Poetry Platform 3: Flipping the Script: poetry + dramatic writing

Exploring the theatrical potential of poetry, and the poetic potential of play-text. Not strictly Dramatic Poetry (which is a form in itself) – we’re being experimental! We’ll be unpicking selected dramatic scenes to re-work into poems – and vice versa: we’ll reimagine poems as short scenes from a play, learning some techniques of dramatic writing and stagecraft, expanding poetic devices and language into action and dialogue. 

We will work from examples of poems and play-texts provided. You’ll come away with new pieces of writing, and plenty of techniques and ideas to use again. Optional: if you have a poem of your own (or a scene, or extract of performance text) that you’d especially like to use, bring it along and time permitting you’ll be able to work with it on the day.

This workshop will be great for anyone who already writes at any level, who wants to shake things up. It will also be fun and instructive for those new to either form of writing – support will be given to everyone, no matter what stage you’re at. 

What to bring:
Your own writing materials of choice (inc. laptop if you wish).

Tea and coffee is provided. There will be a 30-minute break for food if you wish, please bring your own. 

Rebecca Sharp is a writer from Glasgow, now based in Fife.  Her work spans poetry, theatre and performance, interdisciplinary and collaborative projects. Her recent poetry collection Rough Currency (Tapsalteerie 2021) received a Literature Matters Award from the Royal Society of Literature, and an Art of Energy Award from the Centre for Energy Ethics. Other work includes Notes for a Traveller, visual poetry commissioned for exhibition at An Lanntair; THIS (with Steve Smart) – digital interactive poetry commissioned by StAnza Poetry Festival, Finalist in the Brush & Lyre Prize for Multimedia Poetry; and The Ballad of Juniper Davy and Sonny Lumiere, publication and site-specific performances with METAL Liverpool. 

Plays include The Air That Carries The Weight (Stellar Quines Theatre Company / Traverse theatre, Edinburgh), The Wakeful Chamber (A Play, A Pie & A Pint / Sound Festival, Aberdeen and Glasgow), and Danger: Hollow Sidewalk (Arches theatre, Glasgow). Other writing for performance includes For the Bees, with Mr McFall’s Chamber; The Unmaking of Mary Somerville, with Stellar Quines Theatre Company and Scottish National Portrait Gallery; and Rules of the Moon, with sound artist Philip Jeck. She has delivered playwriting workshops for Playwrights’ Studio Scotland, and worked locally with Byre Youth & Community Arts, and the Byre Writers on creating new work for performance.

NB: This workshop shares the same date + time with workshop 4: Occasional Poetry. They will take place in different rooms. 

Booking + enquiries: to reserve your place, please email info@rebeccajoysharp.com