The Playwright at Work

The Playwright at Work PDF Author: Rosemarie Tichler
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810127628
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Rosemarie Tichler and Barry Jay Kaplan take us behind the scenes in conversations with thirteen of today’s most distinguished playwrights, including Tony Kushner, John Guare, Wallace Shawn, Suzan-Lori Parks, David Henry Hwang, and Sarah Ruhl. To familiarize the reader with the world of each playwright, Tichler and Kaplan introduce us to the environments in which the work happens, conducting their interviews in the playwright’s home, a dark theater, or a coffee shop. Topics of conversation range from the playwrights’ earliest memories of the theater to finding their unique voices, and from their working relationships with directors, actors, and designers to their involvement in the purely commercial aspects of their profession. Taken together, these conversations constitute a collectively taught master class in the art and craft of writing for the stage.

The Playwright at Work

The Playwright at Work PDF Author: Rosemarie Tichler
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810127628
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

Book Description
Rosemarie Tichler and Barry Jay Kaplan take us behind the scenes in conversations with thirteen of today’s most distinguished playwrights, including Tony Kushner, John Guare, Wallace Shawn, Suzan-Lori Parks, David Henry Hwang, and Sarah Ruhl. To familiarize the reader with the world of each playwright, Tichler and Kaplan introduce us to the environments in which the work happens, conducting their interviews in the playwright’s home, a dark theater, or a coffee shop. Topics of conversation range from the playwrights’ earliest memories of the theater to finding their unique voices, and from their working relationships with directors, actors, and designers to their involvement in the purely commercial aspects of their profession. Taken together, these conversations constitute a collectively taught master class in the art and craft of writing for the stage.

The Dramatist's Toolkit

The Dramatist's Toolkit PDF Author: Jeffrey Sweet
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
In The Dramatist's Toolkit , playwright and Backstage columnist Jeff Sweet offers an intensive and practical guide to being a working playwright.

The Playwright's Survival Guide

The Playwright's Survival Guide PDF Author: Gary Garrison
Publisher: Heinemann Drama
ISBN: 9780325001654
Category : Playwriting
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Playwright's Survival Guide is written for both aspiring and established writers looking for an emotional, spiritual, or just plain practical connection back to what's important - the writing. It's a "how-to-be" book - with thoughts, stories of inspiration, a few tricks of the trade, a few outlets for venting frustrations, and a reassuring voice that speaks to all the doubts with an "I know. I've been there. This is what you do . . ." Gary Garrison demystifies the playwriting process, speaking honestly, poignantly, and with humor about the lessons he's learned along the way. He explores the issues playwrights face every day, including: inspiration criticism self-doubt relationships with teachers and mentors the art of self-promotion writer's block staying healthy in the art after your fingers are off the keyboard.

The Playwright's Workbook

The Playwright's Workbook PDF Author: Jean-Claude van Italie
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 1476844836
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description
(Applause Books). A series of 13 written workshops covering: conflict and character: the dominant image: Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller; Overheard voices: Ibsen and Shakespeare; The solo performance piece: listening for stories; Terror and vulnerability: Ionesco; The point of absurdity: creating without possessing: Pinter and Beckett; and much more.

The Subversive Copy Editor

The Subversive Copy Editor PDF Author: Carol Fisher Saller
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226734102
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
Each year writers and editors submit over three thousand grammar and style questions to the Q&A page at The Chicago Manual of Style Online. Some are arcane, some simply hilarious—and one editor, Carol Fisher Saller, reads every single one of them. All too often she notes a classic author-editor standoff, wherein both parties refuse to compromise on the "rights" and "wrongs" of prose styling: "This author is giving me a fit." "I wish that I could just DEMAND the use of the serial comma at all times." "My author wants his preface to come at the end of the book. This just seems ridiculous to me. I mean, it’s not a post-face." In The Subversive Copy Editor, Saller casts aside this adversarial view and suggests new strategies for keeping the peace. Emphasizing habits of carefulness, transparency, and flexibility, she shows copy editors how to build an environment of trust and cooperation. One chapter takes on the difficult author; another speaks to writers themselves. Throughout, the focus is on serving the reader, even if it means breaking "rules" along the way. Saller’s own foibles and misadventures provide ample material: "I mess up all the time," she confesses. "It’s how I know things." Writers, Saller acknowledges, are only half the challenge, as copy editors can also make trouble for themselves. (Does any other book have an index entry that says "terrorists. See copy editors"?) The book includes helpful sections on e-mail etiquette, work-flow management, prioritizing, and organizing computer files. One chapter even addresses the special concerns of freelance editors. Saller’s emphasis on negotiation and flexibility will surprise many copy editors who have absorbed, along with the dos and don’ts of their stylebooks, an attitude that their way is the right way. In encouraging copy editors to banish their ignorance and disorganization, insecurities and compulsions, the Chicago Q&A presents itself as a kind of alter ego to the comparatively staid Manual of Style. In The Subversive Copy Editor, Saller continues her mission with audacity and good humor.

