Playwriting For Dummies

Author: Angelo Parra
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118017226
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Book Description
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.

Writing Your First Play

Author: Roger Hall
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 113608214X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Book Description
Writing Your First Play provides the beginning playwright with the tools and motivation to tell a story through dramatic form. Based in a series of exercises which gradually grow more complex, the books helps the reader to understand the basic elements of drama, conflict, and action. The exercises help the reader to become increasingly sophisticated in the use of dramatic formats, turning simple ideas into a viable play. Topics include: the role of action in drama; developing action and conflict to reveal character; writing powerful and persuasive dialog; writing from personal experience:pros and cons; how to begin the story and develop the storyline. This new edition is thoroughly updated and contains new examples based on contemporary plays. The author has added additional writing exercises and a new student-written one act play. It also contains a new chapter on how to sell your play once it is written. With examples based on student work, this text both inspires and educates the student and fledgling playwright, providing solid tools and techniques for the craft of writing a drama. Roger A. Hall, a professor of theatre at James Madison University, had taught playwriting for nearly 20 years. Many of his students have gone on to write for theatre, television, and the screen. He has written numerous plays and articles and has acted and directed extensively in the theatre.

Vladimir

Author: Julia May Jonas
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982187654
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
An NPR, Washington Post, Time, People, Vulture, Guardian, Vox, Kirkus Reviews, Newsweek, LitHub, and New York Public Library Best Book of the Year * “Delightful…cathartic, devious, and terrifically entertaining.” —The New York Times * “Timely, whip-smart, and darkly funny.” —People (Book of the Week) A provocative, razor-sharp, and timely debut novel about a beloved English professor facing a slew of accusations against her professor husband by former students—a situation that becomes more complicated when she herself develops an obsession of her own... “When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.” And so we are introduced to our deliciously incisive narrator: a popular English professor whose charismatic husband at the same small liberal arts college is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extra-marital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir, a celebrated, married young novelist who’s just arrived on campus, their tinder box world comes dangerously close to exploding. With this bold, edgy, and uncommonly assured debut, author Julia May Jonas takes us into charged territory, where the boundaries of morality bump up against the impulses of the human heart. Propulsive, darkly funny, and wildly entertaining, Vladimir perfectly captures the personal and political minefield of our current moment, exposing the nuances and the grey area between power and desire.

Young Playwrights 101

Author: Jonathan Charles Dorf
Publisher: Young Playwrights 101
ISBN: 1599710692
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 153

Book Description
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.

Portia Coughlan

Author: Marina Carr
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571389198
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 84

Book Description
Winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 1997. 'Carr's harrowing play has the scale and anguish of myth, and the immediacy of a contemporary anecdote.' Independent on Sunday There's a wolf tooth growin in me heart and it's turnin me from everywan and everthin I am. Portia Coughlan lives life in monstrous limbo, haunted by a yearning for her spectral twin brother lying at the bottom of the Belmont river, unable to find any love for her wealthy husband and children, seeking solace in soulless affairs, deeply afraid of what she might do. Portia Coughlan premiered on the Abbey Theatre's Peacock Stage, Dublin, in April 1996 and transferred to the Royal Court Theatre, London, in May that year. It was revived at the Almeida Theatre, London, in October 2023. 'Taut and haunting, funny and sad . . . Carr plays with time and place to resonant, ultimately devastating effect.' The Stage 'One of the most important Irish plays of the twentieth century.' Arts Review 'Marina Carr goes to a deep place that has not just to do with society now but that touches an inner tragedy of existence. The female quality of her writing comes through not only in the way she writes about women, it's in the physicality in her writing. She is right in there with the cycles of life, with the blood and the dirt.' Joyce McMillan, New York Times

Torch the Place

Author: Benjamin Law
Publisher: Melbourne University
ISBN: 9780522876659
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 118

