Anne Galjour

Anne is a great teacher, especially if you take advantage of her office hours, and get to know her. Once she feels she knows you better she will have no problem really taking a look at your work critically, and can work wonders on a scene by simply tearing off the first page, or changing one or two lines. Her lectures on the elements of playwriting made a huge difference on my approach to writing...she puts emphasis on action, conflict and what's at stake, what makes an audience invest in the characters on stage. she had a few cool writing assignments in class that lead to pretty weird and funny scenes, and the final was writing 2-3 connecting scenes. many students took scenes from earlier in the semester and revised and added to them. sometimes I felt she was too nice, but this lady knows what she's talking about. some people are intimidated by her - don't be!

also, as long as you don't miss too many assignments and aren't late to class, you will get a good grade. she gives lots of opportunities for extra credit as well.

Anne is a Lecturer and not a Professor I believe. As that is the case she can't be judged against the stature of a full tenured professor. She is however a working playwright and is also evidently an actor as she will often act out her lessons and get into character mode throughout the class. She is not the person to take if you are looking for a workshop class as the person below should have taken. She is however the person to take if you are looking to: gain a playwriters'/actors perspective on playing a part, multiplying drama in your own play, writing your own play succesfully, and also if you are looking for leniency. She is extremely tolerable if you are making an honest effort. She is hard on tardiness, her classes are mostly eve., or afternoon so being late is your fault, getting up late in the noon is no excuse to throw a whole classes concentration as you stroll on in like a king. Her homework is easy. Her grading is fair. Her office hours are kept. She will make every possible effort to accomadate you.

If you're looking for comprehensive and helpful feedback on your work, don't take Anne. She's a nice person and I suspect a good playwright but she can't teach for shit. She's one of those teachers that spends more time trying to motivate the class than actually teaching you. She kept repeating that good writing comes "from the GUT! Y'know, right here." That's all well and fine in a highschool English class but come on, this college. If we weren't self motivated, we wouldn't be here.

And don't expect to do a whole lot of writing in this class either, the first 7/8 of the class are reading plays, watching movies of those plays, and doing short, pointless assignments about plot structure, technique, etc. Oh and doing 10 to 30 minutes of freewriting at the beginning of class. Don't assume that you'll have an easy final though; with only 3 weeks of class left she tells us that our final paper needs to be the first 30 pages of a play! Now writing 30 pages of a play is not as bad as it sounds, it's fairly easy really, but it does take a while. I wouldn't have minded at all if she had given us more warning (it wasn't even on the syllabus) so that we could have been thinking about the plot and putting it together piece by piece. Instead she gives you a series of unrelated short assignments which in no way build up to writing the play.

Oh yeah, and she's a real tightass about lateness. I think she lets you be late 3 times (we're talking even 3-5 minutes past) & then that's it, you're gone.

[To be fair, I know that some people in my class loved her style of teaching & found her inspirational. A good number also found her teaching unbearable. What can I say; you'll respond to her from your gut thats for certain, but it may be hate or love.]

I just wanted to warn anyone considering taking this class that Galjour sometimes requires students to dance around the classroom or flop around or give eachother massages. I'm totally serious. I would have liked to have been warned, so here ya go. If you're comfortable with that kind of stuff, like maybe you're an actor or a hippie, then you really shouldn't have a problem. Other than that, the class was alright. Galjour is very enthusiastic and you read some good stuff.