Playwriting and Screenwriting Resources

Considered an essential text since its publication thirty-five years ago, this guide for students and practitioners of both theatre and literature complements, rather than contradicts or repeats, traditional methods of literary analysis of scripts.

Decentered Playwriting investigates new and alternative strategies for dramatic writing that incorporate non-Western, Indigenous, and marginalized storytelling techniques and traditions while deepening a creative practice that decenters dominant dramatic methodologies.

In just eight years, The Dramatic Writer's Companion has become a classic among playwrights and screenwriters. Thousands have used its self-contained character, scene, and story exercises to spark creativity, hone their writing, and improve their scripts. Having spent decades working with dramatists to refine and expand their existing plays and screenplays, Dunne effortlessly blends condensed dramatic theory with specific action steps--over sixty workshop-tested exercises that can be adapted to virtually any individual writing process and dramatic script.

In a series of interviews with fifty playwrights from the US and UK, this book offers a fascinating study of the voices, thoughts, and opinions of today's most important dramatists.

New Playwriting Strategies offers a fresh and dynamic approach to playwriting that will be welcomed by teachers and aspiring playwrights alike.

Drawing on a huge range of sources, it deconstructs playwriting into its constituent parts, and offers illuminating insights into: Structure - an in-depth exploration of the fundamental elements of drama, enabling you to choose instinctively the most effective structure for your play Character - advice on how to generate and write credible characters by exploring their three essential dimensions: story, breadth and depth How to Write - techniques for writing great dialogue, dynamic scenes and compelling subtext, including how to improve your writing by approaching it from unfamiliar directions What to Write - how to adopt different approaches to finding your material, how to explore the fundamental 'Nine Stories', and how to evaluate the potential of your ideas

Research-based theater aims to present research in a way that is compelling and captivating, connecting with viewers on imaginative and intellectual levels at the same time. Research-Based Theatre brings together scholars and practitioners of research-based theater to construct a theoretical analysis of the field and offer critical reflections on how the methodology can now be applied.

Contemporary theatrical productions as diverse in form as experimental performance, new writing, West End drama, musicals and live art demonstrate a recurring fascination with adapting existing works by other artists, writers, filmmakers and stage practitioners. Featuring seventeen interviews with internationally-renowned theatre and performance artists, Theatre and Adaptation provides an exceptionally rich study of the variety of work developed in recent years. First-hand accounts illuminate a diverse range of approaches to stage adaptation, ranging from playwriting to directing, Javanese puppetry to British children's theatre, and feminist performance to Japanese Noh. The transition of an existing source to the stage is not a smooth one: this collection examines the practices and the complex set of negotiations each work of transition and appropriation involves.

This important contribution to the Theatre And series explores what the possibilities and limits of 'community' contribute to our understanding of theatre, and what theatrical practice and representation reveal about the tensions inherent in community settings. Interdisciplinary in its reach, this is the ideal companion for students of theatre and performance studies with an interest in applied theatre or performance in communities.

Part of Bloomsbury Publishing "Theatre &.." Book Series. Current List of Titles can be found here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/series/theatre-and/

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, etc. that need to be discussed.

Series Editor: Jordan Miller, University of Rhode Island.Each volume provides: dramatists, production dates of significant plays, and intellectual, cultural and historical events of the period; original, accessible analyses of plays, playwrights, and literary & theatrical movements; convenient reference features -- notes and references, an annotated bibliography, and an index; and illustrations bringing theaters, playwrights and productions to life.

The Decades of Modern American Playwriting series provides a comprehensive survey and study of the theatre produced in each decade from the 1930s to 2009 in eight volumes.

Each edition of theOccasional invites a guest editor to talk with artists, thinkers and members of our community about questions that we have and topics that move us. For the inaugural issue, we invited actor/director/genie Paul Lazar to do the asking, and in turn he invited Jess Barbagallo, Tymberly Canale, Steve Cuiffo, Eric Dyer, Erik Ehn, Jim Findlay, Dayna Hanson, Keith Hennessy, Molly Hickok, Kristen Kosmas, Young Jean Lee, Trey Lyford, Kirk Lynn, Annie-B Parson, Kourtney Rutherford, Tina Satter, Sheena See, ScottShepherd, Pete Simpson, Geoff Sobelle, Susie Sokol, and Karinne Keithley Syers to do the responding.

This groundbreaking collection of recent and earlier writings serves as both an overview of the field and a source book for further study and performance. Locating Native theater within the rich contexts of Native communities, tribal sources of creativity, performance traditions, and artistic innovations, the articles and interviews in this reader provide historical context and offer perspectives on directing, dramaturgy, and new play development in Native theater.

Footpaths and Bridges presents eleven unique dramatic works that celebrate the vitality and diversity of Native American women. The collection presents a wide array of plays by leading contemporary playwrights - including JudyLee Oliva, Diane Glancy, and Monique Mojica, among others - in forms ranging from realism to dramatic poetry, from a children's story to a musical, and from full-length plays to one-acts. Alongside contributions from these award-winning playwrights is critical commentary that broadens understanding of Native American women's theater practices and perspectives, highlighting the issues of heritage, identity, and changing lifestyles that the plays imaginatively tackle. The collection affords access to voices previously unheard - voices that reveal the possibilities for communicating the complexity and the diversity of the Native American experience.

This edition has been revised to sharpen, update, and reinterpret information, and the whole text has been reorganized to highlight European and American theatre, as well as the theatre of Asia. A new chapter has been added on the theatre of Africa, and chapter 17, Theatre and Drama after 1968, has been updated.

Interviews with 20 leading American playwrights including: David Mamet Stephen Sondheim David Hwang Wallace Shawn Richard Nelson August Wilson John Guare Each detailed interview is preceded by a substantial introduction.

The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays for the Stage is the first play anthology to offer eight new plays by trans playwrights featuring trans characters. This edited collection establishes a canon of contemporary American trans theatre which represents a variety of performance modes and genres. From groundbreaking new work from across America''s stages to unpublished work by new voices, these plays address themes such as gender identity and expression to racial and religious attitudes toward love and sex. Edited by Lindsey Mantoan, Angela Farr Schiller and Leanna Keyes, the plays selected explicitly call for trans characters as central protagonists in order to promote opportunities for trans performers, making this an original and necessary publication for both practical use and academic study.

This text examines the complex relationship between theatre and disability, bringing together a wide variety of performance examples in order to explore theatrical disability through the conceptual frameworks of disability as spectacle, narrative, and experience. Accessible and affordable, this is an ideal resource for theatre students and lovers everywhere.

Part of Bloomsbury Publishing "Theatre &.." Book Series. Current List of Titles can be found here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/series/theatre-and/