Luke Yankee - The Art of Writing for the Theatre_ An Introduction to Script Analysis, Criticism, and Playwriting-Methuen Drama (2021)

138 The Art of Writing for the Theatre kept hammering away, and now they’ve left behind these incredible bodies of work. It’s like Bach writing music every week for the church service. He wasn’t precious about it, he just worked and worked and worked. David Lindsay-Abaire I was always, and still am very much a student. I’m always analyzing why things work or why things don’t work and trying to figure out some chemistry and writing, which is a useful thing and also a silly thing to do. As an experiment, I thought, “What makes one of these naturalistic plays that the critics seem to like?” And by the way, with my comedies, some of the critics were very nice to me, so it’s not like they were all mean. But the ones that were mean were very, very mean. I thought, “Well, why are they loving these naturalistic plays? Some were wonderful naturalistic plays, some were not wonderful naturalistic plays, but they were written in a very different way from what I was doing at the time. Whether they were good or bad, they were at least given the respect of an actual review. So, as an experiment, let’s try this. Maybe I’ll convert some of these people.” It ended up being a complete wash. Did I convert some critics? Absolutely. Some that hated me then said, “Finally, David Lindsay-Abaire has grown up and written a powerful, emotionally grounded work.” Some of the ones that hated me still hated me. Some of them that loved me before still loved me. And some of the ones that loved me said, “What a sellout! David Lindsay-Abaire’s work was so exciting and fresh and irreverent and now he’s writing about these bourgeois people up in Westchester. Stop that!” The point is, never write for the critics. It cannot help you. But here’s where it did help me. It made me write in a way that I never had before. I opened a section of the toolbox that I had been ignoring for most of my career, just because. I then had permission to write in a naturalistic way and not worry about jokes or laughs or being funny. I never would have been able to write Good People if I had not tried the experiment on Rabbit Hole. Your entire career is a series of steppingstones. Even the plays or the musicals that don’t go well, they lead you to the next place. And that’s what’s most important. Lyn Gardner When it comes to theatre, I’m a bit like that kid with their nose pressed up against the sweet shop window wanting it all. Lots of theatregoers, and critics

The Interviews 139 too, decide that they like one genre or another. They think of themselves as live art aficionados, but sneer at musicals. Or they will go to see immersive theatre but wouldn’t dream of booking a well-made play or Shakespeare. I will quite happily see a circus at the matinee, a Simon Stephens play at the Royal Court in the evening and then take in a spot of cabaret.26 At heart, we are all critics. As long as there is art, there will be critics writing about and responding to art. Every time we come out of the theatre with a friend, we want to talk about and dissect what we’ve seen. The fact that there are now more platforms that give people the opportunity to publish their work widens the number of voices who can join in the public conversations around theatre. I think a multitude of voices is absolutely crucial. Because in the past, the only people who’ve really been able to talk about theatre were the people who had the platform. They tended to be people who had those jobs in the mainstream media, and they often came from a very narrow background. But now, it’s possible for any sixteen-year-old who’s got an interest in theatre to set themselves up on a platform on the internet and write what they think about going to the pantomime or going to see Hamlet for the first time. That can only be a good thing. I think that often one of the problems is that artists, or certainly theatres, often view critics simply as people who might be able to help sell them tickets. And therefore, the only thing that they’re really interested in is how many stars are awarded to a production. In British theatres, all the time outside it will have, “Four stars, five stars.” That is not the conversation. That is not useful to theatre. It may be helpful for marketing departments, but it does absolutely nothing in terms of interrogating the work that is being made, having conversations around it, and really prodding the place of theatre within our culture and why we do it. The thing that motivates me to keep writing about theatre is the possibility that tonight I’m going to see something truly amazing, which will remind me why theatre at it’s very best is such an astonishing experience. I think the breathtaking thing just creeps up on you unaware. I take people to the theatre and friends who may not be huge theatregoers, but will tag along sometimes. They stumble out after three hours and fifty minutes and go, “Oh my God, that was dreadful.” And I’ll say, “Yeah. It was. It was a terrible mess, but there was this amazing moment at two hours and forty-two minutes that felt so true and real and genuine.” So, I’d go back and see this company do something else again at some point. I think that’s all you can do as a critic. People often talk about the idea of critics being jaded. I think we’re incredible optimists because you simply could not go to the theatre five or six nights a week like I do, or when I’m at the Edinburgh festival maybe five or six times a day.

140 The Art of Writing for the Theatre You simply could not do that unless you were an optimist and you thought, “Maybe tonight is the night I’m going to see something that just blows me away.” And, of course, when it does, it’s absolutely incredible. Advice for New Writers Stephen Adly Guirgis When you learn to write, you have to sit down, and if you stay down long enough, something will happen, right? You’ve got to be willing to turn off TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, whatever. There was a great mystery writer. I can’t remember his name, and he had trouble writing, and his deal was that he would sit down for four or five hours to write, and he didn’t have to write, but he wasn’t allowed to do anything else. So, if you sit down and you stay down, something will happen. Unfortunately, what you did the day before doesn’t help get you in the seat any quicker the next day. It’s sort of the same thing. Hemingway said, “When you are writing, leave a little bit undone so that you know what to do when you come back the next day.” I think that’s really smart. But mainly, it’s just “sit down, and stay down.” Try to create deadlines that aren’t secrets, that don’t depend on just you. If I said to you, “I want to write a play.” How long does it take to write a draft? Three months? So, if you say, “In three months, I’ll have a draft,” it’ll never happen. I might not even write a page. But if I say, “Okay. I want to try to write this thing,” and I call you and I call five or six of my friends and I get a space. Now, I haven’t even written anything, but now I have a deadline in a couple of weeks that actually means something, because you’re taking off from your teaching job, and Elizabeth is coming in from Connecticut, and this and that, and then if you don’t have anything, you’re a jerk. So, creating a deadline that involves other people is very helpful. The other benefit of that is, if you’re writing something and you have a reading and the actors like what you’re writing, they’re going to cheerlead you through it because they’ll be like, “Yo. What’s going on? When is the next scene, blah, blah, blah.” Because people want to work. Donald Margulies The thing that I absolutely live by is that you have to tell the truth. I know that sounds very simplistic, but I think that, and this is something that I

The Interviews 141 teach my students as well. If you’re enjoying yourself too much and if you’re intruding too much on a character or the voice of a character, or if you find that you’re stepping back from that character and that situation and you’re commenting on it, you are not doing your job. You need to be as true and as empathic to that moment as possible. You can’t be at a remove. So, you need truthfulness and simplicity. As writers, we all fall in love with the things we write, and sometimes those things are not really faithful to the objective at hand, but they are things we love and things that give us pleasure. And I think as a playwright, focusing on telling the truth has certainly given me the opportunities to cut laugh lines that were wrong laughs. There is a kind of dishonesty in that if you want to get away with a moment that isn’t really true to the situation but that gives you a personal kind of pleasure. And that’s what I mean by telling the truth.27 Samuel D. Hunter If there’s one concrete bit of advice I can give that I’m pretty certain I can stand behind, it’s this: write ten full-length plays. And more than write them, really work  on them. Suffer through readings and talkbacks that make you want to crawl into a hole and die. Get used to being the one person in your writing group who is always met with awkward silence after your pages are shared. Prepare for your first major review to be very mean. Expect early collaborators of yours to leave you behind because they perceive you to be dead weight. All of these things happened to me, and some version of them will likely happen to you. But keep going; write those ten plays, because in all likelihood those first ten plays won’t be all that great, but the eleventh might be doing something interesting. (And yes, I’m speaking from experience. In all honesty, it took me way more than ten plays.) David Henry Hwang Do not worry about commercial or critical acceptance. Write what moves you most deeply. What you need to explore. It’s impossible to predict what will or will not be successful. A truly successful play is one that enriches the author’s spirit. However, it is also the case that this sort of work is also likely to be the most successful from a career standpoint. Paradoxically, success shouldn’t be your goal. Career success is the icing on the cake, not the cake itself.

142 The Art of Writing for the Theatre Ismail Khalidi I think the best way to become a writer is to read, and to read widely and deeply. Not only drama, but history, politics, et cetera. And of course, write. I think one becomes a better writer by using that muscle and toning it. I think it’s only when you let yourself go as a writer and you give yourself permission to let your characters speak and let the story unfold in that way that you grow. That’s not to say that the best thing will always come out, but adhering too closely to dramatic structure is also not a guarantee that it’ll come out great. I think that’s kind of the main thing I would say, to find your voice. It’s easier said than done, and I don’t mean that just in terms of cadence and rhythms and such, but also in terms of structure. Because I think we do need to challenge the notion that there’s only one way to tell a story. Charles Busch I never thought for a second that it wouldn’t work out, which was slightly insane because I was a rather odd type. If I saw that kid, I would probably think, “Oh, honey, he should find himself a regular job, because I don’t think it’s going to work out.” I mean, here I was, this rather androgynous young person with a talent for impersonating movie actresses of the Golden Age, and there were no roles in the repertoire in the early ’70’s that I’d be right for. There was no Angels in America, or The Inheritance, or The Normal Heart, or any of those plays that would be suitable for me. It took a while to really, really figure out who I am, but I was always convinced that I had something great to offer, and that if I pursued it without deviation from my path, as I continue to grow and learn and get better, it just had to work out. Somehow, I was blessed with never having the concept in my head of, “What will people think?” And that’s put the brakes on more people than anything. I always tell young people starting out that it’s so easy to be negative with ourselves. “Oh, I can’t do that because . . . I can’t do that because . . .” And I think I trained myself somehow to come from the place of, “What is it that I have to offer?” Marsha Norman What we do, as playwrights, librettists, and composers, is not try for a seat at the table. We just need to say what it has felt like to be alone, living human

