Guest Dozent, SZENISCHES SCHREIBEN

contact: Prof. Dr Jergen Hoffmann.
Universitaet der Kuenste, Postfach 12 67 20, 10595 Berlin.

Initial presentation, 1995. Terms, winter 1998/99, winter 1999/20, summer 2000, winter 2000/2001, summer 2002, winter 2002/2003, and I’ll work there in summer 2005.
I plan and run my course autonomously. It runs over three months and ends in a presentation of readings. The majority of the students produce theater text which contributes to their final diploma, I also make assessment recommendations of students to permanent staff.
In addition to teaching I formed connections with outside institutes, acting schools, theaters and the like. For example, I organized an international seminar of playwriting teachers at the UdK. Here my duties ranged from security, to financing the brochure, providing accommodation, food and entertainment for the guests, as well as organizing the presentations of the various speakers into a coherent two day experience.
SZENISCHES SCHREIBEN is Germany’s most important course for dramatists (within the German speaking world it has the status of the University of Birmingham’s Playwriting course in the U.K..) and has a biannual intake of around ten students from applications numbering at least two hundred and fifty. The Berlin University of Art is Germany’s leading Art School and in order to make clear what this post means at the UdK, former English Guest Dozents include Bryan Eno and Vivienne Westwood; (now I’m not comparing myself with these people but I am saying, this place has real status.)
Westwood and Eno, of course, taught in English, but in the Dramatists Course everything is done in German (I’m a fluent speaker, reader, but I do not write it well.) All student course work is written in German, though I did encourage a Rumanian Student, Lithuanian Student, and Swiss French Student to write first draft in their first language and then translate – a process I use as English Writer for the German Stage.)
Despite the limitation that the tutors must be able to speak and read German, a range of teachers of various nationalities (Russian, Hungarian, Dutch, American, Polish) and from various backgrounds (actors, dramatist, dramaturges, community theater artists, screenplay writers, journalists, publishers, agents…)
Some of my former students now have international reputations, with productions at various German speaking Theaters, including the Schaubuhne and the Burg Wien, and in translation in theaters including the Royal Court UK, or Manhattan Theater Co US.