Spaces of Creation: The Creative Process of Playwriting

by Suzan Zeder, Jim Hancock, Naomi Iizuka (Foreword by)

Powerful imagery, complex emotions, and hidden connections swirl within everyone's inner spaces. As a writer, you must coax these ephemera from your mind, through your fingers, and, finally, into the written word before they submerge again into unconsciousness. This is the natural tension of writing, a blessing as well as a struggle. Suzan Zeder and Jim Hancock understand the forces at work inside writers, and in Spaces of Creation , they offer insights, exercises and etudes intended to guide you through the process of accessing ideas and images from your own inner resources of mind and body. You will embark on an inward journey through a variety of spacesgeographical, cultural, psychological, architectural, opening your writing to new generative pathways and finding creative impulses that may have been previously veiled in fear or uncertainty. With theories and techniques drawn from an array of psychophysical and theatrical sources, including movement-based body/mind disciplines such as Developmental Movement, Feldenkrais and Contact Improvisation, these essays and exercises connect the inner process of the writer to the craft of playwriting. They reinforce the depth and dimensionality of character by reconnecting you to your own child space, provide insights into plot structure through an examination of architectural space, and invite you to enter the dark territory of your dreams and your fears to release you from the phobias that inhibit creativity and risk taking. No matter your level of expertise, Spaces of Creation will uncover ways to invigorate your writing from within.

208 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2005

Reviews

[Just Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is definitely a different type of craft book from what I am used to.

Each chapter explores different "spaces" for creation, including the child space, the psychophysical space, the interpersonal space, the sacred space, the dream space, and the geographical space. Each chapter also ends with a series of physical exercises for the reader to perform to help get them into these spaces of creation. What I gained from this book uniquely was the concepts; I learned about new concepts such as geopathology and neuro-linguistic-programming, alongside traditional concepts like Aristotle's traditional sequence of action. Most other craft books are really focused on the same things, the same plot ideas and character development ideas, whereas this one also talked about experimental plays, and language-based plays. This book focused on drawing inspiration from the real world and definitely left me motivated and with a list of ideas and concepts to explore in my upcoming writing.