Drama School
Hillel Mittelpunkt, Avishai Milstein, Boaz Gaon, Danielle Cohen Levy, Hadar Galron, Noam Gil, and Oren Jacobi teach us, answering questions that anyone who wants to learn playwriting wonders about, and sharing their experiences as successful playwrights, dramaturgs, students, and teachers: How did they learn to write? What do they think is the best way to learn playwriting? What do they think about playwriting courses, writing workshops, and guidebooks? And what recommendations, warnings, and tips do they have for beginner writers, as well as experienced playwrights.
How did you learn to write plays?
Hadar Galron: I learned how to write plays thanks to desperation. Once I notified my parents that I won't be going to law school, but to study theater and had to leave home, I began writing simply out of the need to make a living. I wrote my first play only after it had already been performed several times as an improvised show in children's summer camps. Later on, I utilized the same method to write and perform a stand-up show for myself about the status of women in religious society, and Tzipi Pines, the manager of Beit Lessin Theater, who saw it, asked me if I know how to write plays, and I replied that I don't know if I know. She suggested I write for the theater, and when I began writing "Mikveh", she offered to enlist playwright Goren Agmon as my dramaturgy consultant and as a teacher who worked with me one on one and in a group, which playwright Maya Arad Yasur was also a part of.
Hillel Mittelpunkt: I went to a high school which offered advanced studies in the arts, and as part of the theater department, a group of friends and I began writing and directing original plays of our own. My first two short plays were performed there. I gathered experience in play analysis classes and by reading plays from different genres, from the poetic realism of Irishman Seán O'Casey, Ionesco, early Pinter, Albee, Nissim Aloni and others. In hindsight I suppose some of my exercises in playwriting then, surely the dialogues, were influenced by techniques I obtained through reading.
Boaz Gaon: I ended up in theater thanks to a number of unforgettable theatrical experiences at a young age, which led me to study a B.A. in theater at Tel Aviv University, in the distinguished playwriting department which once existed there, with professors like Dr. Shimon Levi, Prof. Tom Levy, Joshua Sobol, Edna Mazia and Goren Agmon.
Noam Gil: I didn't study writing anywhere. To learn how to write, you need to first read and watch as much as possible and then write and write and write. At first it's always bad writing, but if you have a sense of self assessment, you learn how to improve.
What is the practical benefit of drama courses and academic studies?
Oren Jacobi: I'm a big believer in educational settings and courses, where you learn the structure that holds the play together and the rules. To write a play you first need to gain knowledge and understanding of the dramatic structure. It's true that all writing frameworks- prose, playwriting and screenwriting- have similar elements: conflict, heroes, obstacles, catharsis and so on, but in every format the way the drama is drawn out, the structure and the dramatic moves are different. A playwright is required to know how to bring worlds to existence, to create something new and personal within a framework and according to set rules, even if you later choose to break or challenge them.
Noam Gil: In my eyes, playwriting workshops and courses give young writers an opportunity to learn what the theaters expect from them. These courses also offer these writers entry to a community of fellow writers, with which you can dialogue and discuss writing and learn from. Apart from that, these courses don't have a dramatic effect on the quality of writing, and can even sometimes have a destructive effect. Since these courses have become popular, the quality of theater has not improved, and may have even gotten worse. There are about a million ways to write a play, and these courses usually teach us that there is only one way, and that there are rules you should never break, but that is not the case. I'm all for courses about writing, but I also prefer an approach that opens writers' minds, rather than narrow them down to one formula.
Boaz Gaon: As someone who's studied playwriting and teaches an annual practical course about the fundamentals of dramatic writing at Minshar School of Art, I believe drama is like architecture- poetry and engineering- and the two must be studied so this building can stand. If the playwriting course contains a combination of both and equips the student with theatrical idealism, along with practical tools to enact this idealism on the stage, I believe there is much to be gained by studying playwriting.
Daniel Cohen Levy: I think there's a shortage of programs for professional writing in Israel: academic study programs or playwriting schools specializing in writing for the theater, regarding it as a profession worthy of specializing in to acquire tools, knowledge and experience. The most supportive writing frameworks for me throughout the years were those who offered mentoring, a deadline, and in several opportunities also a financial scholarship for writing. My greatest motivation for completing and bringing to life my ideas in writing has always been a meaningful dialogue with another set of eyes on the text and its development, and a deadline, whether external or a date I set for myself.
