Playwriting For Dummies

Part I

Catching the Playwriting Bug

In this part . . .

You’re here because you’re writing a play, or you have an idea for one, or you’re just plain curious about this art form. Not surprising. Men and women have been writing plays for more than 2,500 years. The idea and act of composing a story and then seeing it enacted by performers for a live audience are seductive and thrilling. Theatre is truly as real as storytelling gets. This first part of the book introduces you to the art and craft of playwriting, explores the sources of play ideas, and provides a glimpse into the life of a playwright.

Chapter 1

Introducing the Art and Craft of Playwriting

In This Chapter

arrow Looking at what playwriting is all about

arrow Getting your bearings as a playwright and getting to work

arrow Bringing your play to the stage

Playwriting is fun. Writing words that become the basis for what actors do and say in the presence of an audience is a heady experience. And fortunately, the enjoyment and satisfaction of writing plays is not reserved for some small, elite cluster of linguistic masterminds.

Anyone can write plays. It doesn’t require formal training. But like any other pursuit in life, the more you know about a subject, the quicker you’ll catch on and the better you’ll be at it. This book is here to help. It provides you, in a straightforward and uncomplicated manner, with the practical knowledge and tools you need to get down to the joy of writing plays, sooner rather than later.

This chapter lets you get your toes wet in the world of playwriting so you can see how you like the water. It also offers you an overview of how this book will help you write and appreciate plays.

Understanding the Nature of the Beast

A playwright has a foot in each of two worlds: the world of art and the world of craft. For playwrights, the dividing line between art and craft is clear. The playwright as an artist conceives of an idea, a story, a statement to be made by the play. And the playwright as craftsman brings together the materials and construction skills to build the platform — the play — from which the idea, story, and statement can effectively reach out to audiences.

In a less metaphorical and more practical vein, a playwright writes plays for theatre. As obvious as that fact is, it’s important to understand that plays and theatre, though inextricably interconnected, are distinct and therefore deserve individual consideration.

check.png The play: A play is a story written in the form of a script containing dialogue (what the characters say) and stage directions (what the characters do physically). A play is intended to be performed by actors in the presence of an audience.

check.png Theatre: Theatre is a branch of the performing arts that involves the presentation of a play by performers before a live audience. (Of course, theatre can also refer to the physical structure that the play is performed in.) Unlike the production of a film, theatre doesn’t require expensive electronic gear, such as cameras, lights, microphones, sound equipment, and so on. In its most basic form, theatre doesn’t require a director, and it doesn’t even need the presence of a playwright after the script has been completed. You don’t need to be an Einstein to grasp theatre’s fundamental formula:

Script + Performer + Audience = Theatre

Glimpsing the Life of a Playwright

The life of a playwright is, in many respects, much like the life of any other artist — it has its ups and downs. Working as a playwright, you’ll have moments of artistic pleasure and satisfaction, and you’ll also have periods of frustration and disappointment. The work requires persistent hard work, and it rewards you with a sense of fulfillment from a completed project. You’ll find that personal sacrifices have to be made, but you’ll get supreme gratification from knowing that your work has made the world richer.

Working as a playwright is exciting and challenging and fascinating. After you’ve taken the plunge, there’s no going back. I’ve heard playwrights at low points grumbling about giving it up and leading a normal life, but I’ve never seen one do it. When theatre gets in your blood, you’ll likely find that you don’t want to be doing anything else.

tip.eps The following tips for becoming a successful playwright apply to your day-to-day existence as well as your overall lifestyle. You’ll find some of these practices invigorating and others more mundane, but they’re all important.

check.png Be an attentive observer of people and student of human nature. If you want to create and stage believable characters in a play, you need to watch, listen to, and learn from everyone you come across, and you should be able to make use of what you take in.

check.png See and read lots of plays. You can learn a good deal from the successes and failures of others, and you need to know and understand trends and what producers and audiences are looking for.

check.png Participate fully in life. By interacting with others and staying active — from tweeting to traveling — you keep the mental shelves well stocked with fresh experiences to draw on.

check.png Have a quiet and interruption-free place to work. It can be a bedroom converted to an office or cubicle at your library, whatever works for you.

check.png Have the self-discipline to sit yourself down to write, preferably at the same time each day. Some habits are beneficial, and this is one of them. You become a better and productive writer by actually writing.

check.png Make a living. The vast majority of artists in any artistic medium need to have a day job. Man (or woman) does not live by art alone (most of us don’t, anyway).