The Interviews 143 in our time. The playwrights who convey the human condition, who chart the desperate path of one human toward one goal, those are the playwrights we treasure. The plays that tell the stories we need to hear because we’re traveling on the same road, those are the plays that survive. Ben Brantley I am professional, in the sense that if I’m given a job, I feel I should give it my full attention, and “attention” is the operative word. And I think if you really pay attention, if you don’t go on automatic pilot, if you look at something as if you’re seeing it for the first time, you’ll see so much. And I’m talking about looking out of the car window. I’m talking about looking at the patterns of white on your ceiling in the morning, but we often don’t have that switch on. I made it a point of honor to have that switch on when I was watching a play. And I think if you do pay attention, how can you not feel surprised? Because there will be something there that you haven’t seen before. Even if the play itself is a dog and dragging and off its rhythms, there will nonetheless be something that will make you pay a little more attention or focus on something a little more completely. And as long as you have to do that, I think it’s impossible to be jaded. David Henry Hwang I think my main advice for playwrights starting out is that it’s really about an investigation into self. The thing that makes you unique, that makes you idiosyncratic, that makes you weird, that’s your superpower as a writer. Sheldon Harnick To be in theatre is to experience highs and lows, no matter who you are or what you do. One has to love what one is doing. I love the experience of writing lyrics and setting them to music. I love to be able to sing a song, to hear other people sing a song that I wrote. So, when I experience a flop like The Body Beautiful, which was a disaster, or Tenderloin, which closed after six months, it’s very difficult. As a matter of fact, there are people who cannot take it. Years ago, I met a struggling songwriter, and he finally got a musical on. It was a flop, and he killed himself. It can be terribly

144 The Art of Writing for the Theatre depressing. One has to have an inner strength and a good spouse, which I have.28 David Lindsay-Abaire Submit often. Put your work out there in every way possible. Take every opportunity afforded to you. You’ll be rejected 99.9% of the time. I was. That’s all you can do. Keep casting the lines because you never know when you’re going to get a fish. And maybe you would think this is a given, but I’m learning it’s not. See and read as many plays as humanly possible. I’m surprised how often writers are unfamiliar with other plays or playwrights. Just consume it all; analyze it, study it, figure it out. “I like this. Here’s why I like it. I don’t like it. Here’s why I don’t like it.” And keep a list and figure out, “Oh, here are the eight plays that I didn’t like that I’ve read in these two months. And they all have this thing in common. I don’t want to do that. Here are the ten things that these plays have, that they’ve all accomplished. And that’s why I like them.” Figure it out. Be a student. Study the plays, read the plays, know the plays. That’s the best education, whatever structure stuff, whatever class you want to take, just reading and knowing plays and musicals will teach you all you need to know. Also, write more than one play. Many writers write a play, have a reading, get notes, put it away for several months, then rewrite it later. This cycle can go on for years. In that time, you’ve changed as a person. It’s not that you’ve figured out the play. A person has a play for six or seven years because they think they’re going to crack it. Forget that play. Take those new impulses and put them into a new play. It’s better to have ten first drafts instead of one play you’ve written twelve times. You have to rewrite, but not at the expense of the other great plays you can write. Every play is a stepping-stone to the next play. Naomi Wallace I’ve always been captivated by language: the way words can construct, dismantle and turn notions inside out. And telling tales, making up days and hours and lives that don’t really exist in the material world, but then a thing is said, spoken, and it comes into being somewhere between what we know and what we imagine.

The Interviews 145 What Do You Love About the Theatre? Ben Brantley People who regularly accompany me to plays have often heard me mutter, in a claustrophobically crowded theatre lobby, “I don’t know why I’m still doing this.” Such surly sentiments can persist right up to the moment the house lights dim. But once the curtain goes up, a switch flips on inside me. I feel nervous, expectant, and palpably, exhilaratingly in the moment. In that sense, I imagine, I’m experiencing a milder version of what the performers onstage go through every single night. This is live theatre, after all. We’re in this together. Those people up there need us as much as we need them. And I’m being paid to participate, with all senses wide open, in this fraught, blessed exchange of energy. I’m being paid to pay attention. This means that I am hyper-aware of all the moving pieces that make up a production, and that a part of my mind is assessing how successfully these elements cohere. While this might suggest a cold and clinical detachment, I find that it’s an approach that makes me feel more vital, more connected, more grateful.29 Octavio Solis I love the bargain we make between the audience and the theatre makers. We tell them, “Look, for the next two hours, we’re going to create a world here. We want you to pretend it’s real. And we want you to pretend when Romeo dies, that he’s really dead. But I want you to also understand that they’re just an actor. It’s pretend. But in order for you to really buy into the action that’s happening here, you have to believe that he’s so desperately in love, that he will kill himself for his love in this tomb. And by the way, you have to believe that it’s a real crypt and a real tomb, and not a set.” Often, there’s not even that. It’s a couple of chairs. “But help us finish the picture. Help us finish the set. You can do it in your mind.” That’s the bargain that we make with an audience. And that’s why audiences consistently come back to the theatre. Because what they see is ten times more vivid and rich and deep than anything created in cinema, or on IMAX. And for that, the audience doesn’t have to work at all. They just have to sit still, put the goggles on, and they’re there. In this instance, the audience has to work. They have to work

146 The Art of Writing for the Theatre so hard. And the dividends depend on them. It depends on how much you really want to invest as an audience to finish the picture, to finish what’s happening there. Right before curtain, there’s an invisible contract that we all signed together and say, “Okay, this is pretend. But let’s pretend it’s real.” Peter Filichia I think I’m a better person for seeing so much theatre. It teaches me. Because by and large, it is an art form that looks to improve. I mean, even think about songs from musicals from the golden age: Put on a Happy Face, You Got to Have Heart, Climb Every Mountain, You Got to Have a Dream, if you don’t have a dream, how are you going to have a dream come true? All those things are such positive messages. And I will admit that musical theatre has changed, and not always to my liking. Nevertheless, I started with musicals, and those messages really helped me. So, that’s what I love. I think if everybody went to the theatre, I truly believe we’d have a better society. Donald Margulies I love what I’ve always responded to, which is the communal heartbeat of an audience, and the palpable sense of anticipation when the houselights begin to dim. I must not be as jaded as I thought because I still find the shared experience of seeing an aspect of life reflected on stage unlike anything else. Samuel D. Hunter What’s amazing about the theatre is we have to figure out how to make this thing happen in its totality every night. So, we all have to be on board. Everybody is all in the same room chasing the same thing. And it can be mysterious in that way, too. I’ve had the experience of doing a play where the last run in the rehearsal hall was the best it was. And something happened when we put it on stage on the set; it just wasn’t there. But when we just did it in the hall with barely anything, it sang in a way that it’s just not singing right now. And even though that can be frustrating and it’s deeply hard, I love that mysterious thing; that church-like aspect to theatre-making is really beautiful. And then, I love theatre because, objectively speaking, it’s ridiculous.

The Interviews 147 These hyper bright lights come on, on this set that is missing a wall. And these people generally face one direction and talk way louder than they would normally. I think if an alien culture came and saw us, they’d be like, “What are they doing?!” Everybody’s sitting in the dark watching these people up on stage just cavort around and say things, and I love that absurdity. And even within that absurdity, the theatre can be so impossibly moving and enlightening. It’s a little silly what we do, but it’s when that absurd thing can be divined that it’s straddling this gulf that is so amazing. Charles Busch Only recently, I’ve come to see that my entire artistic life is based on love; my love of classic film and theatre history, my love of actresses of the Golden Age of Hollywood, my love for the remarkably small group of directors who have worked so closely with me. Most of the roles in my plays have been written for specific actors, and it derives from my love for them and for their talent. Lyn Gardner I think one of the things that we’re not very good about in theatre is that we’re not great at admitting that actually, a lot of theatre is just so-so. It’s not bad, it’s not brilliant. I mean, I think within that, there are often moments which are truly dreadful and there are also moments where you can go, “Oh, that was just beautiful.” I often feel I’m incredibly lucky to do a job where, maybe six, seven, if I’m really lucky, maybe twelve times a year I go and see something that is so astonishing that I can only describe it as being the equivalent of what you feel like when you fall in love. And it is because it’s a form of falling in love with theatre for the first time, even though actually it’s the 100 thousandth show you’ve seen. And I think to myself, “Gosh, there aren’t many jobs that you can actually do where people have that experience during their working life of falling in love with breathtaking art.” Joe DiPietro The gift that playwriting has given me and taught me is that we are all essentially the same inside. We want the same things out of life. We all want

148 The Art of Writing for the Theatre to be happy. We all want to be loved. We all want to love someone. We all want a purpose. We all want to feel like we matter. Once you can internalize that as a writer, all characters are the same. So, you have to write from the inside out. You have to write characters who want these things as we all do, and I think that’s what makes people empathetic. Discussion Questions 1) Did you gain any insight from these different perspectives? Do you perhaps have a different sense of what it means to be a playwright, lyricist, librettist, or theatre critic? 2) Did anything in particular jump out at you? If so, why do you think this specific comment resonated with you? 3) Did a particular writer (or writers) “speak” to you? Did it make you eager to learn more about that person’s body of work? 4) Since most of these writers are extremely accomplished, did it make you feel differently about your own writing process? Does that process now seem simpler? Or does it seem more challenging? 5) Are there any specific writing methods you’d like to try? Here are a few suggestions: a) Marsha Norman and David Lindsay-Abaire talked about “Writing about the thing that scares you the most.” What would that look like for you? b) Beth Henley talked about writing from specific images, often grotesque ones. Are there any strong images from your past that illicit ideas for plays? c) David Henry Hwang, Naomi Wallace, Kia Corthron, Octavio Solis, and Ismail Khalidi all write about “big issues,” often from a political perspective. Are there any injustices you see that you’d like to address in your writing? d) Charles Busch didn’t fit into any mold, so he created his own form of theatre, which started out as a kind of performance art and evolved from there. If you were to create a one-person show to showcase your unique talents and abilities, what would it look like?

