I have been in production most of my adult life, either as an actor, playwright, or director.

I have developed this unique PRODUCTION PERSPECTIVE when it comes to playwriting. And considering a play is a live emotional experience that is brought to life, having a PRODUCTION PERSPECTIVE is a very good thing.

Many dramaturges and literary managers read plays for Story or Theatre Mission. Is it a compelling story? Or will this play fit into our theatre’s mission? But a play is an emotional experience so unless you have something pretty exciting happening on stage, a story or a perspective only goes so far when brought to life on stage. There has to be events happening in front of you on stage, as the characters fight, struggle, conjole, seduce, manipulate, and go on a theatrical ride.

In a great play, the audience associates with the main character or characters and literally FEELS with them and experiences their pain, sorrow and their ultimate success or failure. That is the type of theatre I like to attend and the type of theatre I like to create.

How can you draw the audience into the ACTION of the play, not just the story?

This such an important distinction! Yes, a great story idea is wonderful, but the story for the stage has to be told with action, events, characters fighting for what they want, where things happen on stage!

That is what I look for in a good script. Real time moments created in real time, where characters struggle, fight, plead, get frustrated, seduce, demand, threaten, and maybe have crazy fun as they come up against a powerful and interesting problem that needs to be solved.

Theatre is live story telling, and as a playwright, you need to remember that every time you sit down at the computer. You can’t just tell the story. You have to create A POWERFUL AND/OR FUN LIVE EMOTIONAL EVENT called a PLAY that tells the story.

As I have talked about on my podcast, action and events happening on stage pulls focus. It really is your only foolproof tool you can use to pull focus. You have no camera lens, and words can only go so far. But action and events happening in real time that you manipulate and orchestrate with your creative intelligence is the way to create an amazing play.

Often, when I direct a play, I will stop a scene and say: “What is happening here? I am just getting words.” As a playwright, the words come out of the actions of the characters, not the other way around.

If you start to write using just words, and are not focused on actions and events happening on stage, you will have a play full of words, and an audience fast asleep.

How can you create exciting EVENTS in every scene of your play, backed up by strong or interesting actions of the characters so that the every scene POPS in a unique way, whether it be a drama or a comedy?

To write a great play, you need a PRODUCTION PERSPECTIVE, for a play is live.

Don’t let yourself be seduced by story and words.

Every scene is a live emotional experience!