I'm going to apply for an MFA in playwriting. I want to go somewhere fully funded. What schools would you recommend? I've done a lot of research but want to cover all my bases.

Additionally, any advice on writing my applications would be appreciated too.

TIA

Hello. I have a play I wrote that's been sitting for a bit. It's about 65 pages. Centers around the history of an African American family and how that history has shaped their legacy. I would love to submit it into competitions, but I'm not familiar with any to do so. Could anyone recommend such competitions? Either geared towards black playwrights or otherwise. Thank you.

For a play I'm writing, the action is supposed to jump away to a different point in the past. How would you do that?

So were are coming into the Thanksgiving weekend in the US and I wanted to spend some of the time off from work browsing NPX in the hopes of reading some good plays and dropping a few positive reviews in the hopes of reciprocation.

And I figured I might as well start here and see if anyone wanted to post either their page or a play for me to read and review.

And if others want to play along for a little networking/ pre-holiday gift (review) exchange, let's have at it.

My NPX page (if anyone is interested) is: https://newplayexchange.org/users/90220/dan-west

I have a short script in English (8-10 minutes on stage) to be reviewed. Please reach out to me on DMs if you'd like to give it a read and leave some feedback! Thanks a lot!

Hello! I was wondering if anybody knew of any playwriting competitions that accepted short plays (mine is 7 pages of text, 9 pages incl. title + character breakdown) where you could submit your script but not have the play be produced, or if it were to be produced, have it be fully produced by the festival. I know this seems counterintuitive, but I wanted to know whether or not competitions such as those exist

Hi. I wanted you to be aware of the following short-play festival that was recently announced by the Palace Theater in Manchester, NH. I am a subscriber to this thread and helping to organize the festival.  The first year there are no submission fees.

Thank you,

Palace Theatre Short Play Festival

Palace Theatre Short Play Festival

Hello everyone! I am in some need of advice on how to publish a one-act I wrote last year. The show has already received two productions and overwhelmingly positive reception from both, and an extreme insistence to publish this show from both the audiences and the production teams that have made the show come to life, as in both instances the rights to perform were gifted to both of the prod teams.

The show itself has four major characters, seven supporting characters, two minor roles, and an optional extra cast in the form of "patrons" (as the show takes place in an antiques shop). The script itself runs from 45 minutes to an hour long, and is about 50 pages long.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

hey I have this play my teacher wanted the class to write it was supposed to be horror themed for Halloween and I finished it I just think there could be some major improvements if you want to help dm me and I'll send you the play thanks in advance

Hi, my name is ines, i'm doing a university project and i really need your help to write a play... so the main story is about artists creative block and procrastination. my main character has no name since she's slowly loosing her artistic identity, and she lives alone in a small apartment in Lisbon. she's a painter who hasn't paint anything in months and is currently unemployed, she survives with little sporadic jobs and she has no connection with her family... i don't know what direction this can go, help me add more characters and story :) thank u <3

Hey yall,

I’m new here. I’m sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, but I just need to start somewhere. I’m currently working on a one act. During a particular scene, one of my characters is crying and she sings a song to herself to sort of self-soothe. The song I’d like to use is not public domain, but would I even need to worry about copyright issues if the song is used in this context? Any insight would help. Thank yall :)

I just wanna write this to complain a little. I finished my first rough draft of a one act I’ve written, let it sit for about a week then spent two weeks printing it and marking up the work, taking notes on characters and scenes I wanted to change, etc. A few days ago I lost the paper copy where I took all of these notes ;;(((( now I’ve kind of lost motivation to actually edit since all of that work is gone :( just wanna complain, I know I’ll get to editing it soon and a lot of the thoughts are still kind of in my head but it still sucks.

Also any advice for editing the one act, as it’s my first play I’ve written (except for a truly awful comedy play I wrote for a class that is embarrassingly not funny) and general tips when editing?

My son is in 5th grade and just finished a unit on personal narratives. His teacher had the kids in his class upload their writing to Google’s Notebooklm, which then creates a podcast episode in which two hosts banter back and forth about whatever writing you upload. I was amazed at how realistic and in depth it was.

I was curious about how it would summarize my own writing, so I uploaded a 20 minute one act play (a political satire making fun of politics interfering with the American education system) that I wrote a year ago and had produced in a local theater’s one act play festival. It provided the same two-person podcast episode, this one nearly 14 minutes long, in which they not only bantered about the characters and what happens in my play, but went really in depth as to the themes I was trying to explore. The AI voices perfectly articulated what I was trying to achieve with my writing (and were incredibly positive in their praise of the material, which was weirdly an ego boost). It was wild.

I’ve been working on a few other pieces of varying length, but have not yet finished any of them. It makes me wonder if Notebooklm could serve as a brainstorming tool by uploading the unfinished pieces and seeing what the AI podcast hosts make of what I have so far.

At any rate, what a wild world we now live in.

I’m writing my first ever play and am coming up to the end of act one. My question is, do I continue on with the story and hammer out act 2 before revising, or should I go back, revise and edit act 1 until it’s something I’m satisfied with before moving onto act 2?

Hello! It's me again. I had another table read, and with those notes, I've finished the third draft.

I admit that I was stubborn with the first draft, and I realized that the first scene wasn't as exciting as I wanted it to be. The new first scene is a poker scene.

I've also changed some big facts from the first draft, so a lot had to be rewritten.

