Every family contains stories. Every community preserves memories. Every historical event leaves traces. The Czech Society for Theatre Research invites emerging playwrights, writers, theatre-makers, researchers, and students to participate in a workshop exploring how personal memories, family stories, historical figures, testimonies, and real events can be transformed into dramatic writing.
Drawing on documentary theatre, oral history, and biographical writing practices, the workshop investigates the journey from lived experience and research to compelling theatrical form. Participants will explore how memories, interviews, archives, family histories, and historical events can become the foundation for original dramatic works through a variety of writing exercises designed to unlock the dramatic possibilities within real-life material.
What You Will Explore
- Using personal memories, family stories, photographs, letters, and inherited narratives as material for dramatic writing.
- Exploring how private experiences connect with broader social and historical realities. Transforming family histories into scenes, monologues, and theatrical structures.
- Creating dramatic works inspired by historical figures, biographies, and ordinary individuals. Exploring the relationship between fact, interpretation, memory, and imagination.
- Working with interviews, oral histories, diaries, letters, photographs, newspaper articles, and archival material. Learning how research can generate characters, conflicts, and dramatic situations.
Ethics and Representation
Discussing questions of truth, memory, authorship, consent, and responsibility when writing about real people and events.
Who Should Apply
The workshop is open to:
Playwrights and creative writers, Theatre-makers and performers, Researchers interested in artistic practice, Students of theatre, literature, history, and the humanities. Anyone interested in creative writing and storytelling
This workshop will be led by Eirini Dermitzaki:
Eirini Dermitzaki was born in Greece. She has studied Acting, Digital Filmmaking and completed her master’s degree in Creative Writing at Teesside University of England. Her plays “Birdphobia” and “Angeleta and Ethelvina” (funded by the Arts Council of England) have been staged in theatres in London. She has published 8 books. Some of her plays have been staged in several theatres in Greece. She wrote scripts for short films, feature films and TV series. She has taught creative writing since 2017 in Greece and England at various organisations (Chelsea London Theatre, American College, Katapacti, Federation of the Blind, etc.). In 2023 she was chosen by the National Theatre of Greece to write a play for teenagers for Theatre and New School. Since 2024, she has been teaching playwriting at the National Theatre of Greece and at the University of West Macedonia.
How to Apply:
To apply, please send a short biography and a brief statement explaining your interest in participating by Saturday, 1st of August 2026 (midnight) at workshoptale@gmail.com .
Registration is free of charge
Application Deadline: Saturday 1 August 2026
Notification of Acceptance: Friday 7 August 2026
Workshop Date:
Friday 4th of September, 1:00-6:00 pm.
Location: Clubroom of the Central Library, Municipal Library of Prague, Mariánské náměstí 1, Praha 1
The workshop is free of charge. Participants are responsible for travel and accommodation expenses.
The workshop will be held entirely in English. The Art of Reality: Scriptwriting workshop is supported by Culture Moves Europe, a project funded by the European Union.
