How To Be a Playwright

Imagining - This entails observing or hearing some scene, and then running it through your mind as though on stage to determine whether it's worth pursuing any further. For example, if you see an extraordinary fight scene between a man and woman, the imagining would entail determining whether the fight could take place on a stage, whether the couple could be reproduced on stage, and whether the audience would be able to follow it all. If the couple were arguing while standing next to their car on a busy freeway, it would present a huge set of production problems to reproduce on stage, assuming that their fight required being on a busy freeway. Conversely, an argument at a restaurant table would be much more suited to be portrayed on stage.

Casting - This can be the most fun, because here is where I study faces and body shapes. Every now and then a person comes along that has the perfect look for some character from something I'm writing. It's like magic. I study the facial features, the physical mannerisms, and watch how they move, trying to impress that image into my mind so that I can transfer it to paper in a character description, or keep it in mind for a show when it comes to auditions.

These are just a few of the things I do daily as a playwright. Most of them I have been doing so long that I don't think about them, it just happens naturally. Being a playwright has become an integral part of my daily routine. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

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