Tragedy as a Toolbox for Writers with Gabriel Graves

Course Summary

For centuries, Aristotle’s Poetics has influenced how we think about dramatic writing. Greek tragedy, through its approach to action, conflict, structure, reversals and character, continues to offer powerful tools for contemporary writers.

This course proposes a practical exploration of some of the concepts and techniques that have shaped theatre over the last 2500 years, and how they can still generate dramatic action and meaning today.

Combining theory and practice, the course will move between close reading, discussion and writing exercises designed to test the concepts explored in class.

Course Outline

Week 1: Why tragedy matters today. Aristotle, Nietzsche and the foundations of tragic structure.

Week 2: Agamemnon. Violence, myth, mimesis and reinvention of inherited stories.

Week 3: Antigone. Hamartia, agon and the collision between legitimate positions.

Week 4: Oedipus Rex. Character, reversal, recognition and tragic irony.

Week 5: Philoctetes and Medea. Suffering, the limits of understanding and the deus ex machina.

Week 6: Contemporary tragedy. How tragic structures continue to appear in modern writing.

Each week, participants will be invited to complete a writing exercise designed to explore the concepts discussed in class and help generate material towards a larger dramatic work.

Course Outcomes

Participants will develop a practical understanding of key concepts and structures from Greek tragedy and how they can be applied to contemporary writing. Through close reading, discussion and writing exercises, participants will explore approaches to dramatic structure, conflict, reversals, character and catharsis across theatre, fiction and other narrative forms.

By the end of the course, participants will have produced a series of short written exercises and gained new tools for generating dramatic action, tension and meaning within their own work.

Gabriel Graves is a playwright, director, critic and educator born in Spain, raised in Argentina and currently based in Ireland. He has premiered more than 25 plays across independent, official and commercial theatre circuits, receiving several awards for his work. He co-founded La Polenta Teatro, a company that worked with migrant actors in Argentina, and collaborated as a playwright with the clown theatre company Malvado Colibrí.

Gabriel has also worked extensively as a theatre critic and taught History of Dramatic Art and Playwriting at university level in Buenos Aires. His work has been presented in Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico, Italy, Spain, and Ireland.

Booked out? To be added to the waiting list for this course, please email bookings@irishwriterscentre.ie.