Hillel Mittelpunkt: I suppose the value is in providing a framework that demands organized writing assignments and discipline. "Writing discipline" is in my opinion the first and most important rule of playwriting. Don't get up and leave your desk prematurely, even if your creative output for the day comes to half a line of dialogue. There is a lot to be gained by the very act of present and active listening to fellow writers' thoughts about their writing.
How do you learn to develop a personal voice and a unique writing style?
Oren Jacobi: I don't think you can teach how to develop a personal voice and unique style. Once you learn the structure, the tools and rules, every playwright (whether a beginner or a pro) must cast their personal content, personality, world view and writing style into the story mold. With gained confidence and experience, a style unique to that playwright almost organically reveals itself.
Avishai Milstein: Finding our personal voice, our unique style, is a personal mission, a lifelong goal, really. but finding our personal voice and unique style still doesn't free us from the wish to communicate them. And in order to communicate our uniqueness, we must act in an environment that has the potential to understand us. Every creator wants to be "special", but earning that title only happens in comparison to many others who are less special, and comparing our uniqueness to the mediocrity of others requires us all to speak a shared language. We can't tell an audience of people an authentic, important, exciting story and make up the language through which we tell it as we go, because no one would understand us.
When we tell a story like this, we rely on the shared grammar that is embedded in our minds and the minds of our listeners, like a road that guarantees that our journey will, in principle, lead us to our desired destination. I have never claimed to teach "talent." Talent is a personal asset that a drama student discovers through studying and practicing to the point of exhaustion, usually after a long period, during which the young writer also understands that they have a unique talent, and that they do indeed want to devote themselves to expressing it by becoming a playwright. There are far fewer real "talents" in the drama market than there are "those with potential." The ability to realize one's potential and impress with talent takes years of work and study. And yet it relies on the simple fact that everyone must speak the same language: the audience, the playwrights, and the other theater creators.
Hadar Galron: When I teach, that's the thing that is most important to me to keep from disrupting- listening to your personal voice and teaching the writers to listen to themselves. I think playwriting is often more similar to poetry than it is to literature. I often find myself telling students that it's wonderful that they're poets, and I don't want to take that away from them, but I'm offering to teach them another tool. Once their writing flows, because they'll know the technique at a level that will allow them to stop thinking about it, their personal style and voice will come out.
Noam Gil: When Stephen King was asked why he chose to write horror books, he replied "Why do you assume that I have a choice?". A personal voice and unique style is not something you find or develop. It's something that finds and develops you. Don't go searching for it. If you persist and don't stop, it'll come eventually.
Are you still studying drama? If so, how?
Daniel Cohen Levy: I really love choosing a form that fits the idea I want to address. So to some degree, every time I go to write, I'm actually also going to study what I want to write, and to decipher how these ideas can be embodied in both content and form. That's the reason why the plays I ended up writing have different formats (a play that is made up entirely of text messages and postcards, a play that takes place entirely over the phone, a historic play with character testimonies, or a play written for an entire city...). There will always be my point of view, the question that interests me, and the form I set up to create.
Boaz Gaon: I'm constantly studying by teaching playwriting, writing plays and staging them in front of an audience, and watching brilliant plays by playwrights who survived the long road to the stage: meeting with students who remind me of the fundamentals, meeting an audience that is moved thanks to the successful implementation of these foundations, and meeting with plays that can be seen as masterclasses.
Noam Gil: For me, the learning process will end only after I finish writing my last play. Writers, like any other professionals, have a toolbox. Every play we write, and every creation we watch or read, is another tool in the toolbox. The more tools we have in our toolbox, the higher the quality of the work we can produce.
If I'm writing a detective comedy for instance, I think about the detective comedies I've read or seen, and try to understand the structure and dramatic tricks they used. The best writers are those with the biggest, most abundant toolbox.
