Nicole Burley is a director and script writer who offers workshops to Drama and Performing Arts students. Nicole studied English and Classics at Bristol University. She worked as a young company director with the Rose Theatre in Kingston while working as an assistant director in London. She enjoyed writing plays for the young company and decided to go to Falmouth University where she did a Masters in Professional Writing. She is currently working on screen projects.
Nicole came to college to work on our students’ devised pieces for BTEC Level 3 National Foundation Diploma in Performing Arts Practice. The students had a plot, characters and a scene structure and a performance style – juke box musical. Each class had put together a shared PowerPoint so that Nicole had something to work from.
The first question she asked each class to consider was the central dramatic question. It is this question that drives the story and should be answered by the end. The students then had to think about the core, universal qualities that shift throughout the story. These could be set up as binary opposite such as success versus failure and unity versus division. There followed a discussion about settings to achieve the greatest dramatic impact and an occasion that can give the scene a purpose and make it move.
Nicole posed interesting questions about conflict to make the students look at it from a new perspective. They thought about conflict in a wider sense as something that goes wrong. Examples might be an environmental discomfort or a secret. Students had to work out what was bothering the characters and causing tension. Next the students focused on a ‘turn’ – an event that affects every character in the scene and drives the narrative forwards.
The students said that they found the workshop very informative and helpful and when they were writing their script, they followed the four rules of scriptwriting which Nicole had given them:
- Show, don't tell
- Avoid ‘exceptional dialogue’
- Keep it purposeful
- Keep it character specific
Nicole worked with the students on their pieces and made suggestions for their piece. Within a week each class had produced a script and had done a read through.
I highly recommend a scriptwriting workshop with Nicole Burley. She can adapt the duration to suit your needs.