The Interviews 149 e) Stephen Adly Guirgis and Samuel D. Hunter write about the specific environments in which they grew up and how this shaped their world views. How has your environment shaped you? Is this something you’d like to write about? f) Sheldon Harnick, Marsha Norman, David Zippel, and Joe Di Pietro all discussed the complexities of writing the book and lyrics for musicals and the different forms of collaboration with their composers. Is there a story you need to tell that could best be told through song? Do you have any ideas about how you’d like to work with your collaborators? g) Ben Brantley, Lyn Gardner, and Peter Filichia all became well-established theatre critics by writing about various types of theatre in very specific terms. What type of theatre would you like to write about? Why does that specific genre speak to you?

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5 The Brass Tacks: Practical Tools of Writing for the Theatre I think the best way to become a writer is to read, and to read widely and deeply. Not only drama, but history, politics, et cetera. And of course, write. I think one becomes a better writer by using and toning that muscle. I think it’s only when you let yourself go as a writer and you give yourself permission to let your characters speak and let the story unfold in that way that you grow. —Ismail Khalidi, playwright Chapter Outline The “How To” of a Writer’s Life 152 Read, See, and Hear 152 Theatre Blogs 153 Submission Opportunities for Playwrights 154 Cover Letters for Writers . . . and Beyond 154 Living Room Readings: The Value of Free Pizza 163 Virtual Presentations 164 A Map of Relationships 165 Opening Night Cards and Gratitude Letters: A Lost Art 166 Exercises 168

152 The Art of Writing for the Theatre The “How To” of a Writer’s Life This chapter covers a lot of practical “how-to” information on writing for the theatre. Some points are geared specifically to playwrights, some to critical writing, while others are geared toward anyone who wants to deepen their knowledge and understanding of writing for the theatre. Here are some of the questions that will be answered in this chapter: z Where can I find plays to watch online? z Where can I read reviews of Broadway, West End, or regional theatre productions? z How do I write a synopsis or a logline? z How do I submit my plays to contests and theatre festivals? z What is unique about a writer’s resume? z How do I present a staged reading of my play? z What is a map of relationships and why do I need one? z Why is it important to acknowledge an opening night? You can jump around and pick and choose which topics best serve you. These are the practical nuts and bolts of writing for the theatre. Read, See, and Hear As stated by so many of the playwrights in the interview section, the best way of learning about writing for the theatre is to simply sit down and write. Also, read as many plays as possible and watch them whenever you can. Any library or large bookshop will have a collection of plays. Many scripts are also available online. Project Gutenberg (http://www .gutenberg.org/) has a number of famous, classical plays (including many by Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Ibsen) filed under Drama (in Book Search, under Subjects). FindaPlay through Playscripts (http://www.playscripts. com/findaplay/) has a large selection of plays geared toward students. You have to pay for complete scripts, but free samples are available. There are many online outlets, including services like Scribd (http://www.scribd. com) where you pay a nominal monthly fee to access libraries of hundreds of plays. If you are a student, you can often connect to an online school library catalogue with a vast number of plays for free. If you spend a lot

The Brass Tacks 153 of time commuting, you can subscribe to services like Audible (http:// www.audible.com) where you can listen to plays performed by awardwinning actors. To view plays online, in addition to YouTube, there are sites like London’s National Theatre at Home (http://www.ntathome.com) and Broadway HD (http://www.broadwayhd.com) to name a few. A quick internet search will bring up others. Better still, theatres are always looking for free labor. Many venues use volunteer ushers to hand out programs or seat patrons. In exchange, you get to see the play for free. This is especially true with smaller theatres at the local or community level. Call the box office and ask if they have such a policy. Theatre Blogs There are a number of excellent theatre blogs with articles, reviews, critiques, online workshops, information on writer’s retreats, how to submit your work, and so much more. There is no way to cite them all, but I have listed a few of the most popular ones. Some are free and some require a monthly membership fee after a trial introduction. Look at the specific website information and be sure you know what the commitment is for each site before you give them any information (especially your debit or credit card). Top 30 Theatre Blogs (from all over the world—monthly subscription required): https://blog.feedspot.com/theatre_blogs/ An extensive list of theatre blogs and writers, mostly based in the United States: https://splatterverse.com/home-2/resources/theatre/ theatre-blogs/ Top Ten UK Theatre Blogs: https://www.vuelio.com/uk/social-mediaindex/top10-theatre-blogs/ The Guardian Theatre Blog: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/ theatreblog The New York Times theatre pages (five free articles per month, then a subscription is required): https://www.nytimes.com/section/theater Broadway Musicals Blog: https://broadwaymusicalblog.com/ That Awesome Theatre Blog (Los Angeles Theatre): https://thatawesome theatreblog.com/

154 The Art of Writing for the Theatre Submission Opportunities for Playwrights Play Submissions Helper (US-based subscription service offering roughly fifteen to twenty submission opportunities per month): https:// playsubmissionshelper.com/ Playwrights Center (US-based subscription service offering submission opportunities, classes, seminars, and online resources for playwrights at all levels): https://www.pwcenter.org London Playwrights Blog: https://londonplaywrightsblog.com/ New York City Playwrights Blog: https://www.nycplaywrights.org/ The Dramatists Guild offers a student rate membership at 50 percent of the regular fee as long as you are in school. They offer a variety of resources including US submission opportunities, seminars, and contract information: https://www.dramatistsguild.com The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook is an annual online directory containing information on UK theatre companies, submission opportunities, articles and interviews with writers and other artists (annual subscription): https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/ Writer’s Market is a US publication for writing contests, literary agents, and publishing opportunities for all kinds of writers: https://writersmarket. com Theatre Services Guide—a guide to technical theatre supplies and services in the United States: http://www.theaterservicesguide.com/ home.asp Cover Letters for Writers . . . and Beyond Like any business, theatre is all about relationships. Every letter of inquiry, cover letter, or follow-up email is an opportunity for someone to get to know you and your work better—and vice versa. Developing a solid group of colleagues, associates, and supporters is part of any artist’s job. Some will become friends and collaborators. And many of them can open the door for

The Brass Tacks 155 productions, workshops, commissions, residencies, or creative jobs for your entire career. When you write a letter of inquiry or a cover letter, imagine an extremely busy person reading it. Get to the point. Treat the person you are contacting with respect. Don’t waste their time by requesting information which can be found on the theatre’s website. Be sure you understand how this particular theatre handles new work and follow those guidelines. Using the internet, it’s very easy to find out the specific selection criteria used by theatres all over the world, so do your homework. Make your cover letter immediate and intimate in a professional sense. Tell a story. Bring the reader into your world. Be passionate. Explain why you and your play serve the mission of the organization, why you are the only one who could write it, and why they are the perfect theatre to produce it. It’s important to keep it to one page. Say thank you. Remind the reader of how to reach you. Be sure to have your contact information at the top and the bottom of your letter. Writing a Synopsis There are times when writing a synopsis of a piece of theatre will be required. A synopsis is a summary of a script (or a book, essay, or pretty much any longer work) that familiarizes the reader with the plot and how it unfolds. If you are a playwright submitting your work, many producers prefer to read a story synopsis before tackling the script itself. Or if you are writing a critique, you might be called upon to summarize the play or musical about which you are writing. Your synopsis should achieve two things. First of all, it must convey the contents of your script, and secondly, it must make the reader want to know more. Overall, the intention of the synopsis is to make the reader want to read the entire script. A synopsis should outline your story in full, but it shouldn’t be longer than one side of a sheet of paper. With submissions, even if a theatre company doesn’t ask for a synopsis, it’s a good idea to include one with your completed script. If your script starts off slowly, a reader might give up on it after a few pages, but if there’s a synopsis to show them how the story develops, they could be encouraged to keep going. Basically, a synopsis covers the points we talked about in script analysis: the protagonist, the antagonist, the climax, etc. It is important to keep in mind you are stressing the main points of your story. In most cases, this

156 The Art of Writing for the Theatre includes the ending. Since the purpose of a synopsis is to interest the reader enough to make them want to read the full script (or story, novel, or screenplay) it’s important that you use highly descriptive words and keep the story moving as quickly and succinctly as possible. Writing a synopsis can be challenging, especially when you have spent a long time crafting your script and you feel every detail is precious. It’s actually a wonderful exercise to distill your narrative down as much as possible. What is really necessary to convey your story? In film and television writing, there is something known as “The Elevator Pitch.” That means you must tell your story to an executive in the time it takes you to ride up in the elevator with them. While this is certainly not the same as a synopsis, it gives you a sense of stripping your narrative down to the bare bones and still conveys the essence of it. One could say, what is the “big idea” of your story? In the elevator pitch, you are doing this verbally. In the synopsis, you are using your command of language to boil it down to its very essence. Very often, when one goes to an opera, there will be a synopsis in the program so that one can understand the basic plot points even if you don’t speak Italian, German, or whatever the language might be. Knowing how to write a strong synopsis can be a valuable tool regardless of what you are writing. While writing your synopsis, make sure that it includes: z A complete dramatic arc (with a complete story line) z Your own voice and the unique elements of your narrative z The ending or resolution of your story As for the ideal length, it varies from project to project. Some authors recommend keeping it to 500 words, while others suggest more. However, the standard range is about one to two single-spaced pages. How to Write a Logline If a synopsis is distilling your story into roughly one page, a logline is boiling it down into one sentence. A logline is simply the script’s main conflict summed up in one or two phrases. While this practice is more commonly used for screenplays, it can often be used for plays or other longer works. By “main conflict” I mean the struggle between the protagonist and antagonist that tells the reader what’s at stake. In other words, the reason they should watch this play or read this script. In most cases, a good logline combines three basic elements: Protagonist + Struggle with the Antagonist + Life or