Hillel Mittelpunkt: Today I don't "study" playwriting in terms of schooling. I write and change and edit and erase intuitively as I work, and rely mostly on how I've solved similar writing problems in the past. Not to worry, new and unfamiliar problems will always appear, of course.
Are there any specific playwrights or works that served as a "school" for you?
Boaz Gaon: My starting point as a teacher is that the designation of any artistic medium can be found in the historical circumstances of its birth. Cinema, to a great degree, was born as a technological wonder, and to this day a substantial part of the role of cinema was to bring audiences to exit the theater uttering "Wow, it was as if I was actually there, how amazing." While theater, was brought to existence by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, to tell 20 thousand viewers each night at the Dionysus Theater: "This is us", "Here's where we're wrong", "Here's where we're a disgrace to the Gods", and "This is how we can be better and more moral". 2,500 years later, and after peeling back everything that has occurred since Athens invented democracy and theater, I believe an audience exiting a theater the way they hoped to, is still an audience that got to dip their toes, or even be baptized, in an ecstatic experience. (Ecstasy in Greek= The ability to supposedly exit the cage of your own identity)
Hillel Mittelpunkt: You can't approach writing without reading. Knowing the dramatic devices of the great masters, even of mediocre writers, is a milestone in the foundation of every playwright's personal educational institution: from Sean O'Casey (Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars) I learned how to weave a realistic drama, uniting themes of family life, alongside large political and social moves. From Arrabal (And They Put Handcuffs on the Flowers- a play about political prisoners in the time of General Franco in Spain) I learned that extreme realism and elevated poetry can coexist in the same play. From Pinter I learned the secret of the casual day to day dialogue that gives off a scent of great horror, and the dramatic dialogue as a musical pattern with a clear tempo.
What book would you recommend as a must-read for a beginning playwright?
Hillel Mittelpunkt: I haven't delved too deep into the literature of teaching playwriting. I've always been intrigued by monographs and biographies of creators and directors. I suppose the book STORY by Robert McKee answers many writers' queries, but I would be careful in fully adopting his "ultra normative" doctrine.
Boaz Gaon: "Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama" by David Mamet is a perfect little book about the purpose of drama in its deepest sense- a must-read for any playwright, and of course Aristotle's "The Poetics", which has provided millions of "How to Write" books since the fifth century BC, and contains the very seed of drama in one genius sentence, which loosely translated states: "Any well constructed dramatic plot must be experienced by the audience in two ways at once: it must be unexpected, and unavoidable."
Hadar Galron: I dream of writing a book myself, but until then, I can recommend "The Art of Dramatic Writing" by Lajos Egri, a series of books about screenwriting by Syd Field, and also "The Playwright's Purpose" by Motti Lerner.
Noam Gil: The best book I've read about the subject is "On Writing" by Stephen King. The man knows the craft , and he writes about this subject as a professional craftsman. Though it's mostly about writing prose, any dramatic writer can learn a lot from this book. King isn't dogmatic like some others are, and he focuses on the small details writing teachers disregard. I believe some books about writing can be problematic. Many people who know nothing about writing (producers for example), read Robert McKee and immediately think they know everything, even quoting terminology from the book as if it's scripture. You should read Robert McKee, John Truby, Lajos Egri and others, but take them with a big grain of salt.
What do you think about group writing workshops as a way to learn playwriting?
Boaz Gaon: As a writer, I'm a less enthusiastic advocate of group comments about freshly written work by writers who need a stabilizing, but loving hand. This hand can often cut down and flatten in the name of competition, which is part of the psyche of every writer. As a teacher, when I'm able to rein in this tendency and facilitate group feedback that is meaningful, altruistic and devoid of any ego or ill intention, I find that group feedback is an important learning tool, because it allows the writer to learn that they can present an audience with very personal words, and not fall apart to a thousand pieces like legos if their response isn't a string of gushing praises.
To what extent has practical experience in theater, as a playwright, or in other roles, contributed to your ability to write plays?
Boaz Gaon: You can't learn how to write plays without performing plays in front of a live audience, like you can't learn how to play pro basketball by watching N.B.A games with a pile of french fries on your belly. You need to sweat, get bruised, lose, and then scrape yourself off. the floor to get back on the court.
