Papatango Playwriting Course

Our playwriting course is for writers with limited or no professional experience, who wish to hone their playwriting skills and write in a supportive environment.

The course takes place over five monthly sessions and covers the key elements of playwriting: finding inspiration and generating ideas, building characters, structuring scenes, writing dialogue, and editing and re-drafting. It aims to build writing networks within local communities and culminates in a rehearsed reading of extracts of participants’ work by professional actors for local audiences.

Our playwriting course is fully funded and completely free to participants! Travel and access bursaries are available to ensure that anyone, anywhere in the region, can take part.

Upcoming Courses
Our 2022 course is being delivered in partnership with Creative Darlington on the following dates:

- Session 1 – Monday 14 March 2022
- Session 2 – Monday 11 April 2022
- Session 3 – Monday 25 April 2022
- Session 4 – Monday 16 May 2022
- Session 5 – Thursday 16 June 2022

All sessions will be held from 6-9pm at Darlington Hippodrome or Theatre Hullabaloo.

Places on the course are limited. To be eligible to apply you must:

- Reside in the North East of England
- Be available on all of the advertised dates

To apply, please send the following to participate@papatango.co.uk with the subject line ‘Playwriting Course Application’:

- CV
- A one page cover letter or email or three minute video or audio recording telling us why you’d like to take part in the course and how you and your work would benefit from it
- A short sample of your scriptwriting (no more than 5 pages – an extract is fine)

If you have any access needs which we could help meet to enable you to attend the course, please feel free to let us know when applying, and we will make appropriate arrangements. Access needs will not be taken into account when selection for the course are made.

Deadline for applications has been extended to 9pm on Sunday 27 Feb.
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Participant Testimonial
Prior to the course, I had little to no experience as a playwright. Since starting my journey in the creative industry, I have been taking any opportunity I can to educate myself and build skill sets that will allow me to succeed, despite my lack of access to resources and exposure to the arts growing up. By participating in the playwriting course I was hoping to gain the skills necessary to thrive and grow as a practitioner, build the tools to support my projects and positively contribute to the conversation of representation within the arts.

As a direct result of the course, I have now begun the development of a script that will serve as part of a long-term audience development project to increase engagement with underrepresented audiences.

The opportunity has really served as a great leveller for me. Financially I can’t afford many of the courses on these subjects. I turned up without experience but the dedication to learn, grow and apply, and that was welcomed and encouraged. I am now in a great position to initiate and start bringing to life some projects that I have been intimidated about tackling and I feel I am at the beginning of a very exciting few years in the world of theatre and playwriting.