Blogger Maia Nolan is keeping us updated with links from her coverage of the Last Frontier Theater Conference in Valdez, Alaska. Among her posts is a piece about playwright Richard Dresser, whose plays include “Augusta” and “A View of the Harbor.”
(Dresser) talked to the assembled playwrights about the writing process. The key, he said, is not to try to write well. Get the words on the page and don’t worry about craft until you’re done. Avoid “craft without creativity” — focusing on the way the play is written limits your creativity. Give yourself license, he said, to “go off the tracks.””I bet most of you would rather see a messy, sprawling play” than one that’s well-crafted but “sends you out into the street with nothing,” Dresser said. Trust your own point of view, he added, and “trust the other side of your brain.” Read more from Maia’s theater post at examiner.com.
She also posted about a conversation with playwright Arlitia Jones, director Bostin Christopher and dramaturg Jayne Wenger — collaborators on Cyrano’s “Make Good the Fires” production — about playwright-dramaturg relationships. (What’s a dramaturg? Here’s your chance to find out!)