1. “One usually dislikes a play while writing it, but afterward it grows on one. Let others judge and make decisions.” – Anton Chekhov
2. “Playwright” not “playwrite”. “Playwright”, implying an ancient form of building as in shipwright, cartwright, wheelwright, millwright, ploughwright.
3. Playwriting is one element of what we call a production. The other elements are direction, performance, design, marketing and audience. All of these elements must be of equal importance to ensure the cohesiveness of production.
4. Playwrighting is closer to architecture than it is to prose or poetry writing.
5. If writing for the theatre is architecture then writing for the cinema is engineering.
6. Writing a play for an actor is like building a pool for a swimmer.
7. The process of theatre is the object of theatre.
8. The purpose of Playwrighting is to ignite performance in an actor, thought in a director and feeling in an audience.
9. Theatre feeds the spirit rather than the intellect.
10. If the audience gets ahead of the story the play fails.
11. Failure is underrated.
12. A play is not written to be read but to be spoken. A play can never “work” fully on the page.
13. Stage directions are as important as dialogue. Reading a play and ignoring the stage directions is like reading a poem and ignoring the consonants.
14. “If I could tell you what the play was about in one line I would just write the line and put it up on a billboard rather than to go through all the trouble of writing the play.” – Judith Thompson
15. The audience is God.
16. The action of the play is the play of the play.
17. It is all autobiographical.
18. From character comes dialogue, from dialogue comes situation, from situation comes story, from story comes theme.
19. The message of the play is individual to each viewer. To state the message in the play is reductive.
20. The best way to write a play is to book a venue.
21. The essence of what theatre is and does has changed little since its inception – rather than making the theatre a dinosaur this proves its essence to be eternal.
22. Be careful what you say if you are sitting near a playwright in a restaurant.
23. An actor can only play the positive, the play represents the negative, it is a given. It is the tension between what the play is and what the actor does that creates the drama.
24. The first draft will not be perfect. The second draft will not be perfect. Nor will the next or next or the final. The production will not be perfect nor will the memory of the production be perfect. Perfection is clearly not the point but it is nonetheless and paradoxically what we aspire to.
25. With playwrighting we seek to construct a vessel through which the truth may pass through. The truth cannot be held. It is fluid.
26. Never talk about a play until you have finished writing it.
27. Always have an ending to head toward.
28. Be suspicious of any advice that begins with the words “never” or “always”.
29. Ego is the fuel not the engine.
30. The playwright does not, nor should they, have all the answers to the whys of the play but they must know all the questions.
31. “I can’t expose a human weakness on the stage unless I know it through having it myself.” – Tennessee Williams
32. The playwright is the aficionado of human behavior.
33. When in doubt the question is not “Why this character?” or “Why this situation?” or “Why this line?” but rather “Why theatre?”
34. Five essential Canadian plays: Creeps by David Freeman, Leaving Home by David French, The Crackwalker by Judith Thompson, Unidentified Human Remains by Brad Fraser, The History of the Village of Small Huts Play Cycle by Michael Hollingsworth.
35. Theatre is the antidote to hopelessness.
36. Indulgence is boring, boring is the cardinal sin. How to know indulgence? It’s boring to everyone but the playwright.
37. Keep writing. Write through the bad stuff. You have to write the bad stuff out to get to the good stuff.
38. Brevity is the soul of entertainment.
39. “The subject of drama is The Lie. At the end of the drama The Truth — which has been overlooked, disregarded, scorned, and denied — prevails. And that is how we know the Drama is done.” – David Mamet
40. The play is never finished.