The following sections pull together all these practices — and then some — to give you an idea of what playwriting is all about and the process you work through to create a play that’s ready for the stage. Chapter 2 also provides more detail on how to develop as a playwright.

Understanding stage plays

Plays are magic. For a couple of hours, a collection of strangers assembles and sits in the dark to witness other strangers enacting a story. The first group of strangers — the audience — is, without conscious effort or consent, drawn psychologically and emotionally into the story. The audience begins to care what becomes of characters who are played by the actors onstage. As if by hypnotism, audience members lose track of time and forget themselves and their personal concerns for the duration of the play.

Plays have a language that’s common to playwrights, actors, directors, and other theatre people. This language includes terminology like protagonist (the main character), antagonist (the primary obstacle facing the protagonist), conflict (opposing objectives), spine (story line), inciting incident (the event that gets the plot going), backstory (events that occurred before the play begins), exposition (the gradual revealing of the backstory through dialogue), climax (the final confrontation between the protagonist and antagonist), and more. Use of this specialized vocabulary promotes clarity among theatre people as a play is developed and, ultimately, staged.

remember.eps Compelling plays — plays that keep theatregoers glued to their seats — feature the following important characteristics:

check.png Characters that the audience can understand and empathize with.

check.png Stories that keep audiences guessing; they never become predictable. You never want an audience to get ahead of the story.

check.png Specific details about the characters and the story rather than generalities and stereotypes.

check.png An essential simplicity and clarity at the core. No matter how complex the characters and story may be, the play should build to the answer of one simple and unambiguous question: Will the protagonist succeed in achieving her objectives or not?

Coming up with and refining ideas

Inspiration is unpredictable. You’ll never be able to tell exactly when you’ll come upon the play idea you want to spend months and even years exploring. Ideas for a play can come from so many sources that listing and discussing the many possibilities would take a book in itself. However, the following list suggests a number of likely sources for good ideas:

check.png Your life: Good or bad occurrences in your life usually provide fertile material. A writer’s life is her unique and most valuable resource.

check.png Events you’ve witnessed: Something you’ve seen, even if it didn’t involve you personally, can inspire a good story for the stage.

check.png Stories you’ve been told: Family memories or other stories and events that have been told to you can spark a play idea.

check.png Media reports: Events, enraging or encouraging, that have been reported in newspapers, magazine, television, radio, and on the Internet can provide the germ of an idea that can grow into a play.

check.png Your dreams: Some of the most intriguing, if sometimes bizarre, ideas for plays can come out of your unconscious mind while dreaming.

check.png Your imagination: Sometimes ideas just pop into your head seemingly with no provocation at all. Write them down.

tip.eps Carry a notebook or an electronic device that allows you to key in information. You never know when that great idea will creep up on you, and you don’t want to trust it to your memory.

To read more about finding and developing ideas for plays, turn to Chapter 4.

Creating complete characters

Plays are about what their characters do and say. The key to creating complete, lifelike, and believable characters is specifics. The more detailed and fully fleshed out your characters are, the more readily audiences will empathize and sympathize with them.

remember.eps A mantra you can embrace that will facilitate the creation of successful characters is this: Know your characters as well as you know your best friend. All the information you know about your best friend allows you to predict with great accuracy what he or she will do in a given situation. And that’s where you want to be with your characters, even if most of the characters’ details and specifics are never mentioned in your play.

Invest some time before you start writing your play in writing mini-biographies of your characters. Chapter 7 gives you plenty of ideas about what sort of info to include in these bios. When you’re working with an intimate knowledge of your characters, it’ll feel like your play is almost writing itself.

Factoring in the logistics of staging plays

One of the hardest things for the generations that grew up with movies and television as their primary source of storytelling entertainment is to internalize the essential differences between screenplays/teleplays and plays for the stage. They are as different as, well, apples and oranges.

Screenplays and teleplays have the technical ability (and usually the budget) to take audiences anywhere anytime. A story told through TV or film can be in New York one moment, in Hawaii the next, and at the top of Mt. Everest the scene after. Film and TV crews can travel to these locations to film and skillfully edit these very different locations into a seamless story line. In addition, today, much of what you see on a screen is created or supported by images produced with computers.