The Collaborative Playwright

The Collaborative Playwright PDF Author: Bruce Graham
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
The interaction between the ideas of the playwright and the know-how of the dramaturg is vital to the success of any production. But not every writer is accustomed to thinking like a dramaturg. The Collaborative Playwright changes that by offering a lively dialogue between a highly successful playwright, Bruce Graham, and an equally accomplished dramaturg, Michele Volansky, supported by hands-on exercises to get you thinking and writing in new ways. The Collaborative Playwright gives you professional advice on how to get started with a play, how to structure it to be performed, and how to work with a dramaturg to turn it into a staged production. Graham and Volansky's fun, smart conversation offers step-by-step advice on each of the components of the craft - exposition, rhythms, characterization, structure, and story generation - all illustrated with clear examples from Graham's own plays. But unlike other books that advise playwrights, The Collaborative Playwright is written from two points of view: the playwright's and the dramaturg's. It's both friendly and packed with indispensable nuggets of information, including interviews with more than thirty current theatre artists whose collective advice articulates some of the more practical aspects of working in the theatre - knowledge that playwrights need as they write. Want to write plays that work as well on stage as they do in your head? Read The Collaborative Playwright, listen in as two theatre veterans discuss the crucial characteristics of good writing, and find out why, if you're writing for the theatre, it pays to listen to your dramaturg.

Equivocation

Equivocation PDF Author: Bill Cain
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
ISBN: 0822225913
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 131

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Book Description
"England, 1605: A terrorist plot to assassinate King James I and blow Parliament to kingdom come with 36 barrels of devilish gunpowder! Shagspeare (after a contemporary spelling of the Bard's name) is commissioned by Robert Cecil, the prime minister, to write the "true historie" of the plot. And it must have witches! The King wants witches! But as Shag and the acting company of the Globe, under the direction of the great Richard Burbage, investigate the plot, they discover that the King's version of the story might, in fact, be a cover-up. Shag and his actors are confronted with the ultimate moral and artistic dilemma. Speak truth to power-and perhaps lose their heads? Or take the money and lie? Is there a third option-equivocation? A high-stakes political thriller with contemporary resonances, EQUIVOCATION gallops from the great Globe to the Tower of London to the halls of Parliament to the heart of Judith, Shag's younger daughter, who finds herself unexpectedly at the very heart of the political, dramatic and-ultimately-human mystery." - from publisher's website.

Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind A Raisin in the Sun

Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind A Raisin in the Sun PDF Author: Charles J. Shields
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1250205522
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
The moving story of the life of the woman behind A Raisin in the Sun, the most widely anthologized, read, and performed play of the American stage, by the New York Times bestselling author of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee Written when she was just twenty-eight, Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark A Raisin in the Sun is listed by the National Theatre as one of the hundred most significant works of the twentieth century. Hansberry was the first Black woman to have a play performed on Broadway, and the first Black and youngest American playwright to win a New York Critics’ Circle Award. Charles J. Shields’s authoritative biography of one of the twentieth century’s most admired playwrights examines the parts of Lorraine Hansberry’s life that have escaped public knowledge: the influence of her upper-class background, her fight for peace and nuclear disarmament, the reason why she embraced Communism during the Cold War, and her dependence on her white husband—her best friend, critic, and promoter. Many of the identity issues about class, sexuality, and race that she struggled with are relevant and urgent today. This dramatic telling of a passionate life—a very American life through self-reinvention—uses previously unpublished interviews with close friends in politics and theater, privately held correspondence, and deep research to reconcile old mysteries and raise new questions about a life not fully described until now.

The Book of Will

The Book of Will PDF Author: Lauren Gunderson
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
ISBN: 0822237725
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 95

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Book Description
Without William Shakespeare, we wouldn’t have literary masterpieces like Romeo and Juliet. But without Henry Condell and John Heminges, we would have lost half of Shakespeare’s plays forever! After the death of their friend and mentor, the two actors are determined to compile the First Folio and preserve the words that shaped their lives. They’ll just have to borrow, beg, and band together to get it done. Amidst the noise and color of Elizabethan London, THE BOOK OF WILL finds an unforgettable true story of love, loss, and laughter, and sheds new light on a man you may think you know.

The Playwright's Voice

The Playwright's Voice PDF Author: David Savran
Publisher: Theatre Communications Grou
ISBN: 9781559361637
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
These 15 interviews illustrate the diversity of modern American theater and examine what makes it a unique art form. Savran (English, Brown U.) discusses the work, artistic influences, and the state of contemporary American theater and its meaning and purpose with artists including Tony Kushner, Jose Rivera, Ntozake Shange, and Anna Deveare Smith. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR