Playwright and St. Edward’s University Assistant Professor of Practice in Creative Writing Timothy Braun presented his latest work at the Marcia Kinsey Visiting Writers Series as the third and penultimate artist of the season.
“It’s inspiring to see the person teaching me also go up there and present such amazing works: seeing how they apply what they’re teaching,” writing and rhetoric junior Luca Rende said. “That’s really impactful for me because it shows what they have mastered in practice and it is a really good reference to follow.”
This event is part of an annual series that brings award-winning writers on campus to share their work and experiences with students.
From plays and operas to essays, Braun’s work encompasses a wide range of mediums that have been performed internationally and published by The New York Times. Braun has been teaching at St. Edward’s University for 16 years, with playwriting as his primary focus.
As Carter Auditorium was packed with students and faculty, Braun delved right into a reading of his plays, joined by St. Edward’s alums Gricelda Silva ’08 (co-producing artistic director of Glass Half Full Theatre) and Jeff Mills ’02, who dynamically performed the excerpts to the audience’s giggles.
“He’s just always playing with reality,” Silva said. “He gives you these very real and grounded lines that can mean a thousand things. It’s really fun to ask him: ‘Where are you coming from? Why did you write this and what do you want?’ And he’s like ‘I don’t know. Let’s see.’ And it’ll go (through) 10 different versions.”
The first excerpt was from “Coney Island Land, or The Great Existential Actuality at The End of The Universe,” produced last spring in Los Angeles. The second reading showcased his upcoming play “The Wedding Story, or The Holistic Phenomenology In The Heart of The Hotel Chelsea,” shared for the first time outside the New York City rehearsal room.
With his work, Braun aims to create a shared experience for the audience. For him, playwriting is a form of storytelling rooted in the tradition of telling stories around a campfire.
“I keep coming back to these concepts of trying to communicate thoughts, emotions and ideas,” Braun said. “And hopefully we can learn something from it – not just as a group of people, but also as a communal experience.”
Creative writing is not only a question of technique. According to Braun, finding your authentic voice is the hard part of playwriting, as opposed to trying to be somebody else.
“I really wanted to be a tough and cool playwright,” Braun said. “When I was in my twenties, I wore a black leather jacket that I bought in Ireland, and I was trying to drink whiskey. I hate whiskey. I had to find my true self. And I was trying to write these really cool, edgy things, but it wasn’t me. Ultimately, it had to come to me writing really sad stories about my dog or love affairs that have gone wrong. That’s usually what I do. So you’ve got to find out what you do, and it may not be what you want to do, but it’s who you are.”
Braun works with students from a variety of disciplines, beyond literature, creative writing or theater majors, to help them understand the principles of narrative structure.
“It’s animation and video game majors that need to study narrative structure with me,” Braun said. “So it’s nice to see a lot of them out here, realizing that you can take these principles of storytelling and apply them to their own video games or animation or something.”
The final act of this season’s Visiting Writers Series will feature author Jason Schneiderman on Apr. 8 at 6 p.m. in Carter Auditorium. So mark your calendar!