The Brass Tacks 157 Death Stakes. Mind you, not all stakes are going to be “life or death,” but you want to express the stakes as if they are. In other words, the highest possible level of what is at stake in your script must be expressed. The most important element of a logline is that it must make the reader say, “Oh wow! I have to read that script!” Since your script has to be read before it will be produced, this is an important marketing tool. Here are three examples from well-known films: z Pulp Fiction (1994): The lives of two mob hitmen, a boxer, a gangster’s wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption. z Rear Window (1954): A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder. z Toy Story (1995): A cowboy doll is profoundly threatened and jealous when a new spaceman figure supplants him as the top toy in a boy’s room. I worked with a brilliant writer who studied poetry to strengthen her loglines. Why? Because in poetry, every syllable counts. Every word has to be the perfect word. Studying this sort of precision in vocabulary taught her how to be more specific in her loglines and stage directions. When you have a limited amount of “word real estate,” this can be a valuable practice. A Writer’s Resume Most submission opportunities ask for a resume or CV. A playwriting resume is different from a standard work resume. First of all, it should only focus on your work as a playwright. If you write criticism or essays on the theatre, this will apply as well. First, list the plays you have written. Be sure to include any productions, readings, or workshops the plays have had. Be sure to include the theatre name or company that produced the play and the year. If you are a writer of both full-length and short plays, it is best to separate these into two sections. If you are a short story writer, novelist, or screenwriter, you can also list those in a separate section. Next, list your educational experience and degrees received. Be sure to include the name of the school and the years attended. Some would suggest listing your educational background at the top. While this is largely a matter of preference, if you are starting out and only have one or two plays to list but you went to a school known for its writing program, you may want to consider this.

158 The Art of Writing for the Theatre A playwriting resume is also a perfect place to list any awards. You can include those you have won as a writer, as well as any for which you have been nominated. Again, be sure to include the company or theatre where the award is based (if applicable) and the year. You can also list classes or seminars you have taught (or those you have taken, especially if they are with well-known artists), as well as any publications you might have. The following is an example of a playwriting resume. Again, this can easily be adapted for other forms of writing. You will notice it is very compact. Your resume should be able to show the reader a quick summary of you as a playwright. If this means you only have your education and one play, that is perfectly fine. There is no need to beef up the document with non-writing experience. An Example of a Playwriting Resume NAME Address phone email SELECTED PLAYS—FULL LENGTH Title of Play Type of Production (production, reading, workshop)—Name of Theatre/Company/Festival, Year Type of Production (production, reading, workshop)—Name of Theatre/Company/Festival, Year Type of Production (production, reading, workshop)—Name of Theatre/Company/Festival, Year Title of Play Type of Production (production, reading, workshop)—Name of Theatre/Company/Festival, Year Type of Production (production, reading, workshop)—Name of Theatre/Company/Festival, Year Type of Production (production, reading, workshop)—Name of Theatre/Company/Festival, Year Title of Play Type of Production (production, reading, workshop)—Name of Theatre/Company/Festival, Year Type of Production (production, reading, workshop)—Name of Theatre/Company/Festival, Year Type of Production (production, reading, workshop)—Name of Theatre/Company/Festival, Year fi

The Brass Tacks 159 SELECTED PLAYS: SHORT/ONE ACTS Title of Play Type of Production (production, reading, workshop)—Name of Theatre/Company/Festival, Year Title of Play Type of Production (production, reading, workshop)—Name of Theatre/Company/Festival, Year Title of Play Type of Production (production, reading, workshop)—Name of Theatre/Company/Festival, Year TEACHING EXPERIENCE Class Title/Subject School/Institute Name & Location Year(s) Class Title/Subject School/Institute Name & Location Year(s) Class Title/Subject School/Institute Name & Location Year(s) Class Title/Subject School/Institute Name & Location Year(s) PUBLICATIONS Title Publisher Year Title Publisher Year HONORS/AWARDS Name of Award (can be both nominee and winner) Company Name/Theatre Name year received/ nom Name of Award (can be both nominee and winner) Company Name/Theatre Name year received/ nom Name of Award (can be both nominee and winner) Company Name/Theatre Name year received/ nom Name of Award (can be both nominee and winner) Company Name/Theatre Name year received/ nom EDUCATION Name of School Degree Earned year completed Name of School Degree Earned year completed Name of School Degree Earned year completed

160 The Art of Writing for the Theatre How to Write a Bio for a Program Whether you are a writer, director, designer, choreographer, musical director, actor, or stage manager, at some point, you are going to need to put together a biography for a show program. Like most anything else discussed in this book, this is a skill that is easy to learn if you follow some basic steps. I have adapted this from Gwen Gillis’s article on Six Steps to Writing a Great Actor Bio, 1 but you can easily tailor it to suit your needs: 1) Make it short and sweet. Being simple and direct in your bio is better than using florid, overly imaginative language. 2) Write it in the third person. This is not an autobiography. Use subjects like she, he, your name (Jane Jones), your professional address (Miss Jones), etc. 3) Avoid sentimental justification. For example, “Jane knew she wanted to be an actress from the time she was six years old, when she played a Munchkin in her first-grade production of The Wizard of Oz. Tell us what you’ve done, not why you do it.” 4) Don’t make lists. Describe or elaborate your skills, training, and experience in sentence form. As a reminder, titles of plays or musicals always go in italics or quotation marks. 5) Include personal experiences and special skills. Put these in the last paragraph. These skills might help you get a job. For example, you could write, “Fluent in French and Italian, Jane studied cooking at the Cordon Bleu in Paris, and painting in Venice.” Or, “A trained massage therapist, she practices sports and pregnancy massage.” Or, “As a gospel singer, her new CD will be released in the spring.” 6) First to last. Put the most important information at the top, working down to the less critical info in the last paragraph. Like any piece of writing, how you open and close are the most important parts. Here are some examples of strong opening statements. Make them want to read more. Weak example: With a winning smile and a “can-do” attitude, Richard is glad to be back in his hometown since graduating from college. Strong example: Classically trained, Richard has played roles from Shakespeare to Tennessee Williams to David Mamet, not to mention featured roles in several short films.

The Brass Tacks 161 Here is how the four parts of your bio should be structured. It could be four paragraphs, or you can combine it into less: Part 1: Your Recent Roles and Strongest Credits It is better to use recognizable plays and roles, not just “showcases.” If you’re just starting out, you can include “representative” roles. Those parts from Shakespeare or Chekhov done at school outweigh showcases of unknown writers Off-Off-Broadway or at a fringe festival. Part 2: Training Don’t be afraid to name drop master teachers or prestigious drama schools, as well as directors with whom you’ve studied. If you’ve worked with some of the “greats,” they will assume you will be great. Part 3: Other Credits Include “indie” films and all major stage credits. Don’t include background or extra work. You’re better off to include classroom projects of substantial roles. Part 4: Personal Life Write about your interests, skills, travel, languages, or musical instruments— anything that makes you memorable. Elaborate and be specific—don’t just list. Here are some examples of closing statements. You want to leave them with a powerful memory of you. Weak example: “She would like to thank her dog Cosmo, her roommate Susan, and her grandma for believing in her.” This gives the impression that you’re still a beginner. Save the gratitude for your acceptance speech at the Tonys or the Oliviers. Strong example: “She is looking forward to working on an Emmy Awardwinning series or whatever exciting work comes her way!” Many times, due to program constraints, you will only be allowed one paragraph for your bio. In this case, you want to stick with the fourparagraph rule, but make each point one or two sentences as opposed to

162 The Art of Writing for the Theatre paragraphs. Your bio is intended to serve two purposes. The first one is to let the audience know about your past experience as an actor, writer, designer, etc. The second one might not be so obvious. It is to share your credits humbly and strategically with your fellow company members so that they will keep you in mind for future employment. It is also intended to serve this purpose for hiring professionals who might attend the production so they can also keep you in mind and refer you for future jobs. That is why you don’t want to have a laundry list of “thank yous” at the end. You want to keep it clean, to the point, and as professional as possible regardless of the number of strong credits you may or may not have. Writing Samples In today’s competitive markets, you may be asked to provide a writing sample, even when applying to a position not related directly to writing. These are primarily used to determine ability, show literary and grammatical skills and reflect a candidate’s overall writing style. Of course, if you are applying to a graduate program in writing, this is a given. But other sorts of programs may require them as well. Samples should be concise and succinct; depending on the form (for instance, a critical essay versus a play), one to five pages are usually sufficient. If it is for a job or program where writing skills are not in the forefront, reviewers are primarily interested in how well you convey your ideas (structure and grammatical accuracy) as opposed to content. If, however, it is for any sort of a creative writing program, you need to be sure your sample sparkles like a diamond bracelet. An excerpt from a full-length script is fine, as long as it makes sense as a stand-alone document. If your piece is an excerpt from a longer work, be sure to note that on the first page. You might not necessarily want to use the opening of your script, but whatever you consider the strongest scene. If you need to set up the sample, use the rules for creating a synopsis to give the reader some context, but remember, brevity is key. Tell them only as much as they need to know to establish the scene. The requirements for such writing samples are very specific. In many cases, following the instructions and giving them what they are requesting is as important as the sample itself. They may require a short story, a poem, a ten-minute play, or an essay. If you have some flexibility, use whatever you feel best represents you and your skills. If you are able to inject some humor into it, so much the better. When I was applying to graduate schools, the reader (who wound up being one of my mentors) told me after I had been accepted that my sample was one of the few that year that made him laugh out loud.

