I expected my playwriting class to consist mostly of theatre majors, or at least experienced thespians. Being neither, I was nervous when I took my seat in Professor Angell’s office, where the class of six would meet twice a week for the semester. Indeed, the rest of the class had previous experience with playwriting and acting. Most of them casually referenced plays I had never even heard of, much less read.
Although Professor Angell’s kind and supportive demeanor served as a significant comfort, it was not until I read the first line of that night’s reading that a huge wave of relief and subsequent confidence came over me. The author Jeffrey Sweet began:
“After years of teaching dramatic technique, I have strong ideas about what kinds of people are most likely to become real, working playwrights: actors and journalists.”
Maybe playwriting won’t be so hard for this journalist after all.
I had felt underprepared going into the playwriting class because Hillsdale’s creative writing department is, well, nonexistent. Hillsdale, while emphasizing the great literary works of history, has little interest in teaching its students to create brilliant fictional prose of their own. I have read “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” and more modern marvels like Elie Wiesel’s “Night” and Robert K. Massie’s “Nicholas and Alexandra.” But my writing has consisted of researching and commenting on these works.
On one hand, I understand that most college students aren’t prepared, in life experience or education, to pen the next great American novel. But if there is one thing I have learned throughout my four years of experience in the excellent Dow Journalism Program, it is that if you want to be a good writer, you must write. Practice, as cliché as it sounds, truly does make perfect.
So, in order to be a great journalist, since my first week on campus, I have written for the Collegian. I have become an editor, held a journalism internship, and taken numerous writing courses, including Advanced Writing. I can whip up a news story in record time, and ledes and concise diction have become second nature. But writing dialogue? Developing characters from my imagination? No way. I can record the conversations from an interview flawlessly, but to dream up an interchange on my own is daunting.
When I read that journalists make good playwrights, and heard Prof. Angell say in class that historical knowledge makes for good playwriting, something dawned on me. No, I have not written any plays or novels in my life. I probably haven’t written a short story since grade school. But maybe I had taken for granted the experience I do have.
Being a journalist, Sweet elaborated, makes a good playwright because journalists cut down the excess fat and share only the information necessary to a story. It is up to the audience to figure out what is going on underneath the characters’ words and actions, in both journalism and theater.
As a History major, the entirety of my course work has been essentially the discovery of life’s greatest dramas. I have read and learned about the Revolutionary War, the Ancient Egyptians, the Russian tsars, the Great Depression, the French Revolution, and the Holocaust, just to name a few. I know the players of history’s stage: George Washington, Aristotle, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Rasputin, the Apostle Peter, Robert E. Lee, Sacagawea, Andrew Jackson, and King Tut, among many others. The experiences of all these people in all these different times can tell me more about writing true human interactions than I had first thought.
That reminded me of the second piece of wisdom that was hammered into my mind over the course of my collegiate journalism classes: Not only to write, but also to write what you know.
I may not have studied Shakespeare, starred in a Tower Players production, or penned a novel in my free time, but I do have experience in human interactions. I am an aspiring journalist and historian, and I will use that background, and an eagerness to learn more, to become a playwright.
I won’t expect to craft the next Romeo and Juliet, of course. Actually, I won’t even expect a crappy off-Broadway play or a decent amateur piece. What I will expect is to improve throughout the semester, and incorporate journalistic skills and historical knowledge into a pastime for which I have a growing passion.
Morgan Delp is a senior from Toledo, Ohio, studying history. She is minoring in journalism through the Dow Journalism program and is the editor-in-chief of the Collegian.
