New Playwriting Strategies has become a canonical text in the study and teaching of playwriting, offering a fresh and dynamic insight into the subject. This thoroughly revised and expanded second edition explores and highlights the wide spread of new techniques that form contemporary theatre writing, as well as their influence on other dramatic forms. Paul Castagno builds on the innovative plays of Len Jenkin, Mac Wellman, and the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin to investigate groundbreaking new techniques from a broad range of contemporary dramatists, including Sarah Ruhl, Suzan Lori-Parks and Young Jean Lee. New features in this edition include an in-depth study of the adaptation of classical texts in contemporary playwright and the utilizing new technologies, such as YouTube, Wikipedia and blogs to create alternative dramatic forms. The author’s step-by-step approach offers the reader new models for: narrative dialogue character monologue hybrid plays This is a working text for playwrights, presenting a range of illuminating new exercises suitable for everyone from the workshop student to the established writer. New Playwriting Strategies is an essential resource for anyone studying and writing drama today.
In New Dramaturgies: Strategies and Exercises for 21st Century Playwriting, Mark Bly offers a new playwriting book with nine unique play-generating exercises. These exercises offer dramaturgical strategies and tools for confronting and overcoming obstacles that all playwrights face. Each of the chapters features lively commentary and participation from Bly’s former students. They are now acclaimed writers and producers for media such as House of Cards, Weeds, Friday Night Lights, Warrior, and The Affair, and their plays appear onstage in major venues such as the Roundabout Theatre, Yale Rep, and the Royal National Theatre. They share thoughts about their original response to an exercise and why it continues to have a major impact on their writing and mentoring today. Each chapter concludes with their original, inventive, and provocative scene generated in response to Bly’s exercise, providing a vivid real-life example of what the exercises can create. Suitable for both students of playwriting and screenwriting, as well as professionals in the field, New Dramaturgies gives readers a rare combination of practical provocation and creative discussion.
In Collaborative Playwriting, five collectively written plays apply polyvocal methods in which clash and frisson replace synthesis, a dialogic approach to collective writing that has never before been articulated or documented. Based on the EU Collective Plays Project, this collection of plays showcases each voice in dialogic tension and in relation to the other voices of the text, offering an entirely novel approach to new play development that challenges the single (and privileged) authorial voice. Castagno’s case-study approach provides detailed commentary on each of the various experimental methods, exploring the plays’ processes in detail. The book offers an evolutionary path forward in how to develop new work, thus encouraging and promoting the writing of collective, hybrid plays as having profound benefits for all playwrights. The ground breaking approaches to playmaking in Collaborative Playwriting will appeal to playwriting programs, instructors, academics, professional playwrights, theaters and new play development programs; as well as courses in gender LGBTQ studies, script analysis, dramaturgy and dramatic literature across the theater studies curricula.
Playwriting with Purpose: A Guide and Workbook for New Playwrights provides a holistic approach to playwriting from an award-winning playwright and instructor. This book incorporates craft lessons by contemporary playwrights and provides concrete guidance for new and emerging playwrights. The author takes readers through the entire creative process, from creating characters and writing dialogue and silent moments to analyzing elements of well-made plays and creating an atmospheric environment. Each chapter is followed by writing prompts and pro tips that address unique facets of the conversation about the art and craft of playwriting. The book also includes information on the business of playwriting and a recommended reading list of published classic and contemporary plays, providing all the tools to successfully transform an idea into a script, and a script into a performance. Playwriting with Purpose gives writers and students of playwriting hands-on lessons, artistic concepts, and business savvy to succeed in today’s theater industry.
WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT, BIRNAM WOOD COMES TO DUNSINANE HILL The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy presents a profoundly original theory of drama that speaks to modern audiences living in an increasingly volatile world driven by artificial intelligence, gene editing, globalization, and mutual assured destruction ideologies. Tragedy, according to risk theatre, puts us face to face with the unexpected implications of our actions by simulating the profound impact of highly improbable events. In this book, classicist Edwin Wong shows how tragedy imitates reality: heroes, by taking inordinate risks, trigger devastating low-probability, high-consequence outcomes. Such a theatre forces audiences to ask themselves a most timely question---what happens when the perfect bet goes wrong? Not only does Wong reinterpret classic tragedies from Aeschylus to O’Neill through the risk theatre lens, he also invites dramatists to create tomorrow’s theatre. As the world becomes increasingly unpredictable, the most compelling dramas will be high-stakes tragedies that dramatize the unintended consequences of today's risk takers who are taking us past the point of no return.
With skills-focused exercises ranging from beginning to advanced levels, Writing for the Stage takes students through the creative process to develop a stageworthy script. The purpose of Writing for the Stage: A Practical Playwriting Guide is to provide students with a variety of exercises to help develop writing skills for the stage that eventually lead to the creation of a script. Although there is no magic formula--no right or wrong way to create a dramatic work--there are still traditional expectations for plot, conflict, theme, character development, dialogue, and so forth, that need to be discussed. Features Provides both a theoretical framework and practical exercises for developing skills, helping students to gain a complete understanding of the creative process. Includes exercises at beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels for each topic, allowing instructors to choose the most appropriate exercises for their students. Looks at the relationship of writing to the practical realities of today's theatre, making students aware of how the realities of staging and budget must be considered in writing for today's theatre. Explores three kinds of conflict--internal, personal, and external--and conflict within society, providing many choices for developing dramatic situations. Discusses not only the "masculine" linear approach to playwriting but also "feminine" and non-linear structure, providing exercises for non-traditional, experimental scene development, opening students' eyes to exploring structure and character in more creative, experimental ways. Devotes an entire chapter to writing monologues, including short monologues within plays and long, one-person plays, providing extra guidance in this important technique. Offers extensive material on exploring character that is more detailed than in other texts, especially in the depth of physical, social, and psychological character development, providing students with a starting place to create characters. Praise for Writing for the Stage: A Practical Playwriting Guide "I haven't seen a more thorough text than Writing for the Stage. The exercises it suggests for student writers are ingenious and. . .of great benefit to anyone trying to develop the skills required to develop character, maintain audience interest and involvement, reveal exposition subtly, create a plausible and aesthetically satisfying plot structure, and so on. . . ." --David Wagoner, University of Washington "This book is distinguished and. . .is a superior and useful text because it is honest, very thorough, step-by-step, and comprehensive. It is wise about the way theatre works today. . . ." --Richard Kalinoski, University of Wisconsin--Oshkosh
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