Oren Jacobi: I began writing after a very short and very very unsuccessful career as an actor, but thanks to studying at Beit Zvi School for the Performing Arts, thanks to the fact that we read and analyzed plays, thanks to the rehearsals in which I deconstructed (or tried to deconstruct) characters, thanks to working through text and dialogue, I learned about plays and playwriting by "inhabiting them physically". I know for certain that I would never have become a playwright if I weren't an acting student first.
Noam Gil: Nothing beats practical experience. One of my first plays, “Someday My Prince Will Come”, was accepted to Beit Lessin Theater's staged reading contest. My weekly meetings with Avishai Milstein, the theater's dramaturg, where he'd tear me apart with the demand to fulfill the full potential of a dramatic text was one of the most important lessons in theater I've ever received. Later, when I met Yigael Sachs, who directed several of my plays, he'd sometimes show me that the playwright doesn't always understand the play they've written. These are two of the best teachers I've had in theater. Additionally, the encounter with the actors also shows me how the writing needs to be realized on stage. In short, I want to think that with every project I keep learning and improving.
Daniel Cohen Levy: I recall one experience that shaped my perception in regards to writing: as we were working on an original play, the cast too often took the liberty of changing the lines as we worked, which made the text slowly lose it's shape and power. In my next project, I remember telling the actors in our first rehearsal: "I've been writing this play for five years, we're not changing a word, now we can start." Of course there were some changes, but the attitude towards the play and the text was different. This was a significant milestone for me, because I have a distinction between my writer self and my creator/director self. They're like two separate stand-alone identities that collaborate in the creation process of each project. I love the separation between the text and the finished work. Even in devised theatre projects, in which the writing process was part of the overall construction of the piece, the text was always a separate entity for me, which stand alone, keeping some sort of secret. I love that the text is an object that must be approached, deciphered, bestowed an image or a language or an action or a world, and that words matter and have meaning.
Hillel Mittelpunkt: I try to get to the start of rehearsals with a text that is as complete and locked in as possible, knowing that there is no one other than myself as the director that will be able to solve what I haven't yet solved by myself at home. In most cases this doesn't help of course, there will always be some issues with the written text that will only become apparent to you in the process of directing it.
What would you recommend to a beginning writer who wants to learn to be a playwright?
Hillel Mittelpunkt: To read as many plays as possible. To expose yourself to countless techniques, and to go see as much theater as possible. Even the worst of these are a potent classroom I recommend attending.
Oren Jacobi: Seek frameworks that provide tools and teaching, as well as mentorship and accompaniment in the writing process, so this study doesn't remain theoretical. And to the talented womankind, I urge you to overcome the obstacles and take a seat at the table, bring your voices and unique perspectives to the stage. There are too few female playwrights in Israel, and a real need to hear your stories. Don't give up, come up!
Daniel Cohen Levy: My recommendation, always, because this is what keeps me motivated, is to set a deadline (and keep it!). Especially in writing, it's also important to create the conditions to uphold your deadline. As writing is very often a relatively lonely process, what helps me is to pin points in time in my calendar and guard them relentlessly. Just like any other job, regarding the act of your writing/creating professionally has a significant affects on your ability to develop it and grow.
Noam Gil: Reading and writing and reading and writing.
What is the most common mistake that beginning writers make, and what should they do to avoid it?
Avishai Milstein: The most common mistake beginning playwrights make is regarding the story they are yearning to tell as a completed play. They don't understand they must "translate" it into the language of drama. Drama is a language, like Hebrew like English, like computer language, and like any language, drama has its own grammar, vocabulary, syntax and pronunciation. When we're fluent in a language- any language- we can use it to tell moving, amusing, abstract, funny, philosophical or political stories. We'll be understood, because those listening to us are also fluent in the grammar of the language we are using to tell this story. The majority of our audience is passively fluent in the language of drama, because 4000 years after it was created, it is already an inseparable part of our collective subconscious, but in order to be active and create something new in the language of drama, the playwright must have a firm grasp of the dramatic grammar, and once they do, they can also play with it, turn it on its head and challenge it- just like we can create wordplay and invent new uses of Hebrew, and still trust that our audience understands us.
