The Elements of Playwriting

Book excerpt: Louis Catron imbued experienced and fledgling playwrights with inspiration, guidance, and a passport to maximizing their writing skills as well as their overall ability to transform written words into a stage production. He understood that being a playwright is more than putting pen to paper. It involves expressing a personal point of view, bringing a vision to life, developing dimensional characters, structuring a play’s action, and finding producers, directors, and actors to bring the work to life. In the second edition Norman Bert infuses the enduring merits of Catron’s original work with examples, technological developments, and trends geared to today’s readers. Bert’s play references are familiar to contemporary students, including examples from plays written since 2000. He includes useful information on web-based research and the electronic submission process. A new chapter focuses on the playwright’s responsibility to lay the groundwork for production elements like casting, design, theatre architecture as it impacts audience–performer relationships, staging modes, and the uses and expectations of stage directions. Also new to this edition are reading resources for delving deeper into topics discussed.