The Brass Tacks 163 Of course, if you are applying to graduate programs or jobs in engineering, social work, or a non-creative endeavor, you’d want to tailor your sample accordingly. And if you do not have a sample that suits what they are requesting, there is no law that says you cannot create one specifically for that application. If, however, you are submitting a previous piece of work, be sure to proof and revise it. Just because you got an “A” on an assignment three years ago doesn’t mean it cannot use a little wordsmithing. Besides, you might have a different perspective on the piece or new things you can bring to it. Living Room Readings: The Value of Free Pizza If you reach a point where you become serious in the pursuit of your work as a playwright, at some point you will want to have a living room reading. Basically, this is where you gather together a bunch of your friends and have them read the play out loud in your living room (or dorm room, basement, etc.). If you are a theatre student, most likely you know some actors. If not, find other friends who are strong readers. You can also go to your local college or amateur theatre group and recruit people. My personal theory about living room readings is this: never underestimate the value of free pizza. Actors are always looking for an opportunity to hone their craft and to collaborate with writers or other actors, not to mention a free meal. As you approach them, make it sound like a fun party they won’t want to miss. Believe me, hearing your play read aloud is certainly worth the price of a few pizzas (or sandwiches, chocolate cake, Chinese food, or grandma’s pierogies). I usually have some non-readers there as well to simply listen and give me feedback. Once you have cast it, during the actual reading, your job as the playwright is to sit there and say nothing. Listen to how the scenes flow, if there are laughs (whether you meant them or not) and how the audience is responding. You can tell when those in the room are really with you, or when they are tuning out. Are people shuffling their feet or could you hear a pin drop? As Alan Jay Lerner, composer of such great musicals as My Fair Lady and Camelot, stated, “Coughing in the theatre is not a respiratory ailment. It is a criticism.” The same is true in your living room.

164 The Art of Writing for the Theatre Different writers approach the living room reading differently. As Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley states in Chapter 4, she emails the scripts out to the actors and tells them very little. She wants to see what they bring to their respective roles on their own. She also listens intently during the reading and makes notes, but she does not ask for feedback afterward. Henley feels she learns what she needs to just by hearing the play. Other writers open the floor for comments from all of the actors and audience members. If you choose to do this, however, proceed with caution. I’m not saying you cannot learn from this, but you need to take any and all opinions with a grain of salt. The greatest value in this process is if you get similar remarks from several people, then it’s worth taking it to heart. As author and management consultant Jack Rosenblum says, “If one person tells you you’re a horse, they are crazy. If three people tell you you’re a horse, there’s conspiracy afoot. If ten people tell you you’re a horse, it’s time to buy a saddle.”2 The main thing is that you learn from whatever comments you receive in order to do a strong rewrite that will serve you and your script. Virtual Presentations In the era of online platforms such as Zoom, you can also do a virtual reading. While it lacks the immediacy and intimacy of a living room reading, the advantages are that you can have actors and audience members from anywhere on the planet. You can also record the reading to use as a reference or to show on YouTube. If you do this, however, be careful that the actors are not members of any professional unions such as Actors’ Equity Association or you could run into rights issues. And, of course, the script must be your original work and not anyone else’s. Be sure that the actors who are reading roles have digital copies of their scripts on one half of their computer monitor and the online platform on the other half. Otherwise, they will constantly be looking down at their scripts. If you wish to do a more polished reading with professional actors for broadcast on a platform like YouTube, it is possible, but you must set up the reading as a charity event and get permission. There is an organization in the United States called Theatre Authority (a subsidiary of Actors’ Equity Association) that controls such things. I’m sure there are similar ones in other countries. Basically, you must fill out a form with the names of the actors, proof

The Brass Tacks 165 of nonprofit status of your charity (for a large or well-known charity, only the name is required), and the dates of the broadcast. Since any profits from donations or access codes to your program will go to the organization, you do not need to pay your actors. Under current US Actors’ Equity stipulations, you can only post an online charity event using professional actors for four days (ninety-six hours total). After that time, you must close the portal or take down the video. If your project is ready for this step, it is a wonderful way to create buzz and expand your audience, since the reach is international. I would not, however, advise doing this until you have had several other readings to work out the kinks, revise your script, and be sure it is ready for a wider audience. After all, you only get one chance to make a first impression. A Map of Relationships A map of relationships is an important tool for everyone. We all know people who can help us move forward personally and professionally. But have you identified them? Here is how you create a map of relationships. This is adapted from Pam Solberg-Tapper’s excellent website, Coach for Success: 3 1. On the left-hand side of a sheet of paper (or on your computer), make a list of the types of people who would be helpful to you in your career pursuits. Let’s say your goal is to be a lyricist for musical theatre. What relationships would you need to cultivate? Obviously, a lyricist would need to be connected to composers, musicians, and librettists. But also, there are singers, actors, directors, designers, potential investors, producers, rehearsal pianists, graphic artists, people who run theatre companies, and so on. Make a list of every possible type of person you can think of who might be even remotely helpful to you. 2. On the right-hand side, fill in the names of any of those people you know or would like to know. (Don’t be afraid to dream big!) Examples: “Susan is a really good rehearsal pianist, so I need to list her. Uncle Walter loves musicals, so I’ll put him as a potential investor. And Sami could introduce me to the artistic director of that theatre, so I’ll write down both of their names.” 3. Next, place your name in a circle in the middle of a blank sheet of paper. 4. Add circles around yours and label them with the names of the people you listed, in addition to companies, allies, customers,

166 The Art of Writing for the Theatre vendors, associations, etc. that are important to your success. In some instances, these can be people or entities that you do not know yet, but you need to know. 5. Draw a line between you and the person or entity to represent your relationship with them. A solid line means a strong relationship, a dotted line means a relationship is in place but needs strengthening, and no line means a relationship needs to be cultivated. Then ask yourself the following questions: z What are the strategic relationships needed to achieve my goal? z What do I need to do to strengthen existing relationships? z What do I need to do to start relationships that are important but not yet in place? z How can I create win-win relationships that will benefit me as well as them? One important thing to remember: to be successful in life, it is not only who you know, it is who knows and has a strong relationship with you. In terms of networking, you must not simply think about what that more powerful person could do for you, but what you could do for them. If you think you have nothing to offer, think again. Let’s say you’re at a gathering with Miss Important Director, you strike up a conversation and you find out she is a vegetarian and has a Siamese cat. Perhaps the next day you send her an email saying, “I enjoyed chatting with you last night at the reception. I heard you say you are vegetarian, and I wanted to send you my favorite recipe for gazpacho. If you don’t have a fondness for gazpacho, perhaps your cat does!” Whether or not she responds, you have started a relationship. A good rule of thumb is to have at least three exchanges (where the other person actually responds) before asking them for something. And if you do ask them to read a script, listen to a song or give you feedback of some kind, be sure what you are presenting is really solid. Again, you only have one opportunity to make a good first impression. Opening Night Cards and Gratitude Letters: A Lost Art I was raised with a sense of reverence for the theatre and its traditions. Theatre people have many superstitions and rituals which could fill another book.

The Brass Tacks 167 One really important tradition is acknowledging the specialness of opening night. You have worked for weeks (if not months) on this production, and the time has finally come to share it with the world. You are experiencing something special and sacred with your cast and crew that will never come again. It is extremely necessary to acknowledge this. Writing a handwritten note to everyone in the company (both cast and crew) is a wonderful way to show your appreciation. Yes, it may take some time, especially if you are in a musical or a large-cast show, but the joy it will bring you will be returned tenfold. Another gesture you can make is to buy some sweets or hard candies (I’ve known many people to purchase a few bags of sugar-free throat lozenges) and put them in a basket or a bowl in the green room or common area backstage with a note saying, “Break a leg, everyone!” Whatever you choose to do, it doesn’t have to be expensive. It is a token of respect and esteem to acknowledge the magic of the moment. If you are the director, the playwright, or one of the leading actors, this is even more crucial, as you are setting the tone for everyone else. Whatever you do, I urge you not to let the moment go unnoticed. You will be so glad you did—and so will the rest of the company. Gratitude Letters The next step beyond this would be a gratitude letter. Like the opening night cards, this is something you do as much for yourself as for the other person. A gratitude letter is, quite simply, a way of acknowledging a close friend, a parent, a teacher, a spouse, or someone significant in your life for all the large and small things they have done that have touched you. If you are a playwright and you were to do it for an opening night, it could be to the director or to a special actor who really made your words sing. It could be a list or written as an essay or even a poem. There is no wrong way to do it, as long as you speak from your heart. It could start, “Dear grandma, I wanted to thank you for . . . .” Once you finish it, consider printing it out on good stationery and presenting it to the person. I gave gratitude letters to both of my parents, and they each said it was one of the greatest gifts they ever received. After my father passed away, I found my gratitude letter to him in his top dresser drawer. It was dog-eared and coffee-stained, and it clearly had been read many times over. This is a gift that can have a tremendous impact on the recipient. Another variation is to write a gratitude letter to yourself. Some people find this challenging, but acknowledging yourself for your achievements in

168 The Art of Writing for the Theatre life (regardless of your age) can be very powerful and healing. Try writing it in the third person. For instance, you would say, “Dear _____, thank you for . . .” then list whatever you want to say to yourself. If you cannot think of anything, start with something small—like the time you received a perfect score on a test or when you supported someone going through an emotional crisis. Build from there and try not to overlook anything. Rereading it when you are having a bad day can be a tremendous gift to yourself. It can also be a tool for your career. The theatre is a business where one can encounter a considerable amount of rejection. On those days when your script is turned down or you don’t get the internship, reading your gratitude letter can help get you back on course. Or rereading one you have written to someone else can remind you of all the love in your life, for this is what really matters. Exercises 1) Look back over this chapter and see what is of the most value to you. Is there something you can incorporate into your work, such as a logline and synopsis? 2) Who are the five most important people on your map of relationships? Who are the ones with whom you have to create a relationship or strengthen one? Are there any actions you can take to do that? 3) Take a look at some of the theatre blogs. Find at least three theatres where you would like to have your play produced, write a critique, or simply see a show. 4) Create a program bio to have on hand. You can always revise it as needed. Writing it when you are not under the pressure of doing a show (in whatever capacity) can save you time and energy when you are in “crunch mode.” 5) What would your resume look like? Once again, having one on hand that you can simply edit will save you time and stress when someone might need it on short notice. Having a bio and a resume at the ready also shows your professionalism and that you take your career seriously. 6) Write a gratitude letter to someone special in your life. Really take some time and contemplate all the ways (large and small)

The Brass Tacks 169 that person has made a difference to you. Print it out on some high quality paper and send it to them. 7) If you were to write a gratitude letter to yourself, think of three things you could put on it. Then think of three more. And three more. Keep going until you couldn’t possibly think of another thing. By now, you should feel quite wonderful! Save this on your computer or somewhere special so you can refer to it as needed.

