Application for the UJ Playwriting Laboratory 2022 is open to emerging and established South African writers.
UJ Arts & Culture, a division of the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA) at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), invites emerging and established playwrights from South Africa to apply for participation in the third iteration of its online playwriting programme.
CLICK HERE TO APPLY
The Laboratory was launched in 2020 by Head of UJ Arts & Culture, Pieter Jacobs, to encourage and support the development of original South African theatre scripts. Playwrights selected for this free programme are challenged to complete a theatre script for a 60-90 minute one-act play within a year. The programme kicks off with a playwriting masterclass series that features experienced local and international playwriting specialists followed by an intensive writing-and-feedback period of a few months and play readings.
Under the direction of award-winning director, Jade Bowers, the division will produce two of the works developed through the Laboratory in 2022.
“When we launched the programme in 2020, we did not anticipate nor plan for works developed through the laboratory to make it onto our programme and that is an extremely exciting development,” says Jacobs. “Four of the works developed by the first cohort were recorded by freelance actors and the Market Theatre Lab’s Kwasha Company and will be released as podcast play readings next year and five plays will be published by Junkets Publisher,” he continues.
Application for the UJ Playwriting Laboratory 2022 is open to emerging and established South African writers. The programme will be presented in English but participants may also be able to write in other South African languages.
Applicants are required to submit one monologue (no more than 400 words) and a dialogue (no more than 600 words). The following online form should be completed and submitted by no later than 31 January 2022.
CLICK HERE TO APPLY
To ensure that participants gain meaningful value from the process and that scripts developed are as close to ready for production as possible, a limited number of participants will be selected.
For more information about UJ Arts & Culture visit https://arts.uj.ac.za/, https://www.facebook.com/UJArtsCulture
About UJ Arts and Culture
UJ Arts & Culture, a division of the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture (FADA), produces and presents world-class student and professional arts programmes aligned to the UJ vision of an international university of choice, anchored in Africa, dynamically shaping the future. A robust range of arts platforms are offered on all four UJ campuses for students, staff, alumni and the general public to experience and engage with emerging and established Pan-African and international artists drawn from the full spectrum of the arts.
In addition to UJ Arts & Culture, FADA (www.uj.ac.za/fada) offers programmes in eight creative disciplines, in Art, Design and Architecture, as well as playing home to the NRF SARChI Chair in South African Art & Visual Culture, and the Visual Identities in Art & Design Research Centre. The Faculty has a strong focus on sustainability and relevance, and engages actively with the dynamism, creativity and diversity of Johannesburg in imagining new approaches to art and design education.