Playwriting

Well-known playwrights on the craft:

“Perfection In the Theatre: Outside New York, there’s still some flexibility in the audience. Even so, we tend to repress our emotions. We don’t laugh as loud as we want to or allow ourselves to enjoy what’s there — especially if the critics tell us how to react. Instead, we keep narrowing the definition of what a play can be. We’re losing the opportunity for someone like Samuel Beckett to spring up, because we no longer want our plays messy. But my God, sometimes we need mess. These are messy times and plays can reflect that. Angels In America is a mess — and I mean that as a compliment.” – Paula Vogel

“As for the story, whether the poet takes it ready made or constructs it for himself, he should first sketch its general outline, and then fill in the episodes and amplify in detail.” – ARISTOTLE, Poetics

“The most important playwight’s gift is to hit your time and speak your time.”   –David Hare

“Try to be original in your play and as clever as possible; but don’t be afraid to show yourself foolish; we must have freedom of thinking, and only he is an imancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.” – ANTON CHEKHOV, letter to A.P. Chekhov, April 11, 1889

“If I write a new play, my point of view may be profoundly modified. I may be obliged to contradict myself and I may no longer know whether I still think what I think.” – EUGENE IONESCO, Notes and Counter Notes

“There’s something very perverse in me that loves trying to do the impossible and put things on the stage that are very hard to stage and that maybe people haven’t seen before. And I have this impulse to see how far the form can take me. Because I think of all the arts, the theatre is the most conservative, because you have that ghastly problem of having to sell all the tickets every night.”  – Tina Howe

“One had the right to write because other people needed news of the inner world, and if they went too long without such news they would go mad with the chaos of their live.” – ARTHUR MILLER, The Shadows of the Gods

“Playwriting: People often ask me how long it takes me to write a play, and I tell them ‘all of my life. — Edward Albee”