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Conclusion There is a famous expression about show business: “You can’t make a living in the theatre, but you can make a killing.” No one goes into the theatre thinking they will make a fortune. Once in a great while, someone like Lin-Manuel Miranda (the creator of the musical phenomenon, Hamilton) comes along and proves us wrong. But those are the rare exceptions, not the rule. Most of the award-winning playwrights interviewed for this book would tell you that they supplement their writing income by also working in film, television, teaching, or some combination thereof. We don’t write for the theatre to get rich. We write for the theatre because we have to. Some passion stirs deep within us when we put pen to paper or when we see a play that moves us so deeply, we feel compelled to share that experience with the world. It’s a mysterious and extremely mercurial thing. Tastes change. Playwrights and critics fall in and out of fashion. But what they create endures. There is an old chestnut about when one points out an extremely attractive person to a colleague, the other will reply, “Yes, they’re gorgeous. But can they talk intelligently about art?” If you employ what you have learned in this book, you will be able to do just that. Honing these writing and observation skills will hold you in good stead for the rest of your life. Being able to articulate your feelings, whether verbally or on paper, will enrich you and those you encounter. The theatre is an abundantly fertile playground. Our imaginations can take us wherever we want to go. If you choose to continue on this journey, your lives will have excitement, fullness, and a wealth of experience just by sitting in the dark with a group of strangers and communing over this incredibly magical art form.

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Further Reading Script Analysis Ball, David. Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983). Knopf, Robert. Script Analysis for Theatre. (London: Methuen Drama, 2017). Thomas, James. Script Analysis for Actors, Directors, and Designers. (New York: Focal Press, 2013). Playwriting Hatcher, Jeffrey. The Art & Craft of Playwriting. (Cincinnati: Story Press, 2000). Spencer, Stuart. The Playwright’s Guidebook. (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002). Sweet, Jeffrey. What Playwrights Talk about When They Talk about Writing. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017). Wright, Michael. Playwriting in Process. (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2009). Criticism Fisher, Mark. How to Write about Theatre. (London: Methuen Drama, 2015). Wiltshire, Kim. Writing for Theatre. (London: Red Globe Press, 2015).

174 Further Reading Creative Inspiration Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. (New York: Penguin Books, 2016). Gilbert, Elizabeth. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. (New York: Riverhead Books, 2015). Pressfield, Steven. The War of Art. (New York: Black Irish Entertainment LLC, 2012).

Notes Chapter 1 1 Stella Adler, Using Imagination to Think About a Play, Setting and Social Class (YouTube, December 25, 2013). 2 Luke Yankee, The Man Who Killed the Cure (New York: Amazon Publishing, 2017), 17–20. 3 William Shakespeare, Henry V, Prologue to Act IV, lines 1–15. 4 David Ball, Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017). 5 Eugene O’Neill, Seven Plays of the Sea (New York: Vintage Books, 1972). 6 William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act One, Scene Five, lines 50–60. 7 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act Three, Scene Four, lines 23–30. 8 William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act Five, Scene Three, lines 316–21. 9 Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act Five. 10 Aristotle, The Poetics of Aristotle (London: Macmillan, 1907). 11 Luke Yankee, The Last Lifeboat (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2015), 25–6. Chapter 2 1 Martin McDonagh, The Beauty Queen of Leenane (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). 2 Uta Hagen, Respect for Acting (Hoboken: Wiley Publishing, July 8, 2008). 3 Yankee, The Last Lifeboat, 16. 4 Luke Yankee, Marilyn, Mom, & Me, Scene One. 5 Michelle Renee Miller, 4 Easy Tensions to Make Your Writing Totally Transform (July 7, 2020), https://www.michellereneemiller.com. 6 Philip Middleton Williams, “A Moment of Clarity,” in A House by the Side of the Road, https://www.pmwplaywright.com.

176 Notes Chapter 3 1 www.grammarly.com 2 LA Stage Alliance, Points to Consider (LA Stage Alliance Ovation Awards Voter Handbook, October 16, 2016). Chapter 4 1 Zack Newick, What Talent Wants to Serve: An Interview with Donald Margulies (The Paris Review, June 27, 2014), https://www.theparisreview .org/blog/2014/06/26/what-talent-wants-to-serve-an-interview-with -donald-margulies. 2 Terry Gross, At 90, ‘Fiddler’ Lyricist Tells His Story (NPR, April 30, 2014), https://www.npr.org/2014/04/30/308276626/at-90-fiddler-lyricist-tells-his -story. 3 Adam Greenfield, An Interview with Samuel D. Hunter (marintheatre .org), https://www.marintheatre.org/productions/the-whale/whale -interview. 4 Emily Wilson, Interview with Octavio Solis (therumpus.net, February 1, 2013), https://therumpus.net/author/emily-wilson/. 5 An Interview with Kia Corthron (The Writing University—The University of Iowa, April 4, 2016), https://writinguniversity.org/news-archive/2016/04 /interview-kia-corthron. 6 Joel Murray, Radical Vision and Form: A Conversation with Naomi Wallace (AMERICAN THEATRE, January 5, 2017), https://www.americantheatre .org/2015/11/10/radical-vision-and-form-a-conversation-with-naomi -wallace/. 7 Newick, What Talent Wants to Serve. 8 Ted Sod, A Conversation with Lyricist Sheldon Harnick (Roundabout Theatre Company, February 27, 2016), https://www.roundabouttheatre.org /about/our-blog/a-conversation-with-lyricist-sheldon-harnick/. 9 Marsha Norman, Can Playwriting Be Taught? Dramatists Guild Magazine, July 2006 (Keynote address from Southeastern Theatre Conference—May 2006), http://marshanorman.com/can_playwriting_be_taught.htm. 10 Robert Falls, The Long Journey Home: An Interview with Beth Henley about ‘The Jacksonian’ (AMERICAN THEATRE, February 1, 2014), https://www .americantheatre.org/2014/02/01/the-jacksonian/. 11 Diep Tran, David Henry Hwang: Backward & Forward (AMERICAN THEATRE, May 3, 2018), https://www.americantheatre.org/2018/05/03/ david-henry-hwang-backward-and-forward/.

Notes 177 12 Henrik Eger, Mentors and Protégés Exist Everywhere: Interview with Playwright Donald Margulies on Collected Stories (Drama Around the Globe, November 11, 2016), http://phindie.com/18632-18632-mentorsand-proteges-exist-everywhere-interview-with-playwright-donaldmargulies-on-collected-stories/. 13 Romulus Linney, Donald Margulies by Romulus Linney (BOMB Magazine, July 1, 2002), https://bombmagazine.org/articles/donald-margulies/. 14 Gross, At 90, ‘Fiddler’ Lyricist Tells His Story. 15 Murray, Radical Vision and Form. 16 Newick, What Talent Wants to Serve. 17 Falls, The Long Journey Home. 18 Gross, At 90, ‘Fiddler’ Lyricist Tells His Story. 19 April Gornik, Marsha Norman by April Gornik (BOMB Magazine, April 1, 2000), https://bombmagazine.org/articles/marsha-norman/. 20 Pat Cerasaro, Marsha Norman and Theatre for Humans: An In-Depth Interview (BroadwayWorld.com, August 7, 2011), http://marshanorman .com/2011/08/07/marsha-norman-theater-for-humans-indepth-interview/. 21 Sod, A Conversation with Lyricist Sheldon Harnick. 22 Gross, At 90, ‘Fiddler’ Lyricist Tells His Story. 23 Cerasaro, Marsha Norman and Theatre for Humans. 24 Eger, Mentors and Protégés Exist Everywhere. 25 Jeremy Goldstein, Q&A: Lyn Gardner Talks Truth to Power with Jeremy Goldstein, about Falling in Love with Theatre and Her Latest Children’s Book (Run Riot, August 5, 2017), http://www.run-riot.com/articles/blogs/qa-lyn -gardner-talks-jeremy-goldstein-about-falling-love-theatre-and-her-new -children. 26 Ibid. 27 Jack Smith and Alison Acheson, Donald Margulies: Writers on Writing (The Writer, October 21, 2018), https://www.writermag.com/blog/donald -margulies/. 28 Sod, A Conversation with Lyricist Sheldon Harnick. 29 Ben Brantley, Why I’ll Never Stop Being a Theatre Critic (The New York Times, October 13, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/insider/ brantley-critic-farewell.html. Chapter 5 1 Gwyn Gillis, Six Steps to Writing a Great Actor Bio (Backstage Magazine, July 8, 2013), https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/steps-writing -great-bio-13225/.

