Less public than our productions but no less harrowing to our playwrights are our weekly workshops -- our classes taught (often on the set of our current shows) by playwrights Kate Snodgrass, Richard Schotter, Melinda Lopez and Ronan Noone. And if you didn't know it: Boston Playwrights' Theatre is Boston University's Playwriting MFA program. I asked Kate Snodgrass a couple questions about her experience as a teacher of playwriting. Jake: Can you give an example of something you experienced as a student in workshop that you try to avoid in your classrooms now? Are you successful?
Kate: In a fiction workshop I was attending, the teacher laughed at one of the student's stories. I don't laugh at any serious stab at playwriting--it's hard enough to write as it is. And yes, I'm successful because I remember that student's face.
J: What play or playwright do you most often recommend new playwrights read? Why?
K: We're all different writers who gravitate to different rhythms, tones, worlds, and there's room for everyone in the theatre. I wait until I understand what might encourage a particular student, and then I suggest a specific play or playwright s/he might gravitate toward. There are playwrights with whom I think we ALL must be familiar, but...that's a different question. (Okay. Shakespeare, Buchner, Chekhov, O'Neill, Wilder, Beckett, Pinter, Churchill, Stoppard, LePage. And some others.)
J: What is the most difficult lesson to teach a playwright?