Stageplays, on the other hand, are limited to what can be done on a stage with real people in real time. Plays, of necessity, focus on the interaction of the characters and on their emotional lives. Theatre springs from characters trying to achieve their goals in opposition to the goals of other characters. That’s what plays do well. What plays don’t do well are car chases, explosions, alien abductions, gunfights, and other large, physically demanding activities; they can be simulated on stage, but they are more realistically done on film or TV.

Getting started on your play

As you get started on your play, you want to have your ducks in a row. Consider all the following recommendations:

check.png Be sure your characters are detailed and specific and driven by clear objectives. You want to be clear on which character is your protagonist and which is your antagonist and what each of them is after.

check.png Be sure your cast is as lean as it can be. It’s an unfortunate reality in professional theatre today that the smaller the cast, the more attractive the play to producers. So you want to be sure that you axe those superfluous characters that appear for a line or two, never to be seen again. Playwriting today requires not only artistic imagination and vision but an inventiveness to do more with fewer actors.

check.png Remember to use your environment in the play. Where your play is set should not be arbitrary or ambiguous. A scene involving two brothers in conflict over an inheritance will play out very differently if it takes place in their home, in a restaurant, in a church, or in the room of their dying father. Where the dispute takes place can and should influence what they can say and how they can say it.

check.png Be clear about your inciting incident. This important term indicates the event that ignites the play and sets your protagonist on her journey. (Turn to Chapter 10 find out more about inciting incidents.)

check.png Start your play as far into the story as possible. Writing plays is about picking the crucial moments of your story and putting only those on stage. Early events and background information can be relegated to backstory and revealed through exposition. (Chapter 10 also discusses these components of the beginning of your play.)

check.png Consider adding a ticking clock. Suspense can be fueled by a limit on the time your protagonist has to complete her mission. (No, it doesn’t have to be a literal ticking clock. And yes, you can read more about this subject — in Chapter 10.)

check.png If you can at this point, have a vision of your climactic moment. Knowing what the final confrontation between the protagonist and antagonist will look like helps guide you through writing the middle of the play.

Some writers outline their plays before beginning work. Some writers outline some of the time. Others prefer to plunge right in and see where the play takes them. You’ll figure out in time what practice works best for you, but when you’re beginning, my best advice is to outline. The time you invest in thinking through your play makes the writing easier and faster and helps you avoid the dreaded writer’s block.

Developing your story line

The middle portion of a play is often the part that requires the bulk of the work. In the middle of the play, your protagonist encounters the obstacles to the completion of her mission.

One by one, the obstacles need to be overcome before the protagonist can move ahead. The obstacles should increase in difficulty, giving a sense of rising action. And to develop the audience’s emotional involvement, you need to include setbacks, moments when both the audience and the character feel pessimistic about the prospects. The protagonist’s journey toward the climactic moment should be anything but smooth sailing.

A tool for coming up with formidable obstacles for your protagonist is to ask yourself this question: What’s the worst thing that could happen right now? And then make it happen. Chapter 11 further advises you on how to develop the middle section of your play with obstacles.

tip.eps If you’re writing the now standard two-act full-length play, you want to craft an ending to the first act that will have your audiences itching to come back to see how things turn out. It should involve a point of no return; the protagonist should be so far into her journey that there’s no going back. If you create a cliffhanger (also sometimes referred to as a hook) at the end of the first act, the audience goes to intermission thinking, How’s she going to get herself out of that? I can’t wait to get back to see what happens.

Building to the climax and resolution

The climax is the point near the end of your play when the protagonist and antagonist confront each other one last time. It’s the apex of your protagonist’s uphill climb. As a result of the climactic moment, only one of the two combatants can emerge on top.

In plays where the protagonist ultimately succeeds in her quest, the climactic moment — her victory — is often preceded by a low point, a negative condition from which it looks like the protagonist cannot recover. Then, like the mythical phoenix, the protagonist heroically arises from the ashes to achieve her objective.

In a play in which the protagonist is destined to fail to achieve her goal, the climactic moment often is preceded by a triumph or advance toward her objective. This temporary success sets the audience up to experience the irony and bittersweetness of the heroic defeat.

Plays have a cause-and-effect structure. One event, choice, decision, or action leads directly to another event, choice, decision, or action, and so on. This causality linking the events of your play should lead to the earned conclusion, an ending that’s justified by the events that came before. It’s a relevant and plausible conclusion that, in retrospect, seems inevitable to the story being played out. Chapter 12 guides you through the process of writing a good buildup to the climax and creating a powerful scene that determines the ending.

