Exposition is information the audience needs and nobody onstage wants to say. That is why it so often arrives wearing a false mustache: “As you know, you’re my older brother, and ever since Mom died ten years ago…” The character ceases to live and becomes a delivery system. The problem is not that the information is obvious or even familiar. The problem is that, for one fatal moment, the character has no reason to speak except that the audience needs to hear it. [more]

An actor’s first instinct is often to make a character sound convincing. The better instinct is to make the character sound inevitable. A convincing voice displays the actor’s skill: the accent is accurate, the rhythm polished, the emotion delivered on cue. An inevitable voice seems to come from somewhere deeper. It sounds as if this person could not possibly speak any other way. [more]

Every few months, someone announces the death of live theatre. But that isn’t true. Live theatre is not dead. It’s just broke. [more]

There is a moment in almost every table read when the play quietly leaves the room. It usually happens after a promising beginning. The actors are engaged. The jokes are landing. Then the reading ends, everyone looks down at the script, and somebody says: “On page seventeen, would she really say she took the freeway? Wouldn’t she say the 101?” And just like that, the discussion has begun — not about the play, but about the freeway. [more]

Actors hate being told what to feel. They may not say so. They may nod politely, underline the stage direction and attempt to honor it. But somewhere inside, a small rebellion has begun. The best stage directions create conditions. The worst dictate results. [more]

There are few experiences more gratifying to a playwright than a successful table read. You hear the dialogue spoken aloud. The actors laugh. A scene you have been staring at alone for six months suddenly breathes. Even the stage directions sound good. By the end, everyone is congratulating you and saying some version of, “You’ve really got something here.” You go home convinced the play works. It may not. [more]

Writers are terrified the audience won’t understand. So we explain. Then we explain the explanation. Then, just to be safe, another character enters and explains it again. By the time we are finished, no one in the audience is confused. They are simply bored. [more]

I keep writing about difficult women. Women who drink too much, want too much, lie too easily, speak too loudly. Women who refuse to behave nobly even when history has cast them in noble roles. Women who betray their lovers, disappoint their children, manipulate the faithful, squander their gifts, and make a mess of the lives they were told to be grateful for. I don’t return to them because I admire everything they do. I return because they do it.

Every writer has one. The play we circle but never begin. The screenplay whose title has been sitting in a folder for years. The book we describe many times it has become a form of procrastination. We tell ourselves the subject needs more research. The structure isn’t clear. We’re too busy with other projects. All of which may be true. But it isn’t the truth. [more]

Theatres are not vending machines. You do not insert a script, pull a lever, and wait for a production to fall out. And yet playwrights are constantly advised to “build relationships” with artistic directors, literary managers, and producers. The phrase can make ordinary human contact sound like a sales strategy — as though every conversation must eventually produce something. That is precisely what makes networking so uncomfortable. [more]