Monthly Archives: March 2011

Playwrights: Collaborators or Contractors?

Posted on March 30, 2011 by jbenjulian

In a theater in which playwrights are full collaborators, it is conceivable that a writer would function more as executive producer of her own work, to use a television model, than as contractor.
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Peace and Trauma, Part II

Posted on March 27, 2011 by eehn

Justice is the defense of nature’s ability to define itself. Human nature is plural. Effect diversity, where we are distinct but in bond, as the portico of the architecture of art and peace. In true diversity, the good isn’t purged from evil. The perfection of hygiene is a fascist too.
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Asking Everyone To Act by Aaron Landsman

Posted on March 23, 2011 by alandsman

For every piece I make, the starting point is the same: I see something that amazes me or makes me uncomfortable, I can’t explain why and I need to find out. Usually it is some awkward, ungainly moment I can’t take my eyes away from: someone bawling out a shelf of cookies at a deli; a desperate real estate sales pitch; a little gesture between two people.
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The Real Reasons Playwrights Fail

Posted on March 20, 2011 by msmart

We—the “emerging” playwrights—are fucking lazy. This is what we don’t want you to know, Dear Artistic Director. Most of us don’t really know how to keep working on a play. Not what it really takes.
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On Student Loans, Craft Services, and Being a Playwright Who Writes for TV

Posted on March 16, 2011 by jbrownell

The truth is, I am a playwright who has always wanted to write for television.
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That Barton Fink Feeling

Posted on March 13, 2011 by awerner

As a young playwright, there is a crushing demand to develop a brand, a “Barton Fink Feeling”.
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Trauma and Peace, Part 1

Posted on March 9, 2011 by eehn

Witness is that place where one is at the far limit of what one may know and the near edge of what one may see. Dramatic language is the language of witness.
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Interview with Ed Stern

Posted on March 6, 2011 by trebeck

I think part of being an Artistic Director is figuring out what the marriage is between you and the community. It really does come down to that. You form a relationship with the community, but the idea that I’m going to impose my interests and standards over the community doesn’t really work.
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Confounding and Creating: At Play with Audience Expectations

Posted on March 2, 2011 by cwhite

You see a film, having heard wretched reports, and hate it; you read a well-reasoned positive critique, see it again, and find yourself moved. My natural fascination with these expectations have led me to think of them as one medium among many that Mugwumpin plays with in making our pieces.
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