There are themes of sexual abuse, cursing, sex.

Thank you for reading!

Read it here.

Hey guys. This is going to be somewhat of a vent, I think.

I've been a writer for ever since I can remember. But it's a lot different than when I was a kid. I have a shit ton of ideas (most of them I end up forgetting) that they pile up, and I have a general idea of what they're about, but I struggle with fucking writing it. I can't even explain it, I map it out, I make a separate doc for plot, characters, motifs, etc. But making the actual script is probably the most difficult thing out of it all. I never know where to start, but I always know lines in the most random of places. It's so strange. Does anyone else go through this?

Hi all - I'm newly represented and am curious how much contact you all have with your agent? So far, I email them twice a month with updates on projects/meetings we've been pushing and industry tidbits I've heard. I'm sure I'll have more contact when a play offer is in process but was curious how other folks handle communication!

I’m trying to write a musical of nacho libre for my school to perform but my teacher says I need to get permission from whoever the license holder is (swank productions). How do I go by doing that.

been getting lost in his stuff... love the detailed worlds and complex characters. i want to try writing like him but have no idea where to start. anyone got tips?

How do I start/open this non-musical play? I'm quite stuck on what to do lol. Here's the synopsis if it helps:

A young child who is chronically ill starts having hallucinations of an imaginary friend who turns out to be Corvus—a constellation spirit symbolizing death. As the child slowly dies, they create a bond with the spirit, fighting battles with their parents who dare defy the existence of their friends, already stressed by the compromising situation. Eventually, the child dies on the month the Corvus constellation rises: May at exactly 9:00 pm. The day the child died, they became a star present in Corvus, shining the brightest amongst all the other stars.

This is for a school project by the way. Help is very appreciated, thank you!:)

I’ve had this play in mind for a year and can’t remember the title or author for the life of me.

It’s a 20th century play about two couples. A younger couple comes over to the older couples house (for drinks after a party I think).

The young man just got promoted or something at the university. The man from older couple is jealous of the young man.

The older couple - the man is married to head of the schools daughter. The older couple has a toxic relationship that ends up influencing the younger couple.

The play takes place in the older couples living room I.

Any help??

It’s on Thursday, specifically. I have had more people RSVP than I anticipated, which is really good (helpful that a last-minute casting change also happens to be a complete social butterfly with close friendships to a lot of local theater people)

I plan on giving a little speech before the reading, as a thank-you to the people who are involved either as cast or audience members. I also plan on bringing up a couple topics I want to hear back about during the talkback, and encourage the audience to ask to clarify literally anything in the play (because at this point, I feel all I need to do is clear some things up within the script).

Now one small question: Would it be okay to have notepads and pens available for if anyone wants to write down thoughts During the reading? Like is this something that’s done at staged readings at all?

I don’t go to full staged readings a lot, but when I am in such environments and I’m able to do so, I’ll sit there with either my notes app open or a pen and paper to write down my thoughts to share with the audience. Which is why I think it might be a good idea to do for my reading. But I also don’t want to be weird/make people feel obligated to take notes. This is something I’d make very clear in my pre-show speech, that writing down stuff during the reading is 10000% optional.

Hello! I have a few ideas that I want to write into a play, I've written for a few school plays before but never one all on my own, so is there any advice that you guys might have to make a good play?

I know that this sort of question gets asked fairly often; but I have a specific request here that I am not finding an answer for in the search.

I have always used longhand notebooks for pre-writing/idea generation/plotting etc and MSWord (and Google Docs) for composition.

Lately I been playing with the idea of joining the 21st Century and think I have narrowed it down to Fade In and/or Scrivener (although I would love to hear any other suggestion as well).

My understanding is that Scrivener may be better for plotting/story construction and that Fade In better for actual scriptwriting. Is this true? Is there any sense in using both?

I don’t do a ton of collaboration, but would like to be able to access it from multiple platforms as needed.

Cost is not a huge concern (although I did eliminate Final Draft due to it); but I do prefer a purchase model over a subscription.

So the purpose of me posting this is more so to ask a specific question but also to make sure I’m doing the whole thing right.

A theater is producing my play, next year, and one of the responsibilities I’m trying to check off my list is writing a play description. I have a short summary written that mentions all the important characters (my play has 4 characters so they’re all mentioned lol). It goes over the basic premise, and I’m working on tying in the more interesting bits about the play into it.

For my specific question, can a play description have a question in it? The main premise of the play is the two main characters trying to fix their relationship using polyamory, which is easy to address. I’m considering ending it with something like “Will their plans work?” Or “will their relationship survive (interesting factor, interesting factor, interesting factor)?”

Thank you in advance!

What are the copyright laws - using parody in a script or onstage, in the UK, and/or elsewhere?

SOLVED

It emphasizes the artificiality of theater, makes no effort to build a fourth wall. I know it has a name and I know whoever created it is fairly popular, but I can't for the life of me remember their names.

I have recently finished writing my first play, a process which has taken just under 4 years. The thing is, in the script I have included songs that are used in two different ways. For example, the main character listens to music on a Walkman and there is background music during a few scenes. I wondered how it would work in terms of publishing at some point in the future with regards to using these songs in the script. I know that for performances you have to get licences and pay to use the music, but I don’t actually know how it works in writing. Every time I try researching it myself I just end up getting more confused.

Advice?