What makes someone a playwright?
How do their identities and ideas interweave and co-exist?
What permanent truths can we discern from examining existing texts?
How can we write theatre that encapsulates the contemporary moment?
How do we develop an idea from the embryonic impulse to a full and
robust piece of theatre?
In this fresh, lively and often very funny book, playwright Ryan Craig
makes a case for the vitality of playwriting in our contemporary world
and offers a way into writing those plays.
From the very first moment of the process, as you sit in a coffee shop,
staring at your 'laptop yawning open like some big, gormless mouth, the
screen a flickering blank', to seeing your play staged and reviewed, the
author takes you through the complete journey.
Drawing on his own experience of writing for theatres such as the
National, Hampstead and Tricycle and Menier Chocolate Factory, TV drama
scripts for BBC, ITV and Channel Four, radio plays and adaptation, as
well as commercial theatre, the author explores what practical tools the
dramatist can use to write plays that build bridges between us.
Full of practical advice for the aspiring - and practising - playwright,
this book is also an important call-to-arms for playwrights everywhere,
arguing for its necessity in the context of an increasingly fractured,
distracted, disconnected world.
