I feel like I am fighting an uphill battle.

For literally years, I have been passionately expounding about the importance of HAVING THINGS HAPPEN ON STAGE, and yet, a good 80% of the full-length plays that I read, have absolutely nothing happening in real time on stage.

I get a lot backstory from the past, stories of things that happen off stage, and I get characters TALKING with each other. When are you going to learn that in playwriting TALKING IS NOT A VERB.

Talking on stage is boring.

We need to see characters threatening one another, seducing one another, trying to control one another. We need to see things break on stage, fisticuffs and ACTION. WE NEED TO SEE THINGS HAPPEN ON STAGE!

I am amazed that playwrights and even producers still think that a play that reads well and tells a good story is a good play, even when NOTHING happens on stage. Nothing. Nothing at all. Just talk talk, backstory, a tear, talk, a giggle, and GET ME THE HELL OUT OF THE THEATRE!

You see, action and clear conflict BETWEEN characters creates focus when brought to life on stage. You can read a play and go wow, but when brought to life if nothing really happens between the characters, if they are not struggling to change the other, it is boring on stage.

Words are boring in the theatre unless they are joined with clear dramatic action, with strong intentions on the part of the actors, and with THINGS HAPPENING ON STAGE in real time. Not in the past. IN REAL TIME. On the stage, in the present moment, in FRONT OF THE AUDIENCE.

Do you want to write a great play? Or a mediocre play?

If you are:

Not putting clear, dramatic action on stage during your play…
Not having your characters battle and struggle to change one another in some way…
Not having big events happening on stage like chairs breaking, or characters running offstage in a tearful frenzy…

you are writing a play to be read, which translates into a bad novel.

A play is a map for a live emotional experience where you take the audience on an incredible emotional ride, and in order to do that, the audience needs to associate with the main characters or character and FEEL THEIR PAIN, THEIR CONFLICT, THEIR EMOTIONAL JOURNEY.

If you are not doing this, you might as well write a novel.