Writing for Stage and Screen - (Introductions to Theatre) by Sherry Kramer (Paperback)

About the Book

"Combining a step-by-step analysis of the technique of writing for stage and screen with how the mystery, poetry and emotional momentum is achieved for the audience, Sherry Kramer offers an empowering, original guide for emerging and established writers. In this structured look at the way audience members progress through a work in real time, Sherry Kramer uses plain-spoken vocabulary to help writers and artists discover how to make work that will mean more to their audiences. By using examples drawn from plays, film, and streaming series, ranging from A Streetcar Named Desire to Fleabag to Pirates of the Caribbean, this study makes its concepts accessible to a wide range of artists who work in what Kramer terms 'timebound art.' The book also features multiple exercises, developed with MFA writers in The Iowa Playwrights Workshop and The Michener Center for Writers, which provide entrance points to help artists consider and create their work. Writing for Stage and Screen revolves around the notion of the perception shift, a moment of surprise that triggers insight in the audience, prompting them to reinterpret what they've just experienced, and reflