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.
