Steal Like a Playwright

Steal Like a Playwright

Oct 17 - Dec 12
6:30pm - 9:30pm 

Instructor: Mickle Maher

This workshop will explore the underlying mechanics that have made plays tick for the last 2,500 odd years, from Euripides to Shakespeare to Büchner to Caryl Churchill, Susan Lori-Parks, and Annie Baker, etc. Students will be asked to shamelessly steal those playwrights' tricks and techniques (if they're found useful), and employ them in the creation of their own piece. Designed for playwrights at any level (beginning or advanced), the workshop's primary goals will be to develop a personal sense of what "works" on stage within the context of what's worked in the past, and to generate a short one act play, start to finish.

Called "One of the most original voices in American theater today" by The Houston Chronicle, Mickle Maher is a cofounder of Chicago’s Theater Oobleck, and teaches playwriting and related subjects at the University of Chicago. Plays include There is a Happiness That Morning Is; Song About Himself; An Apology for the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on This His Final Evening; The Cabinet; The Hunchback Variations; The Strangerer; Spirits to Enforce; Lady Madeline; The Pine; and An Actor Prepares (an adaptation of Stanislavsky's seminal book commissioned by the University of Chicago.) Recent works include the book and lyrics for the musical Small Ball, commissioned by the Catastrophic Theatre of Houston and Daryl Morey, the General Manager of the NBA’s Houston Rockets, and It Is Magic, a sequel to Macbeth, produced by Theater Oobleck in Chicago.