What’s the Objective?

Harare, April 20th, 2018 | Thandiwe Mawungwa 

Two years ago I had the privilege of conducting a playwriting workshop with the students from Churchill Boys High School and this year I had the same privilege but this time with students from the University of Zimbabwe.

The workshop was a three-day workshop and we discussed the elements that make up a story. What I enjoyed the most was the process of using things that surround us to come up with story ideas. The students came up with some creative concepts from things like stones, empty coke cans and chewed ballpoint pens.

Despite the interesting stories the students came up with, they, however, needed help with characterization and coming up with tangible objectives for their characters. Therefore, we spent most of day two working on characterization and character objectives. The question we kept on asking was ‘what’s the objective?”. We also discussed the difference between an objective and the motivation for the objective as I could tell that the students tended to confuse the two.

I was very happy when, at the end of the day each of the participating students had a clear, tangible objective for their character. As a facilitator, one always wants to know that they have made a big improvement in the craft of the attendees – and that is exactly what I did.

Having been part of many Almasi trainings where I gained a wealth of knowledge, it was very rewarding to be able to share that knowledge with young, upcoming and enthusiastic playwrights. I look forward to facilitating more workshops in the future.