having to go back over a sentence multiple times before I can move on to the next sentence.”
“I loved and hated six lines, [a weekly in-class writing exercise] for being so constrained, but for giving me a sandbox to mess around in. I experimented with magic, with implausibility, with life and death, love and betrayal. I found out I like to write about other worlds and about science. I became more confident as a writer, an actor, an editor. I learned a lot about process. Most importantly, I learned to play.”
“Writing something – no matter how terribly it might turn out at first – is always going to be better than sitting around and waiting for inspiration to strike.”
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