Students from Westover’s Drama Program gained insights into the craft of playwriting from the award-winning playwright and actor John Cariani during a February 4th Zoom workshop.

“Bringing in guest artists is a wonderful way to broaden opportunities for theatre students,” said Marla Truini, Westover’s Director of Drama. Members of the Westover community were invited to take part in the workshop hosted by the Trinity-Pawling School Theatre Program, which drew approximately 25 students and faculty from Westover, Trinity-Pawling, and The Emma Willard School, as well as several theatre professionals.

“Kent Burnham, the Director of Drama at Trinity-Pawling, and I have collaborated on a number of student projects over the past few years,” Marla said, “including trips into New York to see Broadway shows such as To Kill a Mockingbird and West Side Story, as well as collaborating on a very successful 24-Hour Theatrefest in the spring of 2019. Kent and his wife Tracy are well-connected to actors and directors in New York and he has been extremely generous in sharing those resources with the Westover drama students.”

Cariani is a Tony-nominated actor and the author of several plays, including Almost Maine, cul-de-sac, Last Gas, and Love/Sick. During the two-hour workshop, he spoke about the challenges of writing, led the participants in a series of writing exercises, and answered questions about his craft.

In his introduction, Cariani shared his philosophy about what goes into writing a successful play. “The best playwrights are actors,” he said. “The worst are novelists or essayists.” The best plays, he added, “shouldn’t be read; they should be performed,” because they are about their characters’ actions and interactions.  

Cariani finds writing almost always challenging. “People ask me what happens when I have writer’s block,” he said. “I have it all the time. Writing is almost always a boring slog, full of obstacles.”

His advice for playwrights facing writer’s block?

“Spend a second complaining about it, but then just ‘Go!’”

Cariani led the workshop participants in a series of writing exercises that he said helps him to get past the blank page.

In the first exercise he led, Cariani offered a series of prompts for participants to incorporate into a scene: Hilary, a police officer, is talking to a drunk driver about gay marriage on September 11th, and the scene must include a profession of love, a moment of betrayal, and end in death. He then called on workshop participants to name certain items — a body part (a leg), an item of clothing (a bow-tie), a planet (Venus), a kitchen appliance (a blender), an animal (an aardvark).

For the writing exercise, Cariani gave the participants just a few moments to write a monologue for Hilary that would incorporate all of the prompts and all of the random words the group had assembled.

After they were done, the playwright asked the participants what the exercise was like, and several volunteered that they felt pressured and challenged, while others said they also had fun in the process.

In another exercise, the playwright chose a student to help write a dialogue in tandem, with each of them composing a line in response to the previous one — but with an added twist: The first line of dialogue would contain 10 words, but each succeeding line of dialogue would include one less word than the one preceding it, until the final line would contain just a single word.

At the end of the exercise, Cariani noted, “There was nothing here four minutes ago, but now we have created a scene.”

If the exercises seemed familiar to students who have taken part in acting classes, Cariani noted, there’s a reason. “You can convert any acting improv exercise into a writing exercise,” he said, comparing them to musicians practicing scales as part of their daily warm-up routines.

“When I am stuck, I love going to these exercises,” Cariani said. “They keep me from quitting.”

Marla was impressed by the playwright’s workshop. “I have known of John Cariani because of the popularity of his plays,” she said, “but had never had the opportunity to meet him before.”

Marla said her students found the workshop experience especially rewarding because ”John offered us many creative playwriting tools that we are already putting to use in writing the narrative for our upcoming original musical revue, Now Us. The students were also very interested in John’s insights into the life of a playwright, the resistance that he feels to writing every day, and how he ‘tricks’ himself into moving past his internal editor to find his creative spark. John was incredibly generous in sharing his process with our students and we are all so grateful to him, and to Kent Burnham for including us.”

For Marla, “Bringing in guest artists is a wonderful way to broaden opportunities for theatre students. Some years ago, David Rimmer, author of the play Album, was a playwright in residence at Westover.”

In addition, Marla said, other professional “theatre-makers” who have shared their insights and expertise with Westover students in recent years have included:

• Jason Forbach and Joe Spieldenner, Broadway musical theatre actors who have led three musical theatre coaching workshops at Westover;

• Stefano Brancato, a master puppeteer and puppet designer who created the Robin puppet for Westover’s production of The Secret Garden, and who coached a student for the performance;

• Chris Truini, who has offered regular workshops in the Drosnin Technique, a physical theatre approach based on Grotowski’s method;

• Tatyana Khaikin, Head of the Department of International Educational Programs and Projects for the Theatre School of Konstantin Raikin in Moscow, who offered a master class in creating etudes in preparation for Westover’s production of Uncle Vanya;

• Most recently, actress Glynnis O’Connor, who coached the cast of Westover’s spring production of OUR TOWN 2020 in on-camera acting technique. 

The Westover students who attended the playwriting workshop included senior Madeline Abate; juniors Jillian Brown, JaMara Jean, and Beldine Atiento Wasonga; sophomores Skyé Lowe, Alexis Mays, and Kyra Rook; and freshman Hannah O’Brien.

Kent has invited Westover drama students to attend two more playwriting workshops later this month, one led by Liz Duffy Adams, whose works include A Fabulous Beast, The Reckless Ruthless, Dog Act, and Or; and the second led by Lauren Gunderson, whose works include I and You, Natural Shocks, Bauer, and The Half-Life of Marie Curie.

A workshop production of Now Us, an original musical revue written and performed by Westover drama students, will be performed on Zoom on Friday, March 5, at 7:30 pm.