Repwrite

REPwrite is an online Playwriting Resource that enables schools, theatres, professional writers/artists and creators of drama to develop collaborative plays with anyone in the world.

It is designed to:

• Encourage and facilitate the development of new playwrights
• Enable playwrights to work collaboratively across social and national borders
• Help generate new original work for production
• Deliver playwriting as a teaching resource in schools
• Enable audiences and community members to engage with the creation of new work

Using RepWrite, Birmingham Repertory Theatre has been able to teach students and writers to work collectively to develop multi-authored plays, creating characters, dialogue and storylines with real-time support from a professional dramaturg in workshops and educational establishments around the world.

Caroline Jester, who initiated the project, uses it in her classes at Central St Martin’s:

“Then we divided up into small teams and were shown a fantastic bit of technical writing kit called REPWrite. This is an online application where you create a play online, each writer is assigned a character and you can simultaneously write a play online so you don’t even have to be in the same room/building/town/country as the rest of the writers. Our task was to choose a location, decide which characters we liked the most, then work out what their want was at the beginning of the scene we would write using the new technology. We had a quick play with the REPWrite (we discovered it was a bit like internet dating, everyone too scared to write anything in case everyone else laughed) but once we got the hang of it we were ready try it out for real in next week’s class. We’re going to try writing our play with all the writers in different locations, and Caroline as our dramaturg online in Birmingham. We’re very excited to see whether it is possible to collaboratively write a play online without physically being able to interact with each other.”

I donated the source code to the Rep in 2014 and it is still in use e.g. The Bedlam Festival of Divine Madness - Rewriting Stigma October 2015 and around the world