Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Blog”
I’ve been trying to be diligent about posting, often reposting items of interest from my favorite playwrights and other creative people, plus my struggles and triumphs with playwriting. I’m pretty proud of my blog output since I switched over to my new website. However. I’m off to a writing residency at Vermont Studio Center. If all goes well, I’ll be …
Sometimes I think it’s a miracle I get anything done at all, what with this voice in my head telling me I can’t do it, I shouldn’t do it … and if I somehow manage to do it, it will be shitty. How about you? Jessica Hagy, amazing illustrator and author, writes, “You hear a voice like this too. It’s …
According to Lauren Elkin, author of Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London, walking is a celebration, a creative instrument, an insurrection, a liberation, and a means toward the ends of empowerment and creativity. She writes: “Why do I walk? I walk because I like it. I like the rhythm of it, my shadow …
At a recent reading of a new play by a playwright I know, an audience member pointed out that racism and transphobia were part of the play, but were not dealt with within the play. For example, an extremely transphobic father deadnames his daughter and disparages her in a number of ways, remaining aligned with the opinion that he sees …
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 …
Writing “Bystanders” is heart-rending. The play does not posit a solution, but follows one woman’s resolute action to open people’s eyes to the problem of mass shootings. The Onion nails the terrible state we’re in: “ROSEBURG, OR—In the hours following a violent rampage in southwestern Oregon in which a lone attacker killed nine individuals and seriously injured seven others, citizens …
Found over at the Bruntwood Prize is this list of questions from Amongst the Reeds playwright Chinonyerem Odimba. I find them provocative and inspiring in my own work. How to find the driving question(s) of your play Ask yourself questions about why you are telling this story. What excites you, the playwright, about the possibilities of the story? What moves …
I love this passage on play structure from James Fritz, over at The Bruntwood Prize (which Fritz has been awarded). “How do you structure a play? Well, often that depends on what your play is trying to do: where does it want to take its audience? What is its intention? Different modes of performance require different structures and rhythms. The …
In writing “Bystanders,” I’m tackling a challenge I haven’t before: writing a full-length two-hander. I’ve written short two-handers, but that’s an entirely different form. As part of my process, I’m reading a lot of two-handers to analyze how they tick. I like this insight from screenwriter Jim Barker. It applies neatly to “Bystanders”: “Story is a form of persuasion, and …
On Youtube, the National Theatre has posted a series of videos intended to spark creativity and give insight into the playwriting process. In the series, ten playwrights discuss different approaches to their craft, featuring writers Simon Stephens, In-Sook Chappell, Evan Placey, Alecky Blythe, Tanya Ronder, Suhayla El-Bushra, Ryan Craig, Lucy Kirkwood, Inua Ellams and Dawn King. Check out all ten!