For me personally I’ll always remember the light, cool even in the summer, shiny like cold water, shimmering on the PVC corridors of the great old Bundesalle buildings. How good it felt to be back there. My little blue alarm clock (bought in the closing down sale; Hertie, on Turm Strasse) counting down the days as it had done in the Burg Theatre in Vienna, or the DT Hamburg, out of place but right in place, as it is now at my bedside in Marsden. It seems to me, most of our students turned up with some idea of where they were and what they wanted, all of them left knowing where they were going and pretty sure of how to get there.

Pictures and info may still be at: http://www.udk-berlin.de/sites/sommerkurse/content/index_eng.html

Contact: Felicitas Wlodygia
FU Weiterbuildung,
Otto-von-Simpson-Str. 13-15
14195 Berlin

Creative Writing workshops for older people who have an interest in biographical writing; the main genre is Short Story.

The Modern Two Act Drama

Contact: Frau Wieler, or Frau Bispin.
Freie Universitaet Berlin, Theatrewissenschaft
Grunewald Str 35
Berlin.

Summer Term, 2002, 2003.

I run and plan this course without supervision. At the end the students have a tool kit for play writing. Some of them will have a first draft. One student has now changed from has Theatre Studies to Literature (at the University of Liepzig) and another has had two professional commissions, a third was invited by Rene Poelisch to present a piece at the Volksbuhne Ost’s Praeter (which is like a showing at the Riverside or the ICA.)

Contact: Michael Mueller
Internet: micheal.mueller.@schauspielhaus.de
Schauspeilhaus in Hamburg
Kirchenallee 39 / 20099 Hamburg / BRD.

Season 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004.

I organize workshops with young people from the city of Hamburg. They range in age from fourteen to twenty five. They’re drawn, mostly, from schools in the local area.
We meet fortnightly, we go through the basics of playwriting; original concept, title, structure, conflict, dialogue, disturbed rituals. At the end is a presentation at the Maaler Saal (which has a status very similar the Cottesloe in England.)
Jannis Klassing’s play, NICHT NICHTS, was shown at the Schauspielhaus and has been invited to numerous festivals; the author is now with the Fischer Verlag and that at seventeen.
ICH LIEBE DICH 00.58, from Anne Kathrin Wett, is in the Schauspielhaus’s current program.
A number of students have had productions outside the Schauspielhaus, one is now on permanent writing course at The University of Leipzig.

contact: Prof. Dr Jergen Hoffmann.
Universitaet der Kuenste, Postfach 12 67 20, 10595 Berlin.

Initial presentation, 1995. Terms, winter 1998/99, winter 1999/20, summer 2000, winter 2000/2001, summer 2002, winter 2002/2003, and I’ll work there in summer 2005.
I plan and run my course autonomously. It runs over three months and ends in a presentation of readings. The majority of the students produce theater text which contributes to their final diploma, I also make assessment recommendations of students to permanent staff.
In addition to teaching I formed connections with outside institutes, acting schools, theaters and the like. For example, I organized an international seminar of playwriting teachers at the UdK. Here my duties ranged from security, to financing the brochure, providing accommodation, food and entertainment for the guests, as well as organizing the presentations of the various speakers into a coherent two day experience.
SZENISCHES SCHREIBEN is Germany’s most important course for dramatists (within the German speaking world it has the status of the University of Birmingham’s Playwriting course in the U.K..) and has a biannual intake of around ten students from applications numbering at least two hundred and fifty. The Berlin University of Art is Germany’s leading Art School and in order to make clear what this post means at the UdK, former English Guest Dozents include Bryan Eno and Vivienne Westwood; (now I’m not comparing myself with these people but I am saying, this place has real status.)
Westwood and Eno, of course, taught in English, but in the Dramatists Course everything is done in German (I’m a fluent speaker, reader, but I do not write it well.) All student course work is written in German, though I did encourage a Rumanian Student, Lithuanian Student, and Swiss French Student to write first draft in their first language and then translate – a process I use as English Writer for the German Stage.)
Despite the limitation that the tutors must be able to speak and read German, a range of teachers of various nationalities (Russian, Hungarian, Dutch, American, Polish) and from various backgrounds (actors, dramatist, dramaturges, community theater artists, screenplay writers, journalists, publishers, agents…)
Some of my former students now have international reputations, with productions at various German speaking Theaters, including the Schaubuhne and the Burg Wien, and in translation in theaters including the Royal Court UK, or Manhattan Theater Co US.