After the climax has occurred in your play, the characters generally have to deal with the consequences, the aftermath. Usually a brief moment or one last scene after the quest is over lets audience see how the dust settles. Audiences are given a peek at the new landscape. This closing is referred to as the play’s resolution. The resolution is where you tie up loose ends if some of the threads in the play remain dangling. If your play has subplots, the resolution is your last opportunity to bring closure to the stories within your main story. Flip to Chapter 13 to find out more about resolutions.

It Ain’t Over ’Til It’s On Its Feet

Despite all your hard work, playwriting is not done when you finish a draft of your play you’re happy with. Plays are meant to be produced — performed by actors for a live audience. Without performance, a play is like a custom-built car that’s never taken out of the garage — it may look good, but it hardly serves any good purpose. So until a play is on its feet, the playwriting process is not completed. (There’s a quaint form of literature called closet drama, which is plays that aren’t meant to be performed but instead be read as one reads a book. Fine and dandy, but where’s the fun in that?)

The whole point of writing a play is to tell a story to an audience through the medium of theatre, via actors in live stage performance. So until your play gets there, until it’s on its feet in rehearsal and performance, the goal is not yet fully attained. You want to see your words dramatically spoken by actors. You want to see your story enacted from start to finish. And you crave the applause that’s earned by a job well done — not only by you but by a host of talented and enthusiastic collaborators.

Getting ready to collaborate

Novels, short stories, and poems are forms of writing in which nothing necessarily stands between the creator and the audience. A poet can recite his work for anyone who’ll listen. A prose writer can make her work available to readers online, if not through a publisher. However, unlike those forms of writing, playwriting does not stand on its own.

The play is where theatre begins. When you type the words The End, the play’s journey is only partially completed. For the play to come to full fruition, it needs to be performed by actors. And the performance is enhanced immensely by the work of a director and a score of people working on the set, lights, sound, costumes, props, and so on. In other words, without the participation of a team of theatre professionals, your play doesn’t happen.

remember.eps The collaborative nature of playwriting requires the playwright to be open to the input and imagination of the other players. The director’s vision impacts your play. The creativity of all the designers (sets, lights, sound, and costumes) is evident in the finished production. You can’t have it all your way, and you shouldn’t want to. Just as a child is not only the product of parental authority but also of teachers, classmates, and media influences, so too is the production of a play the result of many hands. And as a playwright, you’ll want to adopt a team-spirit mindset to playwriting. (If you want to know more about that aspect of playwriting, Chapters 3 and 16 help you come to grips with the collaborative process.)

Promoting your play and understanding the business of theatre

When your play is ready to leave the nest, you need to prepare yourself for the realities of promoting your play with the intention of seeing it performed, which means getting the play produced.

Like it or not, a reality in theatre is that nothing gets done without money. And sad to say, it’s not always the best plays that get produced; sometimes a production decision is about the prospect, from a producer’s point of view, of selling lots of tickets. To get financing for your play, you must attract the attention of a producer or producing organization.

Before doing anything else, your first step is to copyright your play. It’s simple and relatively inexpensive and gives you the peace of mind that comes with having proof of ownership. After that, your path to production will likely include some, if not all, of these phases:

check.png Critique and feedback from people who know plays and theatre

check.png Script-in-hand readings of your play by actors before a public or specially invited audience to get a real-world sense of how well the play works

check.png Submission of the play to contests and competitions in the hopes of getting exposure for the play and building your résumé

Looking at theatre up close

Theatre can be a puzzling word: Is it an art form or a physical location? Is it spelled -re or -er?

In addition to indicating the art form, the word theatre designates the playhouse — the building, auditorium, or other space in which plays and other performing arts take place. The word comes from the Greek theatron, meaning viewing/seeing place. And that’s exactly what a theatre is — a place to see a performance.

To complicate matters, theatre can also be spelled theater. Some people make the distinction that theatre is the art form and theater is the building. Other people say that -re is the British spelling and -er is American. What is correct? Well, it boils down to a "you say tom-a-to and I say tom-ah-to" situation: The answer depends on whom you ask. To keep things simple, I use only the -re form — theatre — in this book.

check.png Networking by showing up at plays and other theatre functions — seminars, workshops, conferences, and so on, where theatre-savvy people are likely to congregate — to introduce yourself and make your interests known

check.png Query letters inviting producers and the artistic directors of theatre companies that produce a season of plays to read your play

warning_bomb.eps Some playwrights fancy themselves artistes and see themselves as above the commonplace undertaking of promoting and marketing their plays. If you’re one of those, I have three words for you: Get over it. The successful playwright — the successful artist of any sort — is one who understands that you need to be your own best advocate. No one can speak to the merits of your work better than you.

