Decentered Playwriting

Decentered Playwriting investigates new and alternative strategies for dramatic writing that incorporate non-Western, Indigenous, and underrepresented storytelling techniques and traditions while deepening a creative practice that decenters hegemonic methods. A collection of short essays and exercises by leading teaching artists, playwrights, and academics in the fields of playwriting and dramaturgy, this book focuses on reimagining pedagogical techniques by introducing playwrights to new storytelling methods, traditions, and ways of studying, and teaching diverse narratological practices. This is a vital and invaluable book for anyone teaching or studying playwriting, dramatic structure, storytelling at advanced undergraduate and graduate levels, or as part of their own professional practice.

Carolyn M. Dunn is a playwright, dramaturg, actor, and director, whose plays have been Equity produced on stages in Los Angeles and New York. She is an Associate Professor of Theatre and Dance at California State University, Los Angeles, USA. Eric Micha Holmes is a dramatist, dramaturg, and educator, whose work has been produced and developed internationally. He teaches at The National Theatre School of Canada and Goddard College's MFA in Creative Writing Program, USA. Les Hunter is a playwright and theatre historian. He is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of English and Creative Writing at Baldwin Wallace University, USA.

Part 1: Decenter(Ed) Playwriting: Alternative Tools, Techniques, and Structures; 1. Playwrights as Architects of Third Space: The Dramaturgy of Japanese Traditional Performing Arts; 2. The Dramaturgy of Nothingness; 3. Poetic Expression in Kanaka Maoli Playwriting Praxis; 4. On Disaesthetics in Hip Hop Dramaturgy: Ruminations on Thinking and Doing; 5. Context/Culture: Using Some of the Complex Dramaturgy of Black Theatre of the 19th Century to Build Contemporary Work; 6. Decentering Humans: Writing Our Way Out of the Apocalypse; 7. Write Where You Are; Part 2: Decenter(Ing) Playwriting: Community Practices, Ritual, and Healing; 8. Horizontal Theatre: Democratic Practices of the New Docudrama; 9. Toward Self-Construction: A Filipinx Dramaturgy in the Diaspora; 10. Writing with Irene: Sustaining the Fornés Playwriting Method; 11. First People First: Community-Based Theatre Praxis in Native American and Indigenous Spaces; 12. "Aruku-Improv," Playwriting and Performance Devising Dramaturgy Part 3: Case Studies in Decentered Processes: Models and Testimonies; 13. Outsider Indian: A Decentered Narrative on the Long Journey of Native Playwriting; 14. Deconstructing and Reconstructing Zimbabwean Ndebele Izaga: A Conversation on Playwriting as Auto-Ethnographic Experiment; 15. Unarcheology: Anticolonial Aesthetics and Putting Things Back in the Ground; 16. Indigenous Placemaking and Storyweaving: An Interview with Murielle Borst-Tarrant (Kuna, Rappahannock)