Watching movies should count as study time for writers. Along with reading novels, going to see plays and listening to radio drama. That is if you take the time to deconstruct your experience of them. And, good news, you don’t have to be a lit major or a dramaturg to gain insights.Read More →
Hotly pursuing my 2017 resolution to read more plays, I’ve chivvied out a play by Joanna Murray-Smith, perhaps the most produced Australian playwright. But then there’s that David Williamson. But surely she’s the most produced female playwright. Good on her, I say.Read More →
I’m a Scandi TV addict. Ok? I am. Everything Nordic, no matter what the topic—and let’s face it, it’s usually the topic of crime—I’m on it. I watched Midnight Sun, smorgasbord-style, all I could eat, back-to-back episodes, could not help myself, in one sitting. I will gorge myself, without a shred of guilt, and also without a shred of regard for how badly written some of this stuff is.Read More →
So I read Private Lives by Noel Coward. It was everything I thought I might be. And less.Read More →
I love the number three. Dramatically speaking, it’s a miracle worker. Three is the smallest number of elements you need to create (or break) a pattern. And your audience likes patterns, almost as much as they like it when a pattern they learn is broken. Three is a destabilising number, too. Three is a provocation and a conflict all by itself. Three is born to tell stories. Count on it.Read More →