178 Notes 2 Jack Rosenblum, Managing from the Heart by Hyler Bracey, Jack Rosenblum, Aubrey Sanford, and Roy Trueblood (New York: Penguin Random House, 1993). 3 Pam Solberg-Tapper, Three Steps to Create Relationship Maps for Professional Success, https://www.coachforsuccess.com/3-steps-to-create-relationship -maps-for-professional-success/.

Biographies of Interviewees Ben Brantley, the former chief theatre critic for The New York Times, wrote more than 3,000 reviews over 27 years beginning in 1993 until 2020, filing regularly from London as well as New York. Before joining The New York Times, Mr. Brantley was a staff writer for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He reviewed fashion for Women’s Wear Daily, where he was the Paris bureau chief and European editor, and movies for Elle magazine. Mr. Brantley grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and graduated from Swarthmore College. He is the editor of two books of The New York Times theatre reviews and a recipient of the George Jean Nathan Award for theatre criticism. Charles Busch is the author and star of such plays as The Divine Sister, The Lady in Question, Red Scare on Sunset, The Confession of Lily Dare, and Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, one of the longest-running plays in the history of Off-Broadway. His play, The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, received a Tony nomination for Best Play and is the longest-running Broadway comedy of the past twenty-five years. He wrote and starred in the film versions of his plays, Psycho Beach Party and Die Mommie Die, the latter of which won him the Best Performance Award at the Sundance Film Festival. Mr. Busch has been honored with a special Drama Desk Award for career achievement as both performer and playwright and received the Flora Roberts Award for Sustained Achievement in the theater by the Dramatist’s Guild. He is the subject of the documentary film, The Lady in Question Is Charles Busch. Kia Corthron is a playwright and novelist. Her plays include Breath, Boom, Force Continuum, and A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick, and for her body of work for the stage she has garnered the Windham-Campbell Prize, Horton Foote Prize, Flora Roberts Award, United States Artists Jane Addams Fellowship, Simon Great Plains Playwright Award, McKnight National Residency, Lee Reynolds Award, and others. Her plays have been produced in New York by Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, Atlantic Theater Company, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, New York Stage and Film; regionally by Yale Repertory Theatre,

180 Biographies of Interviewees Goodman Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Center Stage, Hartford Stage, Children’s Theatre Company, Alabama Shakespeare Festival; in London by the Royal Court Theatre and Donmar Warehouse; and elsewhere. Her debut novel The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and the winner of the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and her second novel Moon and the Mars was published in 2021. She serves on the Dramatists Guild Council, is a New Dramatists alumnus, and is a member of the Authors Guild. Joe DiPietro is a playwright and lyricist. He has won two Tony Awards, a Drama Desk Award, and three Outer Critics Circle Awards. His musicals and plays have received thousands of productions across the country and around the world. Broadway: Nice Work If You Can Get It (ten Tony nominations, including Best Book and Best Musical); Memphis (four Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Book and Best Score), All Shook Up, and Living on Love. Off-Broadway: Ernest Shackleton Loves Me; Clever Little Lies; The Toxic Avenger (OCC Award—Best Off-Broadway Musical); The Thing About Men (OCC Award—Best Off-Broadway Musical); the muchproduced comedy Over the River and Through the Woods, and I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change (the longest running musical revue in OffBroadway history). Other recent regional theatre credits include The Second Mrs. Wilson, Hollywood and Chasing the Song, The Last Romance, and Creating Claire. His murder mystery The Art of Murder won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Play, and his adaptation of Schnitzler’s La Ronde—called F**king Men—is the longest running Fringe play in London history. Peter Filichia is the former New York-based theatre critic for The Star-Ledger newspaper in Newark, New Jersey, and New Jersey’s television station News 12. In addition, Filichia has two weekly columns at Masterworks Broadway and Kritzerland, and also writes regular entries for the Music Theatre International Marquee blog. He wrote a regular column, “Peter Filichia’s Diary,” for the website TheatreMania from November 2001 until October 2011, and previously for the website BroadwayOnLine. He is the author of the books Let’s Put on a Musical!: How to Choose the Right Show for Your School, Community or Professional Theater; Broadway Musicals: The Biggest Hit and the Biggest Flop of the Season, 1959 to 2009; Broadway MVPs 1960- 2010: The Most Valuable Players of the Past 50 Seasons; Strippers, Showgirls and Sharks: A Very Opinionated History of the Broadway Musicals that Did Not Win the Tony Award; and The Great Parade: Broadway’s Astonishing,

Biographies of Interviewees 181 Never-to-Be-Forgotten 1963-1964 Season. He served four terms as president and chairman of the nominating committee of the Drama Desk Awards and has also been a member of the nominating committee for the Lucille Lortel Awards. He is currently head of the selection committee of the Theatre World Awards and has hosted the annual award ceremony for a number of years. His plays include Adam’s Gifts and God Shows Up, which had a substantial run Off-Broadway. He has also written the liner notes for many Broadway cast albums. Filichia is also the critic-in-residence for the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He has served on an assessment panel for the NEA and is the musical theatre judge for the ASCAP Awards program. Since March 2009, he has been on the panel of reviewers heard on the podcast This Week on Broadway for BroadwayRadio. Lyn Gardner is a graduate of drama and English from the University of Kent. Gardner was a founding member of the City Limits magazine, a cooperative for which she edited the theatre section. Later, she was a contributor to The Independent. Gardner joined The Guardian as a theatre critic in 1995 and remained on the paper for twenty-three years, taking a particular interest in fringe and more alternative theatre. She was writing 130 reviews and 28,000 words of features annually, as well as 150 posts a year for an online blog for the paper, from 2008 to 2017. Since June 2017, Gardner had been an associate editor of The Stage newspaper, where she continues to write her theatre blog. She also teaches an MA in Dramatic Writing at Drama Centre London at Central Saint Martins. Ms. Gardner is also a writer of children’s novels, the earliest being Into the Woods (2006) and Out of the Woods (2010). She has written six further children’s novels for Nosy Crow, known as the Stage School Series, based around a young girl named Olivia attending Stage School. The first in the series was Olivia’s First Term. Stephen Adly Guirgis is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. He grew up on the Upper West Side of New York City, attending school in Harlem. Guirgis studied at the University of Albany, SUNY, graduating in 1992. Some of his most famous works include Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, and Between Riverside and Crazy for which he won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He was nominated for a Tony Award for his play, The Motherf**ker with the Hat, which was performed on Broadway and at London’s National Theatre. He is also a member and the former co-artistic director of the New York City LAByrinth Theatre Company. Guirgis is also an actor and has performed in

182 Biographies of Interviewees films (Palindromes, Jailbait), TV (Law & Order), and on stage (Guinea Pig Solo). Guirgis has directed productions across the United States including Sistah Supreme, Behind the Counter with Mussolini, and Kiss Me on the Mouth. Through his work in theatre, Guirgis has used improvisational theatre to teach HIV/AIDS prevention and conflict resolution in prisons, schools, and hospitals. He was a close friend of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and often collaborated with him on his theatre works. In addition to his Pulitzer Prize, Guirgis is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, the Lucille Lortel Award, and the Whiting Award. Sheldon Harnick is an American lyricist and songwriter who is best known for his collaborations with Jerry Bock and beloved musicals such as Fiddler on the Roof. He is a celebrated artist in the musical theatre community. He has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and three Tony Awards (Best Musical for Fiorello! and Fiddler and Best Composer and Lyricist for Fiddler). Bock and Harnick were presented with the Oscar Hammerstein Lifetime Achievement in Theatre in 2009. The composing team also received a Drama League Award for Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre and a special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre in 2016. Born in Chicago, Harnick graduated from Northwestern University School of Music with a bachelor’s degree in music in 1949. He began working for various orchestras in the Chicago area before moving to New York City. Harnick met Jerry Bock, his longtime collaborator, around 1965. Together, they would write some of the most beloved scores in musical theatre history: The Body Beautiful, Fiorello!, She Loves Me, The Apple Tree, and their most celebrated musical, Fiddler on the Roof. Beyond his work with Bock, Harnick wrote the libretto for the opera Coyote Tales, was the writer of the book, music, and lyrics for Dragons, and wrote the lyrics and cowrote the book for The Phantom Tollbooth. Beth Henley is an American playwright of regional dramas set in provincial Southern towns, the best known of which, Crimes of the Heart, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1981. Henley, a graduate of Southern Methodist University, turned from acting to writing as a career because she felt that the theatre offered few good contemporary roles for Southern women. Her first play, Am I Blue, was produced while she was still an undergraduate. Crimes of the Heart, her first full-length play, was produced in Louisville, Kentucky, and in New York City. Henley’s later plays include The Miss Firecracker Contest (filmed as Miss Firecracker), The Wake of Jamey Foster, The Lucky Spot,