Contact: Petra Zeigler, or Felicitas Jacobs.
Boddin Str 34
12053 Berlin
Internet: Petra.Zeigler@ba-nkn.verwalt-berlin.de

2002, 2004.

Two weekend seminars for a Theater Education Officers/Drama Therapists training course. Useually the course members are re-training from Social Service professions, or are Theatre Artists who use their skills therapeutically. The client groups that they anticipate working with (or do already work with) include the mentally and physically handicapped, drug addicts, old people, prisoners, youth groups, and women’s groups.
I give them a crash course in Drama Writing, they go away and write a few scenes, or a few scenes plus a structure, some do manage an entire play (on a particular theme, or for a particular event, which I also give them as sort of “contract play.”)
On the second weekend we look at their plays: how effective are they as drama? How effective are they in their educational or therapeutic aims?
I can not train them to write well as dramatists in such a short time, so my aim is to introduce them to the process of writing, to give them the confidence to practice techniques that I teach them for use in a particular educational or therapeutic setting.

Dozent Szenisches Schreiben

Contact: Frau Petra Ziegler,

VHS Neukoelln,
Boddin Str 34,
12053 Berlin.

2000, 2001, 2002.

Contact: Andreas Beck
Internet: andreas.beck@burgtheater.at
The Burg Theatre
Dr. Karl Luegner Ring 2
1010 Wien, Austria.

Season 2004.

My duties are similar to those at the Schauspielhaus. The presentation weekend is planned for October the tenth, 2004.
The Burg Wein is Austria’s National Theatre. This is the first course of its kind in Austria.

Press and Review:

• Zeitschift Schreiben: Ausgabe 034

Outside Writer on Dramatists Tools (2)
Contact: ALISON JEFFERS
7 Edge Lane
M21 9JG
Internet: ajeffers@ccm.ac.uk

2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004.

With the seniors I gave the playwrights practice in writing scenes for larger ensembles.
We took interior monologue, created from four or more connected characters from a project they were currently engaged in.
The monologues were then gived time and place, for example a railway station in the present, a futuristic living space, a barbecue in 1990.
An inciting action was then found for each set of characters, something that disturbed the ritual and caused the internal world to become external via speech and action.
For example, at the barbecue banter became a heated discussion that developed into a blazing row when one of the characters sprayed yoghurt onto one of the others and then stumbled backwards into the Bar BQ.
In the futuristic piece it was the human need to embrace and be embraced, which brought action to an otherwise static piece.
We worked with actors, in semi improvised situations, to refine the scenes. The writers rewrote, the scenes were re-workshopped, and in all cases the goal, to produce scenes where at least four characters were taking place in simultaneous dramatic speech and action, was achieved.
With the first year student we went from original idea via title and synopsis to first draft. Themes discussed in depth were the structuring of an idea and action. Organizing a narrative. How to connect with themes that are of a personnel relevance to you, not strictly autobiographical fiction but using the molecular theory of fiction as proposed by Pagett Powell…
“there are atoms of autobiography, they can be the moment when the curtains opened on a room, or they can be an enitre day spent with Grandad, but they are always an event or sequence that can not be split. These atoms are placed together in new ways, glue must be written, and is these atoms, and this glue, that creates pleasing molecules of fiction.”
My main role was motivation and guidance over a six week period, the time that Checkov gave, in his advice to young dramatists, as the right amount of time spend on the first draft.
I mentored Catherine Kay, who got a Bursary at the Soho Theatre London, then later had her play, BUBBYSAURUS, produced by The Happy Theatre Collective for The Contact Theatre Manchester.
Julian Hill, another student, is now an important member of PANDA. A respected and exciting collective of performance and theatre artists in Manchester.

Contact: Amanda Dalton (or current education officer)
Internet: amanda.dalton@royalexchange.co.uk

Winter 1999.

I work with youths; aged from twelve to fourteen, multiple rapists, killers, serious assault, pimping younger children where amongst their crimes. My job was to get them to write. One girl now works for Clean Break (Womens Theatre in Prison.)