When you’re ready to take on the challenge of getting your play produced, plenty of info in this book will help you on your way. Chapter 15 discusses the process of holding readings and revising your script, and Chapter 17 helps you nail down a producer so your vision can finally be brought to life on a stage.

Chapter 2

Living the Life of a Playwright

In This Chapter

arrow Defining the playwright and what the playwright does

arrow Developing your skills as a playwright

arrow Investigating how a playwright works and the tools available

arrow Examining how a playwright makes money, both in and out of the theatre

You want to put words in other people’s mouths. You’re dying to hear those words dramatically expressed in the presence of an audience. You can’t wait to revel in the ecstasy of the wild applause.

You’ve been bitten by the bug — the playwriting bug.

You’ve probably seen plays presented by the drama club of high schools or colleges or performed by community theatre companies. Possibly you’ve acted in such productions. Very likely you studied some classic plays while in school or you may have had the opportunity to experience the excitement of seeing new plays done professionally. And during one of those theatrical experiences — somewhere between the heartrending dialogue and the laugh-out-loud comedic lines — you thought, I can do that. I can write lines like that. That’s how the obsession begins. Welcome to the art and craft of playwriting!

This chapter previews what you’re getting yourself into. In it, I outline what it means to be a playwright, explain what a playwright does, list the traits of working playwrights, and describe what the life of a playwright is like.

And by the way, yes, you can do that!

Discovering What Makes a Playwright

A playwright writes plays. When you begin to pen dialogue or key it into a computer, you are playwriting. You may not be an experienced playwright and you may not yet have had one of your works produced, but by setting down lines to be said and enacted by someone else, you’ve become part of a long and (mostly) venerated tradition and history: You’ve taken on the mantle of dramatist. So hold your head high!

The playwright is an artist and a craftsman. Like an architect, the artist component of the playwright formulates the idea of the play, determines the form that will best serve the idea, and creates the blueprint for an engaging story. The craftsman component of the playwright is like an engineer, responsible for using the blueprints to design the infrastructure — the frame, water lines, power lines, communication lines, and so on — that will enable the building to function and fulfill the architect’s vision. Both an architect and an engineer are needed for most building projects. So, too, are the artist and craftsman roles needed for the creation of a play.

Playwrights come from all walks of life

No single formula creates a playwright. Playwrights come from all walks of life, every type of job, all education and economic levels, all ages, colors, and creeds, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or disability. The playwriting bug is an equal opportunity stinger.

I started out as a small-town reporter-photographer, segued into corporate communications for a decade, and was involved in local politics before my love of a good story — and an improvisation class I took for the fun of it — led me into playwriting.

And though it’s not unusual for playwrights to have related pursuits (like journalism or acting) in their backgrounds, no special résumé or particular experience is required to join the club. All you need is the love of storytelling and the willingness to roll up your sleeves and get to work.

The Great White Way is great, but you don’t need to live there

If you’re under the uneasy impression that to be a successful playwright you need to reside close to The Great White Way, relax. Broadway is a great place to visit, but you don’t have to live there.

Funny spelling: Is wright right?

The word playwright is a combination of the product — the play — and of its maker — the wright. The word wright isn’t used much today. It can stand on its own, meaning a person who constructs or repairs, but most often the word is found piggybacking on what the wright constructs or repairs. For example, a shipwright is someone who constructs or repairs ships, and a wainwright is someone who constructs or repairs, yes, wains (meaning carts and wagons).

Most people who have not had occasion to refer to this profession in writing usually go for playwrite as the spelling. After all, if the activity is playwriting, then shouldn’t the person who writes plays be known as a playwrite? Or should it be playwriter, since a person who writes movie scripts is called a screenwriter? Maybe in some parallel universe, but not here for us. And you can blame it on that snobby old dramatist and poet, Ben Jonson. While you and I are thrilled to be called a playwright, Jonson devised the term as an insult.

