Spaces of Creation: The Creative Process of Playwriting

By Suzan Zeder and Jim Hancock

Powerful imagery, complex emotions, and hidden connections swirl within everyone's inner spaces. As a writer, you must coax these ephemera from your mind, through your fingers, and, finally, into the written word before they submerge again into unconsciousness. This is the natural tension of writing, a blessing as well as a struggle.

Suzan Zeder and Jim Hancock understand the forces at work inside writers, and in Spaces of Creation, they offer insights, exercises and etudes intended to guide you through the process of accessing ideas and images from your own inner resources of mind and body. You will embark on an inward journey through a variety of spacesgeographical, cultural, psychological, architectural, opening your writing to new generative pathways and finding creative impulses that may have been previously veiled in fear or uncertainty.

With theories and techniques drawn from an array of psychophysical and theatrical sources, including movement-based body/mind disciplines such as Developmental Movement, Feldenkrais and Contact Improvisation, these essays and exercises connect the inner process of the writer to the craft of playwriting. They reinforce the depth and dimensionality of character by reconnecting you to your own child space, provide insights into plot structure through an examination of architectural space, and invite you to enter the dark territory of your dreams and your fears to release you from the phobias that inhibit creativity and risk taking. No matter your level of expertise, Spaces of Creation will uncover ways to invigorate your writing from within.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0325006849
• ISBN13: 9780325006840
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Heinemann Drama
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 10.1"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Developing a New Style of Teaching Playwriting

The writer of a play, looking at the first blank piece of paper has to first create a world. It is a world that will exist only in the mind of the audience, but it is a world none the less. He has to start with some kind of image of the space he is creating along with the emotions that he has to make the audience feel. To do this the author must look at the conflicting ideas inside his head and bring them out to mere words on that piece of paper. Susan Zeder is the head of the playwriting program at the University of Texas at Austin. Jim Hancock is a teacher of acting and movement. Over many years they have jointly developed their approach to teaching acting. This book summarizes their efforts. It combines an array of psychophysical and theatrical approaches to playwriting that is unique. Following a series of short exercises, this book will enlighten and entertain while uncovering ways to invigorate your writing from within.