The presence or absence of the supernatural in theatre has long been a way for playwrights to test the limits of belief — both the characters’ and the audience’s — while shaping how meaning is produced onstage. When the supernatural is explicit, theatre often uses it to externalize inner states or moral forces. Greek tragedy stages gods and oracles to frame human action within cosmic order (or punishment). [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]

Entrances and exits are storytelling tools, not traffic patterns. Treated well, they create meaning before and after a character speaks. An entrance is a claim on the room. Ask: What changes because this person arrives? Are they early, late, unexpected or unwanted? Do they interrupt, observe or pretend not to listen? [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]

Exposition is the information the audience needs in order to understand what’s happening — who these people are, how this world works, what happened before now and what’s at stake. Exposition is pressure. It’s the past intruding on the present. It’s context arriving at a moment when it’s inconvenient, painful or destabilizing. [more]

In most stories: Protagonist = the character whose goal/need drives the plot. They make the key choices, take the biggest risks and experience the main change (or refusal to change). Antagonist = whatever most actively blocks that goal. This can be a person, but also a system, a force of nature, a community, a lover, an institution, time, addiction, grief, shame, etc. [more]

Writing a mystery romance play means braiding two engines at once: desire and secrecy. The audience should lean forward because they want answers — and because they want these two people to collide. [more]

A dramaturg reads an early draft, gets what the writer is doing, then becomes a long-term advocate — connecting the playwright to theatres, keeping the play alive across years and productions. Example: Dramaturg Lauren Halvorsen read an early draft of Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor is the Villain, messaged her enthusiasm, introduced the play to colleagues and pushed for it to be programmed. [more]

Dramaturgy is the craft of helping a play (or musical/opera/dance piece) make sense and land with an audience. It’s the bridge between the script, the production team and the world the piece comes from. A dramaturg is the person who does this work. [more]

Environmental theatre is a style of performance where the whole space becomes the stage — and the audience is placed inside the world of the play rather than watching it from a separate “front.” [more]