Costume design is fundamental to theatre — not decorative, but narrative.  It operates on several levels at once, often before a single line is spoken. Costumes instantly communicate who a character is: class, profession, psychology, desires, contradictions. A frayed sleeve, an ill-fitting suit, or an overly pristine dress can reveal inner states that dialogue never names. They anchor the audience in period, place, or stylized reality. [more]

In a play, stasis is the moment (or condition) where nothing fundamentally changes. More specifically: Stasis is the state of equilibrium at the beginning of a play — the “normal world” before something disrupts it. [more]

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]

In plays, foreshadowing is a dramatic technique where the playwright plants early hints or signals about events, conflicts or outcomes that will occur later. These clues prepare the audience subconsciously, creating anticipation, tension, or a sense of inevitability. [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]

When an audience enters a theatre, the set speaks before a single line is spoken. Set design is the first act of storytelling in a play, shaping how we understand the world of the story and how we feel inside it. Far from being decorative, it is a core dramatic language — one that works quietly, persistently and powerfully. [more]

Both Neil LaBute and David Mamet are still working — but neither occupies the cultural center the way they once did, and for different reasons. Both men built careers on confrontation, cruelty and moral absolutism, mistaking provocation for profundity and abrasion for insight.  For a time, American theater rewarded this. [more]

A comic play works best when it treats humor as a tool, not the point. You’re building a dramatic engine that happens to make people laugh. [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]