Every rehearsal room contains at least one imposter. Usually, it's everyone. Actors worry they've been miscast. Directors wonder if they have any idea what they're doing. Designers fear their best work is behind them. Playwrights sit quietly, convinced that sooner or later everyone will discover that the script was a lucky accident. [more]

There is an old saying in theatre that you had to be there. It sounds like an excuse for exaggeration, but anyone who has spent enough time in a theatre knows it's true. Some performances survive beautifully on film. Others become almost incomprehensible once they're separated from the electricity of a shared room. The difference isn't talent. It's the mysterious chemistry that exists only between actor and audience. [more]

One of the easiest ways to identify a weak scene is to look at its ending. If the final moment feels arbitrary, melodramatic, or merely convenient, the problem is usually not the ending itself — it's everything that came before it. A scene earns its ending by making it feel both surprising and inevitable. The audience should not be able to predict exactly what will happen, but once it happens, they should think, Of course. It couldn't have ended any other way. [more]

In theatre, the center is never neutral. The audience's eye is naturally drawn to center stage. Whoever occupies it is often perceived as the person with the greatest authority, importance, or emotional weight at that moment. But the more interesting question is not who owns the center, but why they own it. [more]

When you write for a specific audience, you gain clarity. You know who is sitting in the seats. You know their assumptions, references, and desires. The work can become sharper, funnier, more immediate. A playwright writing for the subscribers of a regional theatre in Minneapolis will make different choices than one writing for downtown audiences in New York. A church audience, a college audience, and a fringe festival audience each invite different kinds of storytelling

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]