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Description
Playwrighting
Master Class is a book for the active playwright. It explores the process of playwrighting, the
evolution of the play as the playwright engages with it, and the choices the
playwright makes in creating the play. Through the use of a number of case
studies of playwrights engaged in writing and rewriting plays, Wright focuses
on different individual approaches to their work, fostering their own unique
visions and voices as a means of helping the working playwright find her or his
own voice.
Features
Using a
number of playwrights, Wright's text focuses on the individuality of the
process rather than on a one way does all.
End-of-chapter
take-out exercises are designed to give working playwrights exercises into developing
their own plays by giving them insights into their own processes and processes
useful to others.
Market
For courses at the advanced undergraduate level or MFA level in
playwrighting taught in departments of theater at most state colleges and
universities.
About the Author
Michael Wright is the Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Creative Writing at
The University of Tulsa, where he teaches Screenwriting and Playwriting. He is
the founder and moderator of the Fictional Characters writers collective, the
U.S. Representative to World Interplay in
Australia,
a resource artist for the Necessary Stage in
Singapore, and the WordBRIDGE
Playwrights Lab. His books include Playwriting at Work and Play:
Developmental Programs and Their Processes, Playwriting Master Class,
Playwriting in Process, and the Monologues for Men by Men series,
co-edited with Gary Garrison. His plays, poems, and fiction have appeared in The
Elvis Monologues, Scenes and Monologues for Mature Actors, Monologues from the
Road,
Rio Grande
Review, Voces Fronterizas, 5th Story Review, the Moondance Film Festival,
SixSentences.com, and PrickoftheSpindle.com. His plays and radio plays have
been produced by Dorset Theatre Festival, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Actors
Theatre of Louisville, New Playwrights Theatre of Washington, The Baltimore
Playwrights’ Festival, The Vineyard Theatre, Living Arts of Tulsa, the National
Audio Theatre Festival, and Shoestring Radio Theatre.
Reviews
[This book] is an
invaluable tool for anyone who seeks to understand the secret that is
playwriting.
~ Lee Blessing
A fascinating and
movingly honest look into several individual processes of playwriting, from the
first kernel of dream state inspiration to the painstaking details of rewriting
a final draft. More of an inside look into coaching sessions rather than our
standard idea of a more rigid class, the book does indeed demystify the art of
playwriting with revelations of the very individual progress down a creative
road it is — albeit with helpful sign posts along the way.
~ Morgan Jenness
Creative Consultant, Abrams Artists Agency
This book is like an
archeological dig: it reveals much of what usually remains buried about the
most personal aspects of the act of writing. The eight playwrights in this book
open up their processes to the reader’s scrutiny and in doing so, they provide
a guide of sorts to the reader's own trajectory. A terrific addition to the
literature on writing!
~ Moisés Kaufman,
Writer — Director, Tectonic Theater Project
This is a one-of-a-kind
wonder of a book on the writer's complex, emotional process of writing a play.
Deep inside you'll discover not only the unique path each writer takes to
dramatically express their theatrical ideas, but you're privy to an assessment
of that process by one our country's most important scholars in the theatre —
Michael Wright.
~ Gary Garrison