David Mamet Teaches Dramatic Writing in a New Online Course

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

David Mamet, one of Amer­i­ca’s pre­em­i­nent play­wrights and screen­writ­ers, is now offer­ing an online course on Dra­mat­ic Writ­ing over at Mas­ter­Class. Fea­tur­ing 26 video lessons and a down­load­able work­book, the course will take you through Mamet’s “process for turn­ing life’s strangest moments into dra­mat­ic art. He’ll teach you the rules of dra­ma, the nuances of dia­logue, and the skills to devel­op your own voice and cre­ate your mas­ter­piece.” The cost is $90. It’s not every day that you can get inside the cre­ative process of the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning writer of Glen­gar­ry Glen Ross. So per­haps it’s mon­ey well spent. (If you want to give this course as a gift, just click here.)

As we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned, Mas­ter­Class has enlist­ed oth­er accom­plished fig­ures to teach cours­es on their craft–eg, Steve Mar­tin does com­e­dy; Wern­er Her­zog, film­mak­ing; Aaron Sorkin, screen­writ­ing; Christi­na Aguil­era, singing, and Frank Gehry, archi­tec­ture, to name a few. You can browse their com­plete list of cours­es here. And, for $180, you can now get a year-long pass to all Mas­ter­class cours­es.

If you’re look­ing for free cours­es, check out our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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