Teaching Adapting Screenwriters: Adaptation Theory through Creative Practice

Abstract

Whilst many of the most innovative and progressive texts on adaptation theory still emerge from Literary and Film Studies, the attraction of the subject for a variety of scholars from divergent academic disciplines has seen the field expand to incorporate new methodologies and approaches. Despite this, the teaching of adaptation is still principally located in departments of English and Film, and its pedagogical function remains focused on illuminating students’ understanding of literature, or to better understand cinema’s inherent qualities via its relationship with other media. Furthermore, examinations of adapted films focus primarily on the relationship between the literary source text and resultant film text, failing to adequately interrogate the complex industrial and creative processes that take place during adaptation. The lack of attention to the teaching of processes of adapting can be seen as a more general tendency to overlook the many useful theoretical and creative functions of adaptation studies methodologies beyond comparative case-study analysis. As Dennis Cutchins, Laurence Raw, and James M. Welsh argue in their introduction to The Pedagogy of Adaptation (2010) ‘we have not generally created useful theoretical models or participated in sufficient dialogue concerning how adaptations might be taught in different contexts’.¹