Originally published in 2005, To Be A Playwright is an insightful and detailed guide to the craft of playwriting. Part memoir and part how-to guide, this useful book outlines the tools and techniques necessary to the aspiring playwright. Comprised of a collection of memoirs and lectures which blend seamlessly to deliver a practical hands-on guide to playwriting, this book illuminates the elusive challenges confronting creators of dynamic expression and offers a roadmap to craft of playwrighting.
1. The Twelve Habits of Successful Playwrights
2. A Room of Your Own
3. Fifty Questions to Ask When Writing A Play
4. Character
5. Dialogue: The Ways Our Characters Speak to Us
6. Location: Passports to Playwrighting
7. Endings
8. Rewriting
9. Journals
10. The Making of a Play: "Small Delegation" From Beijing to Home
11. Adapting From Fact and Fiction
12. The Do’s and Don’ts of Playwriting: What I Know to be True
13. Critics
14. The Education of a Playwright
15. What They Told Me: Advice on Writing and Other Vices
16. To Be A Playwright
17. Notes
Index
Biography
Janet Neipris is an award-winning playwright and Professor of Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her previous publications include To Be a Playwright (Routledge, 2006), Natives (2011), Plays by Janet Neipris (2000), and the musical Jeremy and the Thinking Machine, with Barbara Greenberg (2005). Her plays and letters are in the Theatre collection of Harvard University’s Houghton Library.
