Playwriting 101

To write for the theatre you need to know about theatre. Ideas are easy to come by. Examine your background, interest, and beliefs. Examine the world around you. Exercises can help you come up with ideas. Choose the audience you want to reach and write to that audience. To learn to write dialogue listen to and record everyday conversations. Dialogue should sound like ordinary conversations but has more direction. Know as much as you can about your central characters. Do a character analysis. Choose the character traits to emphasize. A character should come across as both typical and individual. Most plays have a plot, which involves conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. The parts of a plot are: inciting incident, rising action, turning point, climax, and falling action. Other types of organization for a play are circular and thematic. Before starting to write, you need to develop a central idea. Plays exist for a number of reasons—entertainment, to bring attention to something, and to teach. You need to decide what you want to accomplish. It’s easier to gain an audience’s interest if you start with a theme they agree with. A play needs a sense of universality. A play should be unified, but it also needs contrast. Since theatre is a collaborative art, the director, actor, and designers may see the different facets differently than you do. It’s not difficult to have a well-written produced. Possible markets are schools, organizations, and professional theatre. Finished plays have to follow a particular format. About the Expert Marsh Cassady has had thirty-eight plays published and/or produced—including Off-Broadway. A former theatre professor with a Ph.D. degree, he started a playwriting program at Montclair State in New Jersey that included beginning and advanced classes, workshops, and individual projects. He also taught creative writing, including playwriting, at UCSD. Marsh is the author of sixty published books in a variety of genres from theatre textbooks to novels to true crime, and hundreds of shorter pieces. For about thirty-five years he led all-genre writing workshops in San Diego and in Rosarito, BC, Mexico, where he has lived since 1997. HowExpert publishes quick 'how to' guides on all topics from A to Z by everyday experts.

YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS 101 is a complete playwriting course that uses easy-to-follow lessons and practical exercises to guide playwrights from idea through submission. While it was originally written with young playwrights and their teachers in mind, you dont have to be a student or drama teacher to benefit from YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS 101: no matter what your age or experience, if youre looking for detailed, no-nonsense advice about the craft and business of playwriting-and to write plays that will actually be produced-this is the resource for you. Here are just a few examples of topics youll find inside: Creating Characters Conflict Play Structure Choosing the Right Setting The "Question" of the Play How to Use an Outline Handling Exposition Using Punctuation to Write Better Dialogue Opening and Ending Your Play The Writing Process Dealing with Writer's Block Choosing the Best Title Recentering Your Play Rewriting Using the Expanded Writer's Web and Troubleshooter's Checklist How to Have a Useful Play Reading The Playwright's Bill of Rights and much, much more Whether youre writing your first play, want to brush up on your skills or are looking for that missing something in your writing, YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS 101 is the jumpstart you need to write plays that make it to the stage.

The easy way to craft, polish, and get your play on stage Getting a play written and produced is a daunting process. From crystallizing story ideas, formatting the script, understanding the roles of the director stagecraft people, to marketing and financing your project, and incorporating professional insights on writing, there are plenty of ins and outs that every aspiring playwright needs to know. But where can you turn for guidance? Playwriting For Dummies helps any writer at any stage of the process hone their craft and create the most dramatic and effective pieces. Guides you through every process of playwriting?from soliloquies, church skits, and one act plays to big Broadway musicals Advice on moving your script to the public stage Guidance on navigating loopholes If you're an aspiring playwright looking to begin the process, or have already penned a masterpiece and need trusted advice to bring it into the spotlight, Playwriting For Dummies has you covered.

Jeffrey Hatcher knows the nuts and bolts of writing for the theater. Here, he shares his views on it all--from building tension and plotting a scene, right down to moving a character from one side of the stage to the other. From crafting an intriguing beginning to delivering a satisfying ending. In Hatcher's one-on-one discussions with acclaimed American playwrights Lee Blessing, Marsha Norman and Jose Rivera, you'll find a wealth of practical advice, tricks of the trade and insight that will help you in your own creative efforts.

In the Craft of Writing series, aspiring writers will discover that-like carpentry, computer programming, or calculus, but often infinitely more fun-writing is a craft that anyone can learn. Talent helps, but persistence and following some basic rules of the trade are crucial. from fiction to journalism, with playwriting, screenwriting, and poetry in between, readers will learn about the history of the art form as well as getting practical tips on how to go about writing and selling their work. Each book has a chapter full of exercises for the aspiring writer, and all of the books in this series are written by professionals in the field.

A dazzlingly diverse anthology of thirty-five short plays spanning the theatrical spectrum. A ten-minute play is a blaze of theatrical energy. In this follow-up to their groundbreaking collection Take Ten, editors Eric Lane and Nina Shengold have put together a veritable bonfire of talent. Take Ten II: More 10-Minute Plays provides a fast-track tour of the current theatrical landscape, from the slapstick ingenuity of David Ives’ Arabian Nights to the searing tension of Diana Son’s 9/11 drama The Moon, Please, to Susan Miller’s luminous fable The Grand Design. This remarkably diverse anthology includes thirty-five short plays by such major American playwrights as Christopher Durang, Warren Leight, Romulus Linney and Donald Margulies, alongside a host of exciting new voices. Actors, directors, producers and teachers will find Take Ten II an invaluable source of meaty roles for people of every age, ethnicity and gender; lovers of theatre will find it a richly satisfying read. These deceptively short plays throb with life in all its variety: harrowing, hilarious, and breathtakingly vital. Playwrights included: Taylor Mac Bowyer Laura Shaine Cunningham Anthony David Steven Dietz Christopher Durang Linda Eisenstein Simon Fill Craig Fols Sigrid Heath David Ives Caleen Sinnette Jennings Honour Kane Eric Lane Edward Bok Lee Warren Leight Romulus Linney Donald Margulies Susan Miller Chiori Miyagawa Itamar Moses Sean O'Connor Mark O'Donnell Dael Orlandersmith Rich Orloff Joe Pintauro Craig Pospisil Toni Press-Coffman Claire Reeve Elaine Romero Susan Sandler Nina Shengold Diana Son Alison Weiss Mary Louise Wilson Garth Wingfield Alexander Woo From the Trade Paperback edition.

The fully updated new edition of this indispensable guide.

The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical provides a comprehensive academic survey of British musical theatre offering both a historical account of the musical's development from 1728 and a range of in-depth critical analyses of the unique forms and features of British musicals, which explore the aesthetic values and sociocultural meanings of a tradition that initially gave rise to the American musical and later challenged its modern pre-eminence. After a consideration of how John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728) created a prototype for eighteenth-century ballad opera, the book focuses on the use of song in early nineteenth century theatre, followed by a sociocultural analysis of the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan; it then examines Edwardian and interwar musical comedies and revues as well as the impact of Rodgers and Hammerstein on the West End, before analysing the new forms of the postwar British musical from The Boy Friend (1953) to Oliver! (1960). One section of the book examines the contributions of key twentieth century figures including Noel Coward, Ivor Novello, Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber, director Joan Littlewood and producer Cameron Macintosh, while a number of essays discuss both mainstream and alternative musicals of the 1960s and 1970s and the influence of the pop industry on the creation of concept recordings such as Jesus Christ Superstar (1970) and Les Misérables (1980). There is a consideration of "jukebox" musicals such as Mamma Mia! (1999), while essays on overtly political shows such as Billy Elliot (2005) are complemented by those on experimental musicals like Jerry Springer: the Opera (2003) and London Road (2011) and on the burgeoning of Black and Asian British musicals in both the West End and subsidized venues. The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical demonstrates not only the unique qualities of British musical theatre but also the vitality and variety of British musicals today.