Ben Jonson, a contemporary of William Shakespeare, is known for his satirical plays. Jonson, like the great Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, wrote his plays in blank verse (a form of nonrhyming poetry), and he had no patience for dramatists who couldn’t quite measure up to his artistic standards. Jonson belittled lesser writers as playwrights — implying that they were merely common tradesmen constructing plays. On the other hand, he was (visualize Jonson with his nose in the air) a poet! Jonson’s sneering term playwright stuck, but over time the word lost his intended negative connotation.

Yes, New York City is to theatre what Hollywood is to filmmaking. The Big Apple is the home of the legendary and electrically gleaming Broadway theatre district. And despite Broadway’s competitiveness and long odds against big-time success, it attracts some of the best and brightest performers, directors, and playwrights theatre has to offer. To bend a line from the Frank Sinatra hit New York, New York: If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

All that being said, though New York is the Mecca of theatre activity in the United States, theatre is alive and well in many other American cities and communities, thank you very much. Other theatre-centric heavy hitters include Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington, D.C. But many smaller cities also have vibrant theatre communities, and, because 90 percent of Americans live within 25 miles of some city, you likely have the opportunity to see — and involve yourself in — theatre.

For those of you who ascribe to Dorothy’s insight, There’s no place like home, rest assured that you can make it as a playwright without uprooting yourself and leaving your way of life behind.

Learning from Other Playwrights

If your dream was to be next hot lead guitarist in a rock band, in addition to learning to play a guitar, you would listen to tons of rock CDs and make your way to as many rock concerts as you could manage in order to learn from the experience and skill of others. As the great mathematician and scientist Isaac Newton said, too modestly but truthfully, about his groundbreaking discoveries: If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants. In other words, intentionally or not, as a playwright you build on the work of those who have come before you.

To develop skills in playwriting, exploring the theatre works of playwrights who have gotten their plays produced is strategically and educationally smart. In other words, before you strike out on your own, you want to understand what has preceded you and learn from the successes and failures of others — be they giants or not.

This section covers simple ways you can quickly get yourself up to speed on playwriting by surveying the theatrical landscape. Check out what others are doing. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to be successful.

Observing the rules before you break them

In my experience as a playwriting teacher, I frequently come across students who can’t wait to shake things up. These would-be revolutionaries are eager to express their individuality and put their unique stamp on the theatre and the world at large. And they couldn’t care less about story structure and playwriting guidelines. Dude, aren’t rulz made to be broken?

As far as I’m concerned, you can’t have too much of that kind of enthusiasm and drive. I admire and welcome the passion and energy of new writers ready to scorch the earth with their fervently held ideas and ideals. But — and it’s a big but — if your credo is that rules are made to be broken, a caveat must be attached to that philosophy: If you’re going to break the rules, first know the rules you plan to break.

Knowing and understanding the rules of any art form, including playwriting, will provide you with a launching pad from which you can soar to any heights and in any direction your heart and skills will take you.

Seeing lots of plays (good and bad)

tip.eps If you want to be an informed and savvy playwright — and you should — immerse yourself in plays and theatre. See as many plays as you possibly can. Even without trying, you’ll learn a great deal about plays and theatre — what works or doesn’t, and what’s practical or impossible. If a play earns less than stellar reviews, don’t necessarily avoid it. The reviewer’s perspective on the play may be very different from yours. And even if the play is a dud, you can learn as much by analyzing a flop as you can by studying a hit.

Here are some venues for you to see lots of shows:

check.png Schools: Almost every high school and college does plays; some do very fine productions. Don’t shy away from school productions. But focus on the play — the story, the characters, the dialogue — and not so much on the abilities of the student actors and directors.

check.png Amateur theatre: Many towns and small cities have what’s referred to as community theatre. (My own suburban county, though relatively small, enjoys two community theatres.) A community theatre company is composed of volunteer actors, directors, stagecraft people (set, sound, lighting, and costume designers, among others). Volunteer is the key; no professional theatre people are involved. All participants are amateurs doing theatre for the fun and satisfaction of it.

Community groups tend to focus on productions of popular plays. The wonderful comedies of playwright extraordinaire Neil Simon are a staple of community theatre.

check.png Regional theatres: Regional theatres, sometimes referred to as resident theatres, can be found all around the country. These are professional theatres that mount their own productions of new shows or revivals. Usually regional theatres have a season of three or more shows, each performed for a month or so, for an audience of about 200–400 people each show.

