Publication Date: March 1, 1994 | ISBN-10: 0240801903 | ISBN-13: 978-0240801902 | Edition: First Edition
This is a practical introduction to the basic principles, structures and processes of writing plays. Beginning with simple concepts and exercises, this book gradually builds in complexity, until the reader is writing his or her one act play.
Writing plays is unique because feedback, alternative approaches and discussion spur creativity. This book encourages this and thereby encourages the reader to write. The reader will discover how stage plays differ from screenplays, novels and television. The book also describes how autobiographical materials are transformed into playable parts, and how characters are moved by action. `Playwriting: The first workshop' gives readers the necessary background to begin working on their first play.
Captures the workshop experience through writing, analyzing and testing plays. Contains synopsis and analysis of several well-known plays, such as `The Dining Room'. Each chapter provides study questions and exercises that reinforce important concepts.
Writing plays is unique because feedback, alternative approaches and discussion spur creativity. This book encourages this and thereby encourages the reader to write. The reader will discover how stage plays differ from screenplays, novels and television. The book also describes how autobiographical materials are transformed into playable parts, and how characters are moved by action. `Playwriting: The first workshop' gives readers the necessary background to begin working on their first play.
Kathleen George is the best selling author of a series of thrillers set in Pittsburgh where she lives and where she is a professor of theatre at the University of Pittsburgh. Her fifth novel HIDEOUT (August 16, 2001) has won high praise already. Her fourth, THE ODDS, just now out in paperback, was a finalist for an Edgar® award for best novel of the year in 2010. She is also the author of the acclaimed novels TAKEN, FALLEN, and AFTERIMAGE, the short story collection THE MAN IN THE BUICK, and the 2011 edited collection of stories, PITTSBURGH NOIR. Early on George Pelecanos wrote "I look forward to reading anything Kathleen George writes." An Entertainment Weekly reviewer wrote of THE ODDS, "If anyone is writing better police thrillers than George, I don't know who it is."
She is married to writer Hilary Masters, who asked her out twenty years ago because he figured she, a theatre director, would be interesting--he was tired of being around writers. On the first date, she told him she had begun writing (or more accurately had taken it up again, having said from the time she was seven that she wanted to be a writer).
He thought, "Oh, no, not another one." But they had already hit it off and so it was too late. Now there are two of them in one household, shuffling around in sloppy clothes, coffee cups in hand, heading to paper, computer, typewriter.
"When I was eight, I took my accumulated miseries up to the attic," she wrote in "The Making of a Writer" "where I had discovered I could make an area, (a small stage set?) with table, chair, notebooks and pen, and suddenly my world seemed whole and good--a secret and a treasure."
*******Detailed media bio and photos:
Kathleen George was born in Johnstown Pennsylvania. As a child, she wanted to be a writer. She wrote stories and plays in high school and in her undergraduate years as a creative writing major at the University of Pittsburgh. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in Theatre (also at Pitt). By then she had made her home in Pittsburgh. For eight years she taught theatre at Carlow College, where she directed many plays. Then she accepted a teaching position at Pitt where she continued to direct and teach dramatic literature and playwriting; in the early 80s, she began to add fiction writing back into the mix. In 1988, she earned an M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing (also at Pitt!) on the side. She is a Professor in the Theatre Arts Department.
Book-length fiction publications are: THE MAN IN THE BUICK, a collection of stories, BKMK press, 1999; TAKEN, a novel, Delacorte 2001; FALLEN, Dell 2004; AFTERIMAGE, St. Martin's Minotaur 2007; and THE ODDS, St. Martin's Minotaur 2009. TAKEN has been translated into French, German, Japanese, Dutch, Danish, and Norwegian. In August of 2011, HIDEOUT, a fifth novel, will launch. She is also the editor of the 2011 PITTSBURGH NOIR.
George has been granted fellowships at artists' colonies, including the VCCA and MacDowell. Her short fiction has appeared in journals and magazines which include Mademoiselle, Cimarron Review, North American Review, New Letters, and Alaska Quarterly Review. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and one story was listed among the Distinguished in Best American Short Stories.
Her theatre publications are: Rhythm in Drama, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980, Playwriting: The First Workshop, Allworth Press, 2008 (first in print with Butterworth (Focal Press) 1994), and Winter's Tales: Reflections on the Novelistic Stage, University of Delaware, 2005.
She has taught for Pitt in London and has served as faculty and as Academic Dean for Semester at Sea. She has directed for Pitt's mainstage and for the Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival productions which include The Rehearsal, The Country Wife, She Stoops to Conquer, The Winter's Tale, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, A Flea in Her Ear, and Our Town. A number of these productions were listed among the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Ten Best of the Year. She has also produced and sometimes directed over sixty original plays written by her students.
This review is from: Playwriting: The First Workshop (Paperback)
This book is amazing. Anyone who is interested in writing plays must read this book. The author walks you through the steps of playwriting and gives you critiqued examples to help illustrate her lesson. A top notch guide to playwriting.
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