This book explores the differences between drama and genre, empowering screenwriters to make their own story and character choices, so they can write, package and finance their own features. Includes detailed case studies of dramas made on both shoestring and bigger budgets and industry insights from their writers, directors and producers.

For over two decades, Stephen Jeffreys' remarkable series of workshops attracted writers from all over the world and shaped the ideas of many of today's leading playwrights and theater-makers. Now, with this inspiring, highly practical book, you too can learn from these acclaimed masterclasses.

Writing Plays is the invaluable and comprehensive guide to anyone who wants to write plays and get them performed. It covers the basics of the theatre, creating and working with characters, writing realistic speech and dialogue, constructing compelling plots and creating a great ending. There are also separate chapters focused on writing for different genres, including pantomimes, musicals, radio and television. And a final section looks at the practicalities...

Ten award winning Australian playwrights talk candidly about their best known plays. Each writer reveals their writing process and discusses the themes and characters within their work. The dynamic presenter, Dr. Tess Brady, provides a critical commentary for each play. Jack Hibberd talks about bringing down the forth wall in Dimboola and the existential clown in A Stretch of the Imagination. Debra Oswald explores the ugly ducking story underlying...

Ten award winning Australian playwrights talk candidly about their best known plays. Each writer reveals their writing process and discusses the themes and characters within their work. The dynamic presenter, Dr. Tess Brady, provides a critical commentary for each play. Joanna Murray-Smith discusses the power of words in Nightfall and explores love, identity and belonging in Honour. Louis Nowra talks about shedding the misconceptions of childhood...

The humor of African-American life is inextricably tied to the humor on the African-American stage, its character shaped by the contradictions of being Black and Bewildered and Bothered in the New World. It is a humor that breathes sanity and humanity in the midst of profound circumstances. To find logic in this existence is at the heart of the African-American comic odyssey. Writers who understand the mythic comic paradigm articulate the rage, the...