Word: workshopping
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...Workshop...
...first two years, Wolfe divided his time between George Pierce Baker's "47 Workshop," and classwork for a master's degree. He took Shakespeare from Kittredge, Romantic Poetry from Lowes, and completed the required curriculum with nearly all A's. Generally he tried to read the complete works of every author mentioned in his classes, and his term papers ran to fantastic lengths, sometimes 80 or 90 typewritten pages...
...most significant part of Wolfe's work at Harvard, however, was the plays he wrote for the 47 Workshop. His relationship with Professor Baker was quite close, and the eventual split with Baker when he left Harvard was the source of great anguish...
...winter of 1920 Wolfe wrote his first play at Harvard, a one-act drama called The Mountains, which was produced for a special workshop audience the following fall. The Mountains was a raw, unpolished production, little resembling the glib drawing-room fare produced by other members of the workshop. It was a story of the Carolina mountain people, dirty and sordid, yet filled with the mystical and romantic eulogization of the "land" which became a trademark of Wolfe's later work. Criticism of the play was highly unfavorable, and Wolfe became despondent: "I will never forget the almost inconceivable anguish...
Wolfe's third year at Harvard was his happiest and most productive. Since his father's death had freed him from financial difficulties, and has formal classwork was finished, he could devote his entire mind and energy to the 47 Workshop. In the first two weeks after his return to Cambridge, Wolfe submitted the first acts of six projected plays to Professor Baker. At Baker's request he concentrated on one of these plays, which he had tentatively titled Niggertown. During the course of the winter he developed it into an unconventional ten scene form, and renamed it Welcome...