Playwriting: A Backstage Guide

by Dan Rebellato

Overview

This book is ideal for anyone keen to understand how contemporary plays and playwrights work, particularly those wanting to write for the stage themselves. Drawing heavily on contemporary practice, it considers moments from a range of plays, with a focus on those from the National Theatre's repertoire. The book embraces a range of different dramaturgical structures and styles popular today; plays by a diverse selection of writers; and the current openness of dramatic form. A book of tools, rather than rules, this guide provides suggestions and provocations, exercises and tricks, examples and discussions. An ideal text for playwrights to hone their craft.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350135833
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/23/2023
Series:	National Theatre Backstage Guides
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	4.75(w) x 6.45(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Dan Rebellato is an experienced, internationally performed playwright for theatre and radio. He has taught playwriting for 25 years for various universities, writers' groups, Arvon and elsewhere. He has also written widely and influentially on contemporary British theatre, with a focus on the theory and practice of new writing. He is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. What Does a Playwright Do?
2. How to have Ideas
3. Monologue
4. (How) Can We Learn from Aristotle?
5. Structure
6. Form
7. Plot vs. Story
8. Time and Place
9. Making a Scene
10. Dialogue and Subtext
11. Character
12. Writing Your Play
13. Getting It Staged
Notes
Further Reading

Editorial Reviews

It's hard to think of a scholar and theatre maker more knowledgeable about new work and how it's made or a more perspicacious critic of the contemporary UK theatre scene than Dan Rebellato.” —David Eldridge, Dramatist and Screenwriter

From the Publisher