Playreading Workshops

What to expect?

The aim of this Workshop is to give participants some tools to delve into the plays and to taste them not only for the stories they tell, but also for their shape, their structure, and their connection with the authors’ poetics and intentions. We will read the plays in groups, share them among ourselves and analyse them together.

We will focus on the form of the SHORT PLAY: usually a one-act play, with a limited number of characters, and with a certain unity of action. Many of the most important authors of the past and of the present took their first steps in this form, and they often returned to it in order to perfect and improve their craft as writers.

In prose theatre many times the writing of the play is the very first step. When a playwright starts conceiving a text, he or she takes decisions, establishes a language, creates patterns, gives shapes to actions, emotions and events in his or her own way. It is not an easy job to read and recognise all the nuances that the writer has put in place so that, as spectators, we can understand, interpretate and enjoy them.

Discover on Wednesdays

Our Playreading Workshops will take place every Wednesday for 6 weeks, 4 May - 8 June 2022

19:00 - 21:30, Le Grand Hospice

Le Grand Hospice is an open space located in the Saint-Catherine area, involving the surrounding neighbours and associations on a daily basis in order to create a real culture of proximity.

Let's meet at the entrance, rue du Grand Hospice 7 – 1000 Bruxelles

A new author each week

We will choose a different author for every session, and will examine 2 to 4 short plays by him or her. In particular, the workshop will focus on authors born in the Twentieth Century, a period of time in which the short form has become more and more famous, used and important for the evolution of drama and playwriting.

Do them all, or just do one

This is a Workshop with flexible attendance. You can choose to sign up to all of them or pick-and-choose the individual classes you like.

Covid Caution

Your safety is our priority. We will keep the room well ventilated. By participating in our Workshops you are knowingly taking the risk of infection. In the unlikely event that we are unable to run the Workshop due to Covid, you will be refunded.

Your Tutor

Francesco Bianchi

Francesco Bianchi is a playwright, director, translator and educator. He was born in Colleferro (Rome, Italy). He obtained his undergraduate degree in Università La Sapienza of Rome and his postgraduate degree in IUAV University of Venice, where he also worked as Assistant Professor from 2015 to 2017.

From 2012 he worked with Fondazione Teatro Due in Parma, as a dramaturg and assistant director to Valerio Binasco, Massimiliano Farau, Walter Le Moli, Gigi Dall’Aglio, Bruno De Franceschi, Elisabetta Pozzi, Csaba Antal among others. Starting from 2018 he became the Assistant Director for Italy of Declan Donnellan at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan and in the company Cheek by Jowl. He writes and translates plays since his first years of theatrical experience, and his career as a playwright has grown alongside with his studies on every aspect of theatre.

He has been award with a Special Mention the prestigious Premio Hystrio Scritture di Scena 2016 with his play Europa, and with a Mention at the Extrême Contemporain Prize 2021 with his play Per lei, nel giorno del suo compleanno. His play VUOTO is one of the 26 texts contained in the Abbecedario per il mondo nuovo (Piccolo Teatro, Milano, 2021). He has translated plays by William Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, William Goldman.

As a director, his most recent work is a children show in 8 episodes L’Arcipelago dei Suoni, also written by himself, and staged as a co-production of Fondazione Teatro Due and Fondazione Toscanini.

Our Playwrights

1. Samuel Beckett

Wednesday 4 May

19:00 - 21:30

An Irish writer, playwright, poet, translator and screenwriter from the middle of the 20th Century, Beckett is most famous for his play Waiting for Godot (1953). Like most of his works after 1947, the play was first written in French. In 1969, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for "his work, which, through a renewal of the forms of the novel and the theatre, takes on its full elevation in the destitution of modern man"

2. Harold Pinter

Wednesday 11 May

19:00 - 21:30

A British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor, Pinter was winner of the Nobel Prize in 2003, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen.

3. Sam Shepard

Wednesday 18 May

19:00 - 21:30

An American actor, screenwriter, director, playwright, producer, musician, writer and stage director from the late 20th Century, Shepard wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in the 1983 film The Right Stuff.

4. Caryl Churchill

Wednesday 25 May

19:00 - 21:30

Churchill is a British playwright known for dramatising the abuses of power, for her use of non-naturalistic techniques, and for her exploration of sexual politics and feminist themes. Celebrated for works such as Cloud 9 (1979), Top Girls (1982), Serious Money (1987), Blue Heart (1997), Far Away (2000), and A Number (2002), she has been described as "one of Britain's greatest poets and innovators for the contemporary stage".

5. Martin Crimp

Wednesday 1 June

19:00 - 21:30

Crimp is a British playwright described as a practitioner of the "in-yer-face" school of contemporary British drama, although he rejects the label. His chiselled writing addresses the violence of contemporary times with devastating cruelty and humour. Along with Sarah Kane, he is one of the few playwrights in contemporary English theatre who has successfully crossed borders. In Germany he is considered to be "one of the most respected British playwrights".

6. David Mamet

Wednesday 8 June

19:00 - 21:30

An American playwright, filmmaker, and author, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for his plays Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). His works are known for their crude, sometimes vulgar, but nevertheless very clever dialogues.

Playreading Workshops

What to expect?

Discover on Wednesdays

Our Playreading Workshops will take place every Wednesday for 6 weeks, 4 May - 8 June 2022

19:00 - 21:30, Le Grand Hospice

A new author each week

Do them all, or just do one

Covid Caution

Your Tutor

Francesco Bianchi

Our Playwrights

1. Samuel Beckett

2. Harold Pinter

3. Sam Shepard

4. Caryl Churchill

5. Martin Crimp

6. David Mamet