One of the most common mistakes in playwriting is confusing conflict with noise. Noise is easy. Conflict is hard. Noise is shouting, arguing, insults, slammed doors, threats, interruptions, and emotional outbursts. It creates activity on stage, but activity alone is not drama. Conflict occurs when two people want incompatible things and neither is willing to give way. [more]

The house lights have come up, the audience is stretching, and the conversations have already begun. Some people seem certain about what they've just seen. They know what they think, how they feel, and where the story is headed. I am not one of them. [more]

The history of theatre is often told through great playwrights, famous actors, and landmark productions. But some plays changed something even more fundamental: the way audiences experience being an audience. Today, we enter a theatre, take our seats, silence our phones, and sit in darkness while our attention is directed toward a brightly lit stage. We treat the performance as something to be watched with concentration and respect. [more]

The distance between the page and the rehearsal room is one of the most fascinating aspects of theatre. A script is not a finished artwork in the same way a novel is. It is a set of instructions, possibilities, provocations, and questions. Rehearsal is where those possibilities are tested against living bodies, voices, space, and time. [more]

Structure vs. Subject Matter refers to two different ways of understanding a work of art, a play, a film, a novel or even an argument. [more]

Adapting a classic is a balancing act between stewardship and authorship. If you're too reverent, the work can feel like a museum piece. If you're too eager to reinvent it, you risk losing the qualities that made it endure in the first place. [more]

A line on the page can feel complete when a playwright finishes it. The rhythm works, the meaning is clear, and every word seems fixed. Then an actor speaks it. [more]

A great costume doesn’t decorate a performance. It makes decisions before the actor does. It tells the body where to hold tension, how much space to take up, what to hide, what to flaunt, whether to sit, slouch, glide, stomp or vanish into wallpaper. A corset can create pride or panic. Bad shoes can invent a limp. A too-tight jacket can make a character irritable before the first line lands. [more]

Version 1: Nobody Gets What They Want (INT. HOSPITAL CAFETERIA — MIDNIGHT Mostly empty. Fluorescent lights hum overhead. MARA, 38, still in her stage makeup from a canceled performance, sits with a coffee she hasn’t touched. Across from her is ELI, 40s, carrying a vending machine sandwich and trying not to look exhausted. Between them: silence with history in it. [more]

There’s a specific kind of silence that only happens after theatre. Not applause. Not the rustle of coats or the scramble toward parking garages. The other silence — the one that arrives later, when you’re home and brushing your teeth and suddenly realize someone fictional is still standing in the room with you. [more]