Directing Your Own Work

Sep 01, 2018

L to R: Morgan Gould, Deborah Zoe Laufer, Rajendra Maharaj, Regina Taylor

Joey Stocks: Let’s start with the general and move towards the specific. When forging a career as a dramatist, is it enough to just write plays and/or musicals?

Subscribe to gain full access to The Dramatist Issue Archive.

Join and become a Dramatists Guild Member, Business Subscriber or subscribe to the magazine with an annual plan for unlimited access.

Guild Members receive our magazine as a benefit of membership!

View Options

Joey Stocks

was born into an Arkansas newspaper family. He strayed into theatre as a performer before joining the Guild as Director of Publications and Editor of The Dramatist from August 2011 through September 2023.

Morgan Gould

is a writer/ director currently in the playwriting program at Juilliard, a New Dramatists resident playwright, and a 2017-18 Dramatists Guild Playwriting Fellow. She is a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre and is the Artistic Director of Morgan Gould & Friends: her theatre company with nine actors, three designerproducers, and a filmmaker. She has directed plays with P73, EST, Marin Theatre Company, The Humana Festival, and Studio Theatre in DC (where her play I Wanna Fucking Tear You Apart also earned a Helen Hayes Nomination for Best New Play). This season, she will direct the NY Premiere of Leah Nanako Winkler’s God Said This at Primary Stages.

Deborah Zoe Laufer

’s plays have been produced at Steppenwolf, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Cleveland Playhouse, The Humana Festival, Everyman, Primary Stages, EST, and hundreds of other theatres around the world. She is a graduate of Juilliard, an alumna of the BMI Advanced Musical Theatre Workshop, and a DG Council member. DEBORAHZOELAUFER.com

Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj

is an artist and activist. His plays include Little Rock, The Ballad of Trayvon Martin, Mother Emanuel. Directing credits: TheatreWorks, Signature Stage, Syracuse Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Alabama Shakespeare, Goodman, and Portland Stage. Off-Broadway: Sheen Center, Public, Classical Theatre of Harlem. Recipient of Barrymore and AUDELCO Awards. www.rajendramaharaj.com

Regina Taylor

’s playwright credits include: Bread (Edgerton Award. Water Tower Theater), Crowns (four Helen Hayes awards, including Best Director), Oo-Bla-Dee (Steinberg-ATCA award), Drowning Crow, (Broadway, MTC), The Trinity River Plays (Edgerton Foundation Award), and stop.reset (Signature Theater Residency Five). She received the Denzel Washington Endowed Chair at Fordham University at Lincoln Center. An Artistic Associate of Goodman Theatre, Taylor is its most produced playwright.