Biographies of Interviewees 183 Abundance, Control Freaks, and The Jacksonian. Henley has also written many television scripts and screenplays. Samuel D. Hunter grew up in Moscow, Idaho. His full-length plays include The Whale (Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, GLAAD Media Award, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play), Greater Clements (Drama Desk Nomination for Best Play, Outer Critics Circle Honoree), Lewiston/Clarkston (Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), A Bright New Boise (OBIE Award, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), The Few, A Great Wilderness, Rest, Pocatello, The Healing, and The Harvest, among others. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, an Otis Guernsey New Voices Award, the Sky Cooper Prize, the PONY/Lark Fellowship, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Idaho. A forthcoming film adaptation of The Whale, directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Brendan Fraser, is set to be released by A24 Films. His work has been developed at the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, the Ojai Playwrights Conference, Seven Devils, and PlayPenn. Two published anthologies of his work are available from TCG books, and a third is forthcoming. He is a member of New Dramatists and a current Resident Playwright at the Signature Theater in New York. He holds degrees in playwriting from NYU, the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and Juilliard. David Henry Hwang is a playwright, screenwriter, and librettist, best known as the author of M. Butterfly, which ran for two years on Broadway, won the 1988 Tony, Drama Desk, John Gassner, and Outer Critics Circle Awards, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The play also enjoyed a one-year run on London’s West End and has been produced in over three dozen countries to date. Golden Child premiered Off-Broadway, received an OBIE Award for playwriting and subsequently moved to Broadway, where it received three Tony nominations, including Best Play. His new book for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song earned him his third Tony nomination. He also co-wrote the book for the Disney musicals Aida and Tarzan. Mr. Hwang’s other plays include FOB (OBIE Award), The Dance & the Railroad (Drama Desk Nomination and Pulitzer finalist; CINE Golden Eagle Award), Family Devotions (Drama Desk Nomination), The House of Sleeping Beauties, The Sound of a Voice, Bondage, Face Value, Trying to Find Chinatown, Yellow Face, Chinglish, and Soft Power. He also adapted Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. Mr. Hwang penned the screenplays for M. Butterfly, Golden Gate, The Lost

184 Biographies of Interviewees Empire (a four-hour NBC television miniseries), and Possession. As a librettist, he has written three works for composer Philip Glass: 1000 Airplanes on the Roof, The Voyage, and The Sound of a Voice. Hwang has been awarded numerous grants, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Pew Charitable Trusts. In 1998, the nation’s oldest Asian American theatre company, East West Players, christened its new mainstage the David Henry Hwang Theatre. From 1994 to 2001, he served by appointment of President Clinton on the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. David Henry Hwang graduated from Stanford University, attended the Yale School of Drama, and holds honorary degrees from Columbia College in Chicago and the American Conservatory Theatre. Ismail Khalidi was born in Beirut to Palestinian parents and raised in Chicago. He is a playwright and director who has written, directed, performed, curated, and taught internationally. Khalidi’s plays include Tennis in Nablus, Truth Serum Blues, Foot, Sabra Falling, Returning to Haifa, and Dead Are My People. Khalidi’s plays have been published in numerous anthologies. His writing on politics and culture has appeared in The Nation, Guernica, American Theatre Magazine, and Remezcla. His poetry and plays have been published by Mizna, and he coedited Inside/ Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora. Khalidi has received commissions from the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Noor Theatre, Pangea World Theatre, and The Public Theatre and is currently a Visiting Artist at Teatro Amal in Chile. He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. David Lindsay-Abaire is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, screenwriter, lyricist, and librettist. His play Good People was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, the Horton Foote Prize, the Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award, and two Tony nominations. TCG named Mr. Lindsay-Abaire as the most produced playwright in America for the 2012–13 season, and Good People as the most produced play. His previous play, Rabbit Hole, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, five Tony nominations, and the Spirit of America Award. He also wrote the book and lyrics for Shrek: The Musical, which was nominated for eight Tonys, four Oliviers, a Grammy, and earned Mr. Lindsay-Abaire the Ed Kleban Award as America’s most promising musical theatre lyricist. Mr. Lindsay-Abaire’s

Biographies of Interviewees 185 other plays include Fuddy Meers, Kimberly Akimbo, Wonder of the World, and A Devil Inside, among others. In addition to his work in theatre, Mr. Lindsay-Abaire’s screen credits include his film adaptation of Rabbit Hole (starring Nicole Kidman), Dreamworks’ Rise of the Guardians, and MGM’s Poltergeist reboot, among others. Donald Margulies won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner with Friends and was a finalist twice before for Sight Unseen and Collected Stories. His many other plays, which include Long Lost, The Country House, Shipwrecked! An Entertainment, Brooklyn Boy, the Tony Award-nominated Time Stands Still, and the OBIE Award-winning The Model Apartment, have been produced on and Off-Broadway and in theatres across the United States and around the world. Mr. Margulies has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He was the recipient of the 2000 Sidney Kingsley Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Theatre by a playwright. In 2005 he was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters with an Award in Literature and by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture with its Award in Literary Arts. In 2019, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was the 2014 recipient of the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theatre Award for an American Playwright in Mid-Career and the 2015 William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre. He has developed numerous screenplays, teleplays, and pilots for HBO, Showtime, NBC, CBS, Warner Bros., TriStar, Universal, Paramount, and MGM. The film of his screenplay, The End of the Tour, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was nominated for the Film Independent Spirit Award and the UCLA Scripter Award for Best Screenplay. He is an adjunct professor of English and Theatre Studies at Yale University. Marsha Norman won a Pulitzer Prize for her play ’Night, Mother and was co-chair, with Christopher Durang, of the Playwriting Program at the Juilliard School for more than twenty years. She also won a Tony Award for the book and lyrics of The Secret Garden and has written books for two other Broadway musicals, The Color Purple, for which she won a Tony nomination, and The Bridges of Madison County, for which she won a Drama Desk nomination. She was Vice President of the Dramatists Guild of America for ten years and is a founder and current president of the Lilly Awards Foundation, a nonprofit corporation that promotes gender parity in theatre productions across

186 Biographies of Interviewees America and celebrates the work of women in the theatre. Other projects include the book for the musical King Kong, and a play commissioned by the UN about trafficking and violence toward women worldwide. Her first play, Getting Out, received the John Gassner Playwriting Medallion, the Newsday Oppenheimer Award, and a citation from the American Critics Association. Other plays include The Laundromat, The Pool Hall, Loving Daniel Boone, Trudy Blue, and Last Dance. Published collections of her works include Four Plays, Collected Works of Marsha Norman, Vol. 1, and a novel, The Fortune Teller. She also has numerous film and television writing credits. She has won Grammy and Emmy nominations, as well as grants and awards from, among others, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She has won the Margo Jones Award, the Sidney Kingsley Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Guild Hall Academy of Arts and Letters. In the spring of 2011, she received the William Inge Lifetime Achievement Award in Playwriting. She writes and lectures frequently on playwriting and musical book and has eighteen honorary degrees from American colleges and universities. www.marshanorman.com Octavio Solis is a playwright and director whose works Quixote Nuevo, Mother Road, Hole in the Sky, Alicia’s Miracle, Se Llama Cristina, John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven, Ghosts of the River, Quixote, Lydia, June in a Box, Gibraltar, The Ballad of Pancho and Lucy, The Seven Visions of Encarnación, Dreamlandia, El Otro, Prospect, El Paso Blue, Santos & Santos, La Posada Mágica, Prospect, and Man of the Flesh have been mounted across the country. His collaborative works include Cloudlands, a musical cowritten with Adam Gown and Shiner, cowritten with Erik Ehn. Solis has received the 2019 Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre award from the William Inge Center for the Arts, the 2018 Imagen Award for his consultancy on Disney-Pixar’s Coco, the 2015 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Texas State University Black and Latino Playwrights Conference, the 2014 Pen Center Literary Award for Drama, the United States Artists Fellowship for 2012, the 2003 National Latino Playwriting Award, the 2000–1 National Theatre Artists Residency from TCG and the Pew Charitable Trust, the 1998 TCG/NEA Theatre Artists in Residence Grant, the 1998 McKnight Fellowship grant from the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, the 1995– 7 Playwriting Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 1994 Will Glickman Playwright Award. Solis is a Thornton Wilder Fellow for the MacDowell Colony, New Dramatists alum, and member of the

Biographies of Interviewees 187 Dramatists Guild. His new book Retablos: Stories from a Life Lived Along the Border received the 2018 Silver Indies Award for Book of the Year. Naomi Wallace is a playwright, freelance writer, and poet. During her career, Wallace has also taught English literature, poetry, and playwriting at Yale University, UCLA, University of Iowa, Illinois State University, Merrimack College, Hampshire College, American University of Cairo, Vrije University of Amsterdam, and other institutions. She has also worked with women in the criminal justice system. Currently, Wallace divides her time between Kentucky and the Yorkshire Dales in Northern England. Her plays include In the Heart of America, Slaughter City, One Flea Spare, The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, Things of Dry Hours, The Fever Chart: Three Vision of the Middle East, And I and Silence, The Hard Weather Boating Party, and The Liquid Plain. Her stage adaptation of William Wharton’s novel Birdy was produced on the West End in London. Wallace’s plays have been produced in the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. In 2009, One Flea Spare was incorporated into the permanent repertoire of the French National Theatre, the Comédie-Française. Only two American playwrights have been added to the Comédie’s repertoire in 300 years. David Zippel is a Tony award-winning lyricist for City of Angels. Born and raised in Easton, Pennsylvania, he earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating in 1976, Zippel was nervous about the stability of a career in theatre and obtained a Juris Doctorate degree from Harvard Law School. While studying at Harvard, Zippel continued to pursue his passion for theatre, writing several songs for various artists. Zippel’s first major work as a lyricist came with City of Angels, which won the 1989 Tony Award for Best Musical, followed by The Goodbye Girl, which he collaborated on with Marvin Hamlisch, and The Woman in White, with composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. He received a Tony nomination for Best Score. Other works include Liza at the Palace, Hercules, and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new adaptation of Cinderella. Zippel has also worked as a conceiver/director on many theatre projects including Princesses, The Best Is Yet to Come, and The Importance of Being Earnest. Zippel has also written lyrics for the film The Swan Princess, Hercules (which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song), and Mulan. He has collaborated with Alan Menken on his Disney projects as well as Captain America: The First Avenger. Over the course of his career, Zippel has been nominated for three Golden Globes, a Grammy, and two Academy Awards.