THE5260C - Advanced Playwriting Workshop

College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences

Course Description

Workshop YOUR play!

This is a workshop for playwrights who already have a complete draft of a full-length stage play and are ready to refine and prepare the script for potential submission to theatres, competitions or festivals. Beginners should consider taking the THE4400C - Playwriting for Absolute Beginners before enrolling in this course.

Across an intensive 8-week period, participants will focus on strengthening scene construction, progression of action, and overall structural integrity. The workshop emphasizes revision strategies and dramaturgical support. Peers and the instructor provide ongoing feedback on successive drafts, and individual story meetings are scheduled as needed. The course may be repeated.

Who Should Take This Course

Alums of the MFA Theatre program at the University of Idaho
or with permission (see Pre-reqs below) anyone who is ready to work on an existing full-length play they've written.

What You’ll Gain

Targeted, industry-savvy feedback from a produced and published playwright.
Ongoing, rigorous peer response from a cohort of advanced writers, giving you multiple perspectives on structure, character, dialogue, and theatricality across multiple drafts.
A polished, submission-ready full-length play developed over the term, with time built in for deep revision rather than just generating new pages.
Concrete submission strategies and resources—where to send your script, how to present yourself professionally, and how to build a sustainable playwriting practice beyond the course.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:

Robert Caisley is an award-winning playwright whose work has been produced across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, and translated into Italian, French, Estonian, Spanish and Czech. He is the recipient of a 2015–16 Performing Arts Fellowship from the Idaho Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the University of Idaho’s 2015 Excellence in Research and Creativity Award. A three-time alum playwright of the National New Play Network, he has also been a featured playwright at the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference.

Caisley’s play Lucky Me received an NNPN Rolling World Premiere in the 2014–15 season with productions at New Jersey Repertory Theatre, Curious Theatre (Denver), Riverside Theatre (Iowa City), 6th Street Playhouse (Santa Rosa), Oregon Contemporary Theatre, The Modern Theatre (Spokane), Theatre Tallahassee and CAT Theatre (Richmond). The play later toured with Vana Baskini Teater in Estonia during the 2018–19 season and subsequently enjoyed an extended run at Divadlo Ungelt in Prague.

His play Happy, first presented at the 2011 NNPN Annual Showcase of New Plays at InterACT Theatre in Philadelphia, was a 2012 finalist for both the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference and the Woodward/Newman Award. It received an NNPN Rolling World Premiere in the 2012–13 season with productions at New Theatre (Miami), Montana Repertory Theatre, 6th Street Playhouse, New Jersey Repertory and Redtwist Theatre (Chicago). Happy was named one of Chicago Magazine’s “Nine Best Comedies” of the season, nominated for a Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Best Original Script, and received the 2014 SOTA Award for Best Play. Its Spanish-language premiere was staged in 2018 at Teatro Milán in Mexico City, where it earned a 2018 theatre Billboard Award nomination, and the play later ran for more than 100 performances. It is currently running at El Piccolino Teatro in Buenos Aires.

Additional plays include The Open Hand (Clarence Brown Theatre, Phoenix Theatre), A Masterpiece of Comic…Timing (B Street Theatre) and Front. His most recent play, Snow Fever: A Karaoke Christmas, has been produced at B Street Theatre, Oregon Contemporary Theatre and Phoenix Theatre.

Caisley directs the MFA Playwriting Program at the University of Idaho.

Prerequisites

Alumni of the MFA Theatre program at the University of Idaho or by instructor permission. Instructor permissions can be obtained by sending a writing sample to rcaisley@uidaho.edu.