Story Theatre sits somewhere between oral storytelling, ensemble theatre and playwriting. You’re not “writing scenes” in the traditional way so much as composing an event where narration and enactment constantly trade places. [more]

Short answer: no. An intermission is never necessary when writing a play. It’s a choice, and often a practical one rather than an artistic requirement. Historically, intermissions existed for very concrete reasons. Candles needed trimming, audiences needed to be refreshed, scenery had to be reset, and theaters were social spaces as much as artistic ones. [more]

The architecture of story is the invisible structure that holds meaning, tension and transformation in place. Like a building, it determines how an audience moves through space — emotionally, intellectually and morally — without necessarily noticing the beams. (more)

Plays: story advances through human action in real time; confrontation, decision and speech are the engines; momentum comes from tension between people sharing space. Films: story advances through selection and juxtaposition; cuts, camera movement and image sequencing do narrative work; momentum comes from what is shown — and what is withheld. (more)

Starting in the fast lane means: the central tension already exists when the lights come up; the audience enters mid-motion, not at rest; relationships may be established, but the problem is alive, not pending. (more)

Theatre genres overlap and evolve, but they’re usually grouped by tone, structure, purpose and relationship to reality. For example, tragedy is serious drama in which characters confront irreversible consequences. (more)

In a play, the inciting incident is the moment — often small, sometimes explosive — that disrupts the existing order of the world onstage and makes the central conflict unavoidable. It’s the event that forces the play to begin rather than merely exist. (more)

In playwriting, the backstory of a play is everything that happened before the curtain rises that still exerts pressure on what we’re watching now. It is not exposition. It is not biography for its own sake. It is the past in collision with the present. (more)

In a play, plot is the sequence of actions that occur onstage — what happens, in what order and why it happens. But unlike a novel or film, plot in a play is shaped by live time, physical space and audience attention. (more)

Starting a play isn’t about introductions. It’s about immediate pressure. “Lights up” should only happen after something is already wrong. A decision has just been made. A secret is about to surface. Someone wants something they shouldn’t. The audience will catch up. They always do. (more)