How does a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright teach 18 college amateurs about his art?
Montgomery Fellow August Wilson is doing it in a less than typical manner.
"I don't deal with the conventional, well-made play structure -- plot, rising action, falling action," Wilson said. "I find that if students have that in their heads, then they're not really free to write."
Wilson believes the most important thing his students must learn is "what it is that [they] have to say." He said he sees himself as a guide to help his students to identify their "cares and concerns."
Wilson begins each class by telling a story from his life. He does this to reveal his own method for identifying the issues which are important to him.
In one of Wilson's stories, his friend Cy Morocco heard about an opportunity to join a jazz band on stage at a local performance. He brought a saxophone and joined the band, despite his inability to play the instrument. Morocco was chased off of the bandstand.
"So here was someone trying to express himself without having the tools to do that," Wilson said. "As a playwright, you have to learn the tools before you can get up on the bandstand."
Wilson tries to teach his students "that there is a world out there," and people must pay attention to their own stories in order to "create a world" out of them, he said.
During each class, one student selects a poem, reads it and explains why he or she chose it.
"So already, by the mere selection of the poem, it begins to identify who the student is," Wilson said. "And why they have chosen this poem has something to do with their cares and concerns." Wilson called poetry "an enlargement of the say-able."
Discussion about painting, artists and artists' methods for arriving at their products also occur during Wilson's classes.
"Anybody who stands in front of a blank canvas is Picasso until proven otherwise," he said.
Hannah Kenah '01, a member of Wilson's class, said Wilson's comment about Picasso has been the one that has most significantly affected her writing.
She and her peers were surprised to learn Wilson never suffers from writer's block, because "he just writes," Kenah said.
Wilson emphasizes that his students must "claim that you're a writer, and just write, not wondering if it's good enough or if people will like it," Kenah said.
As a result, Kenah said she has taken a much more "spontaneous" approach to her writing and has gotten "over the feeling that every word you write has to be brilliant, because nothing will ever be brilliant if you don't write."
Wilson also has his students bring articles about photography, dance or even Latin American economics into the class. "They begin to broaden the way they think and become aware of what other artists are doing in other fields," he said.
He said culture -- religion, mythology, history, economics, social issues and politics -- all have be parts of plays.
Wilson's students complete two writing assignments per week. Once, they created a painting in their minds and described it with their words.
"What you really find out is that what it is that they really want to say is in the painting, and that they made this without thinking about it," Wilson said.
The students have also dramatized fairy tales such as "Little Red Riding Hood," or Wilson's own ideas, such as a situation in which people enter a hotel and try to get a room without a reservation.
The writing assignments teach his students the "tools" of the trade, Wilson said. He works with them on such aspects of plays as exposition or dialogue.
"We go through a new technical thing every class -- dialogue or character -- but he incorporates it very well into the whole creative process and mixes it into what he calls the craft of writing," said Nicole Savickas '00, another member of Wilson's class.
During one class, Wilson made up the line, "Bartolow say his pig's hair is falling out." His students had to use it as the beginning of a dialogue.
"I was surprised and amazed at the inventiveness of all the students as they came up with things from that one line," Wilson said. One student responded by writing about magic pigs, and another used the line as a password for characters who robbed a local store.
While Wilson does his best to teach his about the art of play-writing, he can only do so much. He cannot "teach talent" and cannot tell people "what to say or how to make it interesting ... but you can teach them to find it within themselves," he said.
Wilson said he does not know if his students will pursue writing careers, but he thinks his teaching will have been most effective if, 10 years from now, they "decide to walk on a different side of the street," rather than taking their usual routes.
He wants them to "be aware that there are a lot of different perspectives on one thing," he said.
Instructing at the College has been Wilson's first teaching experience and he said he has been surprised at how "astute" his students are.
His students have found Wilson to be very un-intimidating and responsive.
"When we all got into class on the first day, you could hear a pin drop, because everybody was so intimidated to be in the room with this Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright," Kenah said. "But he's really approachable, just very honest, and he doesn't have any airs about him."
Savickas said Wilson immediately "put everyone at ease" and placed his students "up on his level."
She said she was pleased that Wilson also made the effort to have individual meetings with all of his students to critique their work.
