The theatre experience begins well before the curtain rises.  Don’t make your audience overcome obstacles before the lights dim.  If they’ve had to fight the website, repeatedly circle the block to find parking, feel foolish at the box office, read an unprofessional (or no) program or sit through a self-serving curtain speech, they arrive armored.  [more]

The play Doubt works powerfully onstage because it’s built for theatrical pressure, not cinematic expansion — and the film version exposes that mismatch. Onstage, the play thrives on confinement. The audience is trapped in the same moral box as the characters, forced to interrogate language, tone and silence.  Film, by contrast, opens the world up — and in Doubt, that openness weakens the core tension. [more]

When people talk about a screenplay “opening up” a stage play, they usually mean expanding space, time and visual language without losing the play’s core engine (language, power dynamics, theatrical tension). [more]

Because “bad” and “successful” measure different things. A play can be technically clumsy — thin characters, obvious themes, awkward dialogue — and still succeed because it hits a nerve that craft alone doesn’t control. [more]

There isn’t one single “best” seat for everyone — but there is a sweet spot, and it depends on what you value most. NOTE: These tips are for a theatre with 99 seats or more.  Smaller theatres typically have good seating options (except on the extreme sides), but the tips below can apply. Here’s the short, honest breakdown from a theatre-maker’s point of view for a large theatre. [more]

Trigger warning:  This post may piss you off. Theatre should make us uncomfortable.  That discomfort is not a flaw to be mitigated but the point: a live encounter with ideas, bodies and emotions we’d rather avoid.  Trigger warnings, when they pre-emptively sanitize experience, risk training audiences to manage their feelings instead of confronting them.  [more]

Watching a play as a theatre creator is different from watching it for pleasure. You’re not judging taste — you’re studying craft under pressure. Here’s how to do it without killing the magic. 1. Watch the problem, not the plot. Every play is trying to solve a dramatic problem. Ask early: What does this play need to make true? What tension is it built to sustain? What would break if one character disappeared? Don’t track events. Track necessity. [more]

An admittedly subjective list below, in no particular order, but first ... What are yours? [more]

In a play, intermission isn’t just a break — it’s a referendum.  The audience has enough information to decide whether the contract still holds.  Staying means: I’m willing to see this through, even if it changes. Leaving means: The pressure hasn’t earned my time. (more)

Yes — and in theatre, this is less an aesthetic failure than a material one. In plays, the second act is never better than the first because theatre is an event, not a recording. (more)