Two things to note about these phases:
- The phases refer to the mechanical work being performed by the playwright, not the components of playwriting, such as theme, plot, characters, and dialogue. Those are quality aspects, and are covered in my articles Evaluating a Script and Evaluating a Script, Part II.
- This is not a strict one-through-six-and-you're-finished laundry list. The last three phases may repeat many times, such as going back to Development for rewriting after a staged reading or after a production closes. Even the earlier phases will sometimes need to be revisited to make sure the continuity of the script is there, in the planning, in the approach, and even in the value of the original idea. I have plays that have been published, but following a production I was involved in, the rewrites made the script so significantly better that the publisher was willing to re-publish the new version.
The next article will look at each of the phases in detail.
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