Will Dunne is a playwright, scriptwriter, and teacher whose plays have received many international, national, and local honors. I got to know him when I copyedited his book, The Dramatic Writer's Companion: Tools to Develop Characters, Cause Scenes, and Build Stories, for the University of Chicago Press.
Will was one of those dream authors: he submitted an immaculate manuscript, quietly corrected my editing lapses, and indulged me when I challenged him to reduce Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf to a haiku. (I would share it with you, but it contains a plot spoiler.)
A couple of times recently I was invited by playwright or director friends to attend staged readings of drafts of new plays. Both times, the audience was made up mainly of actors and writers, and afterward there was a rather intense postmortem, with a moderator guiding the criticism while the author listened and squirmed. I was curious about the process and thought you might be, too, so I asked Will to talk about it.
Carol: Have staged readings always been a part of play development? This seems so different from the process of developing a novel or short story.
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