About

The UK is unequivocally a frontrunner in producing outstanding dramatic writing for stage and screen. Our world-renowned contemporary playwrights and screenwriters are exported across the Globe, not least to the US. Despite this, it remains true "that the context for pedagogy is America" (Wright, 2004). There have been no substantial UK-based academic inquiries into the teaching of our dramatic writers. This suggests the training of the scriptwriter is, to an extent, uninformed and disassociated from the work of the professional scriptwriter in industry. If we are not conducting pedagogical research, how can we conclude that the teaching of dramatic writing aligns with the demands of writing for stage and screen today? Here lies the inevitable gap between the practice and the pedagogy of dramatic writing.

This practice-led inquiry seeks to assess that gap by comparing the actual process of writing scripts with the ways we teach students to write them; through examining scriptwriting ‘instruction manuals’ and approaches to teaching dramatic writing in higher education. My thesis is particularly interested in the discrepancy between these 'how-to' textbooks and the practice of writing, as a means of developing a pedagogical approach that moves beyond the dramaturgical confines of ‘how do plays and screenplays work?’ and instead towards an interrogation of ‘how do we train good playwrights and screenwriters?’

To achieve this, my research project will examine the scriptwriting process through the creation of a portfolio of new dramatic work. Subsequent analysis and evaluation of my creative writing process, compared and contrasted with an in-depth review of the scriptwriting 'rulebooks' which dominate the training of British scriptwriters in higher education today, will critically inform the development of a cohesive and bespoke pedagogical approach to scriptwriting.