A guide to the hidden workings of plays and the trade secrets that govern their writing – by the acclaimed playwright Steve Waters.
Drawing on a wide range of drama, both historical and modern, Waters takes the reader through the key elements of dramatic writing – scenes, acts, space, time, characters, language and images – to show how a play is more than the sum of its parts, with as much inner vitality as a living organism.
Almost uniquely amongst accounts of playwriting, Waters' book looks at the ways in which good plays move their audiences, generating powerful emotional responses that often defy conventional analysis.
The Secret Life of Plays is for playwrights at any stage of their career, and will inspire and inform drama students as well as working actors and directors. Most of all it is for anyone who has ever laughed or cried in the theatre – and wants to know why.
'Theatre is a live medium, about bodies, sweat and feeling, even if it is informed by ideas and reason. How a thing composed of words manages to carry within it the currents of energy that generate that impression of life is what I want to explore…' Steve Waters
'Steve Waters' book is like his plays: clear, elegant and stimulating throughout' David Edgar
About the author
Steve Waters is a playwright whose plays include: The Last King of Scotland, adapted from the novel by Giles Foden (Sheffield Theatres, 2019); Limehouse (Donmar Warehouse, 2017); Temple (Donmar Warehouse, 2015); Why Can’t We Live Together? (Menagerie Theatre/Soho/Theatre503, 2013); Europa, as co-author (Birmingham Repertory Theatre/Dresden State Theatre/Teatr Polski Bydgoszcz/Zagreb Youth Theatre, 2013); Ignorance/Jahiliyyah (Hampstead Downstairs, 2012); Little Platoons (Bush Theatre, 2011); The Contingency Plan (Bush Theatre, 2009; revived in a new version at Sheffield Theatres, 2022); Fast Labour (Hampstead, in association with West Yorkshire Playhouse, 2008); Out of Your Knowledge (Menagerie Theatre/ Pleasance, Edinburgh/East Anglian tour, 2006-8); World Music (Sheffield Crucible, 2003, and subsequent transfer to the Donmar Warehouse, 2004); The Unthinkable (Sheffield Crucible, 2004); After the Gods (Hampstead Theatre, 2002); and English Journeys (Hampstead Theatre, 1998).
His writing for television and radio includes Safe House (BBC4), The Air Gap, The Moderniser (BBC Radio 4), Scribblers and Bretton Woods (BBC Radio 3).
He ran the MPhil in Playwriting at Birmingham University between 2006 and 2011, and is now Professor of Scriptwriting at the University of East Anglia, where he convenes the MA in Creative Writing: Scriptwriting programme. He is the author of The Secret Life of Plays, published by Nick Hern Books.
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