Master Class Archive: Playwriting and Story Theory with Pulitzer and Tony-winning Playwright Marsha Norman
No currently scheduled sessions
Interested in hearing about the next session of this course?
Add your name to our notification list
About this Master Class
Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright Marsha Norman leads a three-hour, live, online Master Class. She will focus on how you build a play from its basic architecture to the major and minor moments it must support. Norman will illuminate how you create and develop characters, giving examples from both classic and contemporary work. She will also discuss the decision to include an intermission, how to title your play, and how to find the right subject for your play—the one mistake from which you can never recover.
Topics presented will include:
- What does the audience expect of a good play and why does audience expectation matter?
- What is the basic architecture of a good play?
- What determines the commercial success of a good play?
- How do you decide what to write about?
- How you find and work with great collaborators?
- What is the difference between a play and a musical?
- What needs to happen on page 8 of a play?
- Who you shouldn't let read your play?
- How to listen to a talk-back
Master ClassTeam
Marsha Norman
Playwright, Screenwriter, and Novelist
Marsha Norman won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for her play, ‘night, Mother, and a Tony award for the book to her musical, The Secret Garden, as well as another for the revival of The Color Purple. She has been co-chair, first with Chris Durang, and now with David Lindsay-Abaire, of the Playwriting Program at The Juilliard School for twenty-four years. She also teaches Musical Book at Yale.
Her most recent Broadway work is The Bridges of Madison County, and the revival of The Color Purple. Her new project is the book for a musical about two women who dressed as men and fought in the Civil War, and a new play, assisted by the UN, about trafficking and violence toward women worldwide.
She has won a Peabody award for her work in television as well as grants and awards from among others, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She has won the Margo Jones Award, the Sidney Kingsley Award, the William Inge Lifetime Achievement Award in Playwriting, and the Dramatists Guild Career Achievement Award. In 2016, she was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame.
She writes and lectures frequently on playwriting and the musical book, and holds 18 honorary degrees from American colleges and Universities. She is a founder and President of The Lilly Awards Foundation, and serves on the Dramatists Guild Steering Committee, as well as serving on the Education Committee.
No currently scheduled sessions
Interested in hearing about the next session of this course?
Add your name to our notification list