I’ve been privileged to have one of my plays, The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith, presented at such fine regional theatres as the Hartford Stage (Connecticut), the Cape Playhouse (Cape Cod, Massachusetts), the Florida Stage (near Palm Beach), Florida Rep (in Fort Myers), and the George Street Playhouse (New Brunswick, New Jersey), among others.

check.png Touring productions in performing arts centers: Hundreds of performing arts centers are located in and outside of major municipalities around the country. These venues typically bring in the road-show productions of Broadway hits as well as concerts and dance programs. Touring shows — like Phantom of the Opera, for instance — bring Broadway-caliber productions to the hinterlands, sometimes with the Broadway cast members and sometimes with different performers.

check.png Broadway and other big-city theatre: You can catch major productions of new and important plays in New York City on Broadway, obviously, but also in such other major cities as Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. The quality of the plays you can see in the big cities may or may not be superior to what you see elsewhere, but the production values (sets, props, costumes, lighting, sound, and so on) generally will be first rate. And occasionally you’ll catch big-name film actors in starring roles.

Finding ways to attend theatre without going broke

Compared with movie tickets, theatre ticket prices are high. Typically, tickets can range from $20 to $30 or more in community theatre, from $40 to $80 or more on the regional level, and $75 to $150 or more in the big cities. Going to theatre ain’t cheap. So how, then, can you see lots of plays without taking out a second mortgage? Below are several avenues to less expensive (and even free) tickets. In some cases, you may find yourself up in the nosebleed seats, but you’ll be able to see plays without breaking the bank.

remember.eps Never be reluctant to ask about discounts or freebies. Because everyone, particularly theatre people, knows that tickets are not cheap, no one will be offended. The worst that will happen is you’ll get no for an answer.

Subscribing to theatres

tip.eps Buy subscriptions to theatres that present a season of shows. Subscribers generally get their pick of seats, are entitled to perks (like after-show discussions with the cast), and, best of all, pay as little as half price per ticket. For example, Penguin Repertory Theatre (with which I’m affiliated) in Stony Point, New York, offers subscribers a season of four productions for the price of three. If you need encouragement to get out and see theatre, buying a subscription is a good way to prompt yourself to go.

Going through discount organizations

A number of theatre and entertainment organizations, most of them online, offer discounted tickets. Many of them will send you e-mails alerting you to the latest ticket opportunities. Discounts can range from 10 percent to half price or more (or even offer free tickets), depending on the nature of the organization. Generally, attractive discounts are available when a show opens (to help build audiences and positive word of mouth) and when a show is nearing the end of its run (to fill seats as the production schedule winds down). Some discount organizations charge a small annual fee; some charge a service fee. Following are some organizations that offer discounts and information about discounts:

check.png America Performs: www.americaperforms.com

check.png Broadway Box: www.broadwaybox.com

check.png Theatre Development Fund (TDF): www.tdf.org

check.png Playbill Online: www.playbill.com

check.png Audience Extras: www.audienceextras.com

Snagging student or senior discounts

Some theatres, usually those outside the Great White Way (Broadway), offer discounts to senior citizens or to students with student identification (see Student rush below for another discount opportunity for students). This courtesy, if available, varies from theatre to theatre, so the only way to know is to check with the box office or go to the theatre’s website.

Attending previews

When plays open, the first handful of performances may be designated as previews, followed days or weeks later by the official opening performance. The purpose of the preview period is to see the show on its feet and make any last-minute changes or refinements to fix problems that may emerge when the show is done for an audience. Sometimes, though not always, tickets for a show are cheaper during the preview period. Why? Theoretically, a preview performance can be stopped to fix a staging problem, but it’s rare. I’ve never seen it happen. Interrupting a performance is not something theatre people like to do, so most fixes are made between performances.

Participating as an usher or volunteer

Ushering — assisting ticketholders in finding their seats — is the simplest way of seeing lots of plays for free. Most theatres favor volunteer ushers. Some theatres keep a running list of available ushers, so ask about it at your local theatres. Unfortunately, the big Broadway houses tend not to use volunteers; they have their own staffs. But you can still ask.

tip.eps An alternative to ushering is to volunteer to help in the costume shop, set-building shop, in theatre management, or other areas. If the theatre uses volunteers, you may be paid in free tickets. Again, ask. Volunteering also gives you the opportunity to make yourself known the various theatre professionals you’ll meet and to build relationships with them that