Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “playwriting”
Playwright John Logan, author of the Tony Award-winning RED, wrote: Allow me share the single best piece of advice I ever got about being a writer, courtesy of my friend Scott Berg, the great biographer: “Keep your head down and do your work.” Meaning, do not be distracted by anything but your writing. Don’t worry about reviews, press, your career …
Simon Stephens, playwright from Royal Exchange Theatre in London, conducts a playwriting workshop with playwrights interested in submitting for the Bruntwood Prize, 2015. I really enjoyed some of the prompts he uses in this workshop. For example, he suggests one write for five minutes straight, a series of sentences all beginning with “I remember …”
In this writing provocation, director and 2017 Bruntwood Prize jury member Lyndsey Turner asks the writer to consider the unconscious. For all the different ways a writer might approach embarking upon a play, and for all the research and planning they might undertake in order to map out their world before they begin, there will always be writers who write …
From time to time on the blog, I feature advice and commentary from playwrights I admire. Charlene James is a British playwright and screenwriter. She won substantial acclaim for her play Cuttin’ It, which addresses the issue of female genital mutilation in Britain, and for which she won numerous awards. Her excellent advice I found on the Bruntwood Prize site. …
YouTube is an excellent place for playwriting resources and education. I’ve posted Paula Vogel before, and here’s another hour-long craft lecture by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, this one from the Sewanee Writers Conference. Image by KoalaParkLaundromat from Pixabay.
Playscripts is a play licensing service, which has published playwriting advice from some of their writers, as follows: “Don’t be afraid to let your play suck. Let the play stink up the joint. Let it be miles from perfect. Then, very systemically, go about the business of fixing it all.” —Michael Mejias “The most important thing for playwrights starting out …
What is #WrAP2020? WrAP (or write a play) is the annual January playwriting challenge put on by London Playwrights. Those who take part receive inspiration and support directly to their inbox throughout the month of January, with the aim of creating a first draft within a month. You can find out all about it here. Who can take part? Anyone …
Winter Miller is a playwright, writer, activist, and Dramatists Guild Representative for New York City. Her plays include No One is Forgotten and In Darfur. I really like her advice regarding an important aspect of playwriting: “It’s important to breathe as you write. When you hold your breath, you hold back your feelings. Think about it—when you’re terrified, you hold …
The American Theatre Wing (who hosts the Tony Awards) offers a series of videos called “Working in Theatre” on Vimeo. This segment on Playwriting features David Henry Hwang, who admits he can’t stop rewriting. Perhaps you can relate. More: “‘There’s no formula for how to write a good play. Nobody knows what’s going to be successful, even if you define …
I’m deep in research for “Bystanders.” These paragraphs from New York Magazine state simply and clearly what we face when we face mass shootings: “There have been more mass school-shooting deaths in the past 18 years than in all of the 20th century. The long list of casualties includes a classroom full of first-graders, an event that shocked the nation …