The Power of the Playwright's Vision : Blueprints for the Working Writer

Every playwright has his or her own vision of lifeand seeks to express that vision on stage. Over the past two hundred years, the worlds greatest dramatists have been constructing models, or blueprints of their visions, to make sure that what is in their hearts gets put on stage. This book distills that genius and innovation into a practical manual.

In a clear and easily understood way, Gordon Farrell makes available the most potent and effective structures ever devised by the worlds most important dramatists. Playwrights like Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekov, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, Lillian Hellman, Bertolt Brecht, Jean Paul Sartre, Harold Pinter, and Jean Cocteau all developed powerful new writing tools that empowered them to capture their personal vision of the world on stage. The Power of the Playwrights Vision describes not only what these techniques are, but also how they can be put to use, enabling todays working playwrights to bring the power of their own personal vision to life in the theatre.

Gordon Farrell has been teaching playwriting at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts since 1991. He also teaches theatre history, playwriting, and script analysis at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, and has been appointed six times as a Visiting Lecturer at Yale University. He began his work in the theatre as a director, producer, and theatre administrator in the San Francisco Bay area. From 1983 to 1986, he studied at the Yale School of Drama, where he earned an MFA in playwriting. His plays have been produced in New York City, Buffalo, New Haven, and San Francisco, and he has written screenplays for Universal Pictures, MGM, and Warner Brothers. He is currently finishing a new full-length drama and developing a feature film with an independent New York film company.