The MA and MFA Writing for Stage and Broadcast Media offers students vocational training in writing drama across a range of different media contexts. Although the primary focus is on writing for television, film, theatre and radio, Central also runs
optional units in writing for new music theatre and, in collaboration with MA Applied Theatre, writing with and for communities. The course provides the opportunity for students to develop the core competencies and skills of the dramatist to explore their own ‘voice’ and develop their confidence as dramatists, and to appreciate the specific media contexts within which professional writers work.
Key features are: practice-based enquiry into techniques and processes for writing for stage and screen; a series of writing projects to engage with different styles and formats of production; associated study of writing techniques and issues of
performance in relation to theatre, cinema, television and other relevant contexts.The MA and MFA are taught in group sessions and through individual tutorials. During these sessions participants will consider the fundamentals of dramatic writing. Indicatively, these will include structure, narrative, dramatic action, genre, character, dialogue and rhetorical effect.
Students will study different approaches to writing including individual authorship, group writing and writing to specific briefs. Students will attend masterclasses, seminars and workshops that focus on particular modes of writing for different production contexts, and will be part of a writers’ group, providing peer support in developing their writing. Their vocational work is complemented by individual research and appropriate theoretical discussion and enquiry. Students will address historical, theoretical and critical contexts within which traditions of dramatic writing have evolved.
Students will engage in a range of projects that test and develop their skills as a writer of drama. Indicatively, these will include forming a team of writers to evolve a television series, writing a short play script for a staged reading, writing a short
film script, writing a radio play and developing and writing a complete dramatic script for production in a particular medium (stage, radio, television, music theatre, or film).
ASSESSMENT
This is through peer assessment, practical assignments, essays, scheme of research, presentations, and the submission of a practitioner portfolio, including personal insights, research, the student’s own scripted material and a plan for professional
development.
Visit the
MA/MFA Writing for Stage and Broadcast Media
page on the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama website for more details!
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