Getting Started with Writing Short Plays
A 2-part series with David L. Williams

PART 1: GETTING STARTED
Saturday, March 1, 2025
2:00pm - 4:00pm

PART 2: WORKSHOPPING
Saturday, April 5, 2025
2:00pm - 5:00pm

S&B Tech Space, Nittany Mall
Enter through entrance A in the mall; unit is across from Ville Billy's (map below)

Registration (18+): $25

Note: Registration includes both sessions.

Registration now open!

As a genre of writing, playwriting might be the most immediately rewarding. You can finish a script one day and have a bunch of actors performing it the next. You just have to know how to start. If you’ve ever acted in plays or even just been in the audience for one and thought, “I have a great idea for a play,” this is the workshop for you.

For the first workshop, you just need to come in with a few ideas for a short play. We’ll tackle the biggest component of playwriting - conflict - and you’ll learn about the difference between conversation and dialogue. We’ll also go over the guidelines for a successful short play, and we’ll work on some exercises that will help you figure out how to make your ideas work on stage.

You’ll take the work you did back home with you and come back the next month with a script to workshop. During that second workshop, your work will be read aloud and you’ll get feedback from the group that will get you even closer to a revised script that is ready for submission to any number of playwriting festivals or contests.

WHAT TO PREPARE/BRING: Pen and paper or a charged laptop for writing, along with a willingness to write and participate! Some ideas for a script would be helpful.

DAVID L WILLIAMS is a graduate of the theatre department of Cornell University, where he was a four-time award winner in the Heerman’s-McCalmon Playwriting contest, and received his MFA in playwriting from the University of Nebraska Omaha.  He has written more than thirty plays and musicals, and his work has been produced across the United States and internationally in Australia, Italy, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and Lithuania.  His most recent productions include the world premieres of his full-length plays The Starving at Barter Theatre and The Censor at Throughline Theatre. In 2021, his book Disruptions, "A collection of fantasy, horror, and science-fiction plays about the little interruptions that change everything,” was published by Montag Press.