Anyone living in an environment which speaks a language they don't master is familiar with the dilemma: whether to spend their time systematically studying the language until the practice gives them the confidence to speak it fluently, or to leave it, simply live in the new environment, and somehow "absorb" how it is spoken, and hope that someday they will master the language sufficiently. It is important to study plays in order to understand and practice the rules of the language of drama until it becomes intuitive to us. Just as we freely speak sentences in our mother tongue without wondering what the subject, predicate, and object are. We simply speak, because we know the language.
Hillel Mittelpunkt: The most common mistake beginning playwrights make is attempting to load the spoken line of text with the character's dramatic action- it really doesn't have to be spoken, and we shouldn't make do with the paucity of material. A well written play must have three fundamental conflicts: between two individuals, between the individual and themselves and between an individual and society (or the mindset of the times...).
Hadar Galron: You can't avoid mistakes, but since the writing is done in layers, it's completely fine to make mistakes in your first draft and fix them later on. The most common mistake is loading the spoken text with all of its intentions, but if there are no hidden intentions, action, subtext and give and take, the result won't be dramatic conflict, but an argument between two people with differing opinions who have no effect on one another. In order to learn how to avoid this mistake, I love to give my playwriting students at Kibbutzim College and Bar Ilan University an exercise whose theme is "Inevitable pain caused to a loved one", which forces them to handle the writing of an internal and external conflict.
Oren Jacobi: Many beginning writers fall in love with the words, dramatic moves and scenes they've written, and they find it difficult to let go and make changes following critique. Bringing a play to the stage also requires the ability to conduct creative dialogue and receive review and criticism. Until the play reaches the stage it is met with the notes, suggestions and criticism of the artistic director, the dramaturg, the director, the actors- and they all have something to say. This doesn't mean that you must accept all notes and suggestions, but it certainly means that you should definitely exhibit flexibility and receptiveness. If you're too "locked in" on the written play, and too enamored with the initial work- it leaves no space for this dialogue.
Boaz Gaon: In the first lesson of the annual course I teach, I invite the budding playwrights to tell me "why they write". About two thirds of the group say they write to express their inner world, meaning they write for themselves. In the final lesson we return to this question to gauge how far they've come from what they've learned and what they came in with, and the realization of this gap usually leads to a nervous chuckle on their part.
Noam Gil: When you write a text and send it to a theater, make sure you've fulfilled the full potential of the text. Don't count on the artistic director's admiration of your talent or potential as a writer. You're competing with other writers who are pedantic over every comma and period. Don't cut any corners. The most important attribute for any writer in my eyes is the ability to critique yourself, and this is a muscle that requires intentional development. Sometimes when I finish a play and read it, I'm certain I've reinvented the wheel, but if I wait a few weeks and read the play again, I often reach opposite conclusions.
After you finish a draft, put the text aside, do other things for a week or two, and then come back to it again with a fresher perspective.
What would you suggest experienced writers do to keep learning and developing?
Daniel Cohen Levy: Read a lot and different types of texts. Prose, poetry, plays, non-fiction, anything that expands the heart and mind.
Boaz Gaon: A. Write and perform, write and perform, even if the production setting isn't a repertory theater, and you must undergo the struggles all theater creators have experienced since Ancient Athens, rather than parading as a victor into a theater that makes everything comfortable for you.
B. Strive to perform plays in a repertory theater and not be satisfied with an audience that a priori wants to get out of its own cage.
C. To see all that is good, in the country and in the world, because everything that is truly good and sees an audience is a small miracle, a grain from the Acropolis that has flown through the ages and somehow grew into a fundamentally modern theatrical moment.
D. Stephen King in "On Writing" suggests driving a nail into the wall and impaling all the rejection letters on it, and then, when there is no more room on the nail from so many rejection letters - driving a new nail in. And keep writing.
Hillel Mittelpunkt: Keep writing, all the time. Try to imagine the scene directed. Try hearing the music that this dramatic moment may be loaded with. Choose a dramatic situation and practice it as a dramatic piece and then a comedic piece...And most importantly- find the playfulness in the act of writing.
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