Tags: Editor's Notes

If you’re like me, just the word “motivation” can be troubling sometimes—especially these days. In the early weeks of this COVID-19 pandemic, I was driven by anxiety. I was maniacally productive. In addition to maintaining our regular...

Recently, I met a newly enrolled undergraduate at a leading dramatic writing program. They told me how most professors in their department went out of their way to encourage students to remain dramatists and not “sell out” by writing for television and/or film....

When I was nineteen years old, I bought a dirt-cheap Smith-Corona typewriter. The reason it was dirt cheap was because it had a broken space bar, but I convinced myself I’d figure out how to repair it sooner or later. To mitigate the problem, the previous owner had re-programmed the “V” key to act as the space bar, creating a reverse-Roman-V situation with the “U” key. As...

Hi! You might know me, but you probably don’t. My time at the Guild began back in 2015, during my sophomore year at NYU. I had just decided to focus on playwriting at Tisch’s Department of Dramatic Writing, and the Guild’s Publications Internship seemed like a pretty...

Our previous two issues have focused on world premieres, cancellations, COVID-19, protests, uprisings, reckonings, and response. Since so many of us are still at home, we thought we’d shift the conversation back to some basics of writing. Initially, we conceived this issue to be solely about craft. In the course of editing...

Friday, March 13, 2020, it was announced the Guild staff would be working from home until the state of emergency was lifted. At the time, we expected it might last two weeks. By the following Monday morning, that expectation had changed to a month. Broadway closed and productions across the country were canceled. Eager to respond...

As I write these notes (always the last thing written for every issue), we are over five weeks into our shelter-in-place order. Here are the facts. This issue was conceived a year ago around the central question, “Why write for young audiences?” The two roundtables that are the centerpiece of this issue were assembled,...

What is Hedgebrook? Who are the new artistic directors at Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Portland Center Stage? Is anything happening at the Intiman? Where is the Village Theatre, exactly? Welcome to the Pacific Northwest Issue of The Dramatist where you’ll find answers to these questions and more. As...

Although I’ve written about it before, it’s little known that our Publications Committee sets the themes for each issue of The Dramatist. That’s not all they do, but it’s invaluable to the making of this magazine. Sometimes a theme bubbles up organically in meetings. Other times, a theme is brought in by a single committee member, like Tina Howe’s The Audience Issue and Amanda Green’s...

I’m writing these notes while on my first writing retreat. Nothing formal, just a few days sequestered in the Catskills with another writer where our days are all about the craft. It’s been a while since we’ve dedicated an issue to the craft of theatre writing. I’m particularly excited two topics are being discussed in The Dramatist for the first time: Structure and Spectacle....

To some, my home state might seem an unlikely place to mention in The Dramatist, but it has been home to some notable Guild members including Maya Angelou, David Auburn, Qui Nguyen, and Honorary Guild member and former NEA Chair Jane Chu. So, in the spirit of this issue, I’d like to pay tribute to three people from Arkansas. My friend, long-time Guild member and founder of Arkansas Repertory Theatre, Cliff Fannin Baker, passed away in September 2018. During his tenure as...

In June 2017, we began developing The Dramatist LIVE, a live event presented in a magazine format that takes its structural cues from this publication. Amy VonMacek (Manager of Business Affairs and Publications Committee member here at the Guild) suggested Community as the theme for this event, and so it was. At all...