Book Description
Teresa's mum finds it impossible to let anything go--from grudges to household objects. She thinks of her home as a museum full of irreplaceable treasures. But she's not really a curator, she's a hoarder. When her kids return home to celebrate her 60th birthday, she's over the moon to have the family back together. But this isn't a reunion. It's an intervention.Celebrated TV writer Benjamin Law (The Family Law) is one of this country's brightest literary stars. For his hysterically funny and moving playwriting debut, Law employs his effortless wit to spark joy in the clutter and find truth in those chaotic moments that bring families closer.Commissioned through MTC's NEXT STAGE Writers' Program with the support of our Playwrights Giving Circle Donors, The Ian Potter Foundation, Naomi Milgrom Foundation, The Myer Foundation, Malcolm Robertson Foundation and The University of Melbourne.

Writing the Script

Author: Wells Root
Publisher: Holt McDougal
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
This essential guide to writing for the screen goes step-by-step through the process of getting the script on paper, and then onto the screen. -- From product description.

A More Perfect Ten

Author: Gary Garrison
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 1585104574
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
A More Perfect Ten is a revision of Gary Garrison's pioneering book on writing and producing the 10-minute play, and it is now the most authoritative book on this emerging play form. The 10-minute play has become a regular feature of theatre companies and festivals from coast to coast, and Garrison has distilled the advice of many of those people who had been instrumental in promoting the ten minute play for the last few years. Replete with advice and tips on creating the successful 10-minute play, and cautions for avoiding the pitfalls, this new edition also includes addresses for the biggest and most important 10-minute festival opportunities, new sample 10-minute plays and questions for thought and discussion, and sample layout templates for laying out the play for submission. The savvy playwright at any level of skill can use this little book to great advantage. Plus Gary Garrison is warm, funny, irreverent, and essential.

Posh

Author: Laura Wade
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350235784
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
In an oak-panelled room in a rural Oxford gastropub, ten young undergraduates with cut-glass vowels and deep pockets are meeting, intent on restoring their right to rule - and on getting totally "chatueaued". Members of The Riot Club, an elite student dining society, the fraternity starts to fray when they discover they're a guinea-fowl short and the prostitute they've hired is suddenly banished. An apparent spoof on Oxford's notorious Bullingdon Club, whose past members include Boris Johnson, George Osborne and David Cameron, Posh is a satirical play about power, politics and privilege, and how these elements interact within British institutions. The play is published here as a Methuen Drama Student Edition with commentary and notes by Henry Bell. Posh premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2010 and two years later opened in the West End. It was nominated for Best New Play at both the Evening Standard Awards and for the Theatregoers' Choice Awards. It was subsequently made into a film called The Riot Club (2014), starring Sam Claflin, Max Irons and Douglas Booth.

Writing about Theatre

Author: Christopher J. Thaiss
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Longman
ISBN: 9780205280001
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
In Hamlet, when the melancholy prince kills Polonius, the dramatic tension is enhanced by the audience's knowledge that Polonius lurks behind the curtain, and that Hamlet will mistake him for his detested stepfather. Though this tension is understood and appreciated by readers of the play, its dynamics of raw intensity are perhaps best understood by the interplay between performers and audience members. By addressing both enthusiasts of theater and enthusiasts of dramatic literature, Thaiss and Davis demonstrate how one's understanding of drama is enriched by critical attention to both performance and text. It specifically addresses the writing needs of a novice playwright, not in conjunction with "writing about literature," but about the play as subject in its own right. This book provides critical analysis of play texts, as well as performance reviews, theater history research, and other examples that enliven understanding and promote versatility. In its sequence of chapters, it addresses projects of increasing sophistication, from performance reviews and play analyses to theater history research and dramatic theory papers. As a general guide to good writing, this book also promotes learning and critical/creative thought. Introductory chapters cover the principles of good writing and offer strategies to help readers overcome writer's block, organize effectively and avoid common usage and style pitfalls. Anyone interested in drama and/or literature.