While successful plays tend to share certain storytelling elements, there is no single blueprint for how a play should be constructed. Instead, seasoned playwrights know how to select the right elements for their needs and organize them in a structure that best supports their particular story. Through his workshops and book “The Dramatic Writer's Companion”, Will Dunne has helped thousands of writers develop successful scripts. Now, in “The...

"Seventeen-year old Megan Harper is about due for her next sweeping romance. It's inevitable - each of her relationships starts with the perfect guy and ends with him falling in love...with someone else. But instead of feeling sorry for herself, Megan focuses on pursuing her next fling, directing theater, and fulfilling her dream college's acting requirement in the smallest role possible. So when she's cast as Juliet (yes, that Juliet) in her high...

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. Alice Pung discusses memoir, loosing her mother tongue in s, searching for her father's secrets in the Killing Fields of Cambodia in Her Father's Daughter and working on the project...

Uncle Vanya (1898) is a four-act play by Russian short story writer and playwright Anton Chekhov. It was first performed at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1899, directed by acclaimed actor Konstantin Stanislavski-who also played the role of Astrov. Reviews were lukewarm at first, but as the play continued to run, Uncle Vanya gained both popularity and critical prowess, and has since become one of the most influential dramas ever produced. When retired...

America. 1776. Christian is a Quaker. His family came to America to live in peace. But he is a young man fired up by dreams of revolution. Should he defy his community and pick up a gun? Thomas Jefferson is an idealist, with a vision of liberty for all. But America is a fractured coalition of states, in a bloody war for independence. How will he balance the ideal with the reality? Susanna was born a slave. But the British promise liberation for...

John Andrew Murray is a writer, architect and travelogue publisher. He was born and lived in west Belfast through the 60s, 70s and 80s at the height of the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland.John is from a working class family. He joined a local running club and completed 4 full marathons before he was 16 years old. He worked for an architect's office when he left school at 16 then moved to England at the age of 20 where he continued working and studying...

It's the beginning of World War I and Herbert Samuel-the first practicing Jew ever to sit in a British Cabinet-dreams of using British power to back a return of the Jews to Palestine after 1800 years. However, his cousin, Edwin Montagu-also in the Cabinet-is implacably opposed to the idea, a conflict complicated by Montagu's passion for the beautiful aristocrat, Venetia Stanley, a confidante of the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith. Politics, religion...

Comical, offbeat, poignant, and fresh, The Best Plays of 2014 presents six of the most original plays of the year in a single volume – selected by renowned editor Lawrence Harbison. • The Country House, a comedy about a deeply dramatic family, by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies. • Dinner with the Boys, an offbeat, dark comedy by Dan Lauria about some old-time wise guys who want to have a good Italian meal and a few laughs...