We’re delighted to welcome Shakespeare Okuni to the English Faculty for a series of playwrighting workshops on 10th – 11th May and 25th – 26th May. A fifteen minute performance followed by a thirty minute Q&A will set the tone and prime the materials of the two crafty-art-of-playwrighting workshops. Each workshop lasts two and a half hours. Participants will take away three fragments of their own making as well as tips and tricks to spark off their own practices and processes in the field of applied poetics.
The Crafty Art of Playwrighting, Workshop 1 & Workshop 2
History of the Book Room, St Cross Building,
10th, 11th, 25th & 26th May 2022
Workshop 1 – performance and Q&A + “Kerelybonto Dialogue”.
Workshop 2 – “New Shakespearean Fragment” + “A Figure on Behalf of the Play”.
Sign-up for one Workshop 1 session either on the morning or the afternoon of 10th & 11th May:
Tuesday, 10 May, 9:30-12:00
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-crafty-art-of-playwrighting-workshops-with-shakespeare-okuni-tickets-328715947247
Tuesday, 10 May, 14:00-16:30
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/copy-of-the-crafty-art-of-playwrighting-workshops-with-shakespeare-okuni-tickets-328750881737
Wednesday, 11 May, 9:30-12:00
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-crafty-art-of-playwrighting-workshops-with-shakespeare-okuni-tickets-328755836557
Wednesday, 11 May, 14:00-16:30
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-crafty-art-of-playwrighting-workshops-with-shakespeare-okuni-tickets-328757010067
Then please sign up for your Workshop 2 session, which will take place two weeks later on the morning or the afternoon of 25th & 26th May:
Wednesday, 25 May, 9:30-12:00
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-crafty-art-of-playwrighting-workshops-with-shakespeare-okuni-tickets-328759256787
Wednesday, 25 May, 14:00-16:30
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-crafty-art-of-playwrighting-workshops-with-shakespeare-okuni-tickets-328759698107
Thursday, 26 May, 9:30-12:00
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-crafty-art-of-playwrighting-workshops-with-shakespeare-okuni-tickets-328765234667
Thursday, 26 May, 14:00-16:30
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-crafty-art-of-playwrighting-workshops-with-shakespeare-okuni-tickets-328765846497
Prep work – If possible before Workshop 1, or between Workshop 1 and Workshop 2.
Prep work 1 – Re-read a Shakespeare play you have already read and, as you make your way through the play, collect fragments – words, sentences, speeches – that particularly appeal to you, fascinate you, or revulse you. (If you do not have the time, do this for act 1 and act 5 only).
Prep work 2 – Read a Shakespeare play you have never read and, as you make your way through the play, collect fragments – words, sentences, speeches – that particularly appeal to you, fascinate you, or revulse you. (If you do not have the time, do this for act 1 and act 2 only).
Prep work 3 – If possible read “Antony in Behalf of the Play” by Kenneth Burke (in Kenneth Burke on Shakespeare, pages 38 to 48, references below) and Emma Smith's essay or essays on the plays you are working on if they are among the twenty plays presented in her book This Is Shakespeare.
Please come to the workshop equipped with your preferred recording and writing devices or instruments, computer and/or pen, pencil and paper.
Shakespeare Okuni. Actor, director, educator. Former member of Footsbarn Travelling Theatre and the Werdyn Gypsy Horse Circus. Has performed as an actor and directed theatre in England, France, Ghana, Ireland, Lebanon, and Switzerland. Author of Black Box, for and with the actors of the National Theatre of Ghana, and Mabinogion, a libretto for string quartet, flutist and storyteller, premiered by the Quatuor Béla and Elise Caron. Shakespeare Okuni's first book, A Creature Comes to Me, will be published in 2023.
Bibliography:
William Shakespeare, Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, Blount and Jaggard, 1613.
Kenneth Burke, Kenneth Burke on Shakespeare, edited by Scott Newstok, Parlor Press, 2007.
Peter Groves, Rhythm and Meaning in Shakespeare, Monash University Publishing, 2013.
Emma Smith, This Is Shakespeare, Pelican Books, 2019.
