La Experimentation as a Methodological Principle for Forming New Playwrights

The Cuban Experience

Abstract

In 1980, in the context of the Dramaturgy Seminar at the Havana Instituto Superior de Artes (ISA), Dr. Raquel Carrió began forming professional playwrights and established an unprecedented school in Latin America. The experience rapidly proved successful, producing young playwrights for the Cuban and Latin American theater, with solid theoretical training and capable of innovating the theatrical language. This training has continued successfully to this day. Contrary to what many believed, this interesting educational experience has proven capable of forming playwrights at the university. So what are the keys to its success? First of all, from the outset the training process included the establishment of a freestyle creative seminarworkshop that combined theoretical and technical aspects of dramaturgy with practical-creative work. Experimentation of new forms of dramatic writing and analysis was established as its basic principle, without renouncing centuries of theory and technique, but rather seeking to creatively integrate this knowledge into different forms of theatrical literature. The fact that the workshop did not derive from an established method allowed for enormous freedom in exploration and exercise that turned the Dramaturgy Seminar into a truly experimental workshop. After 35 years, it has
become a point of reference for training playwrights and understanding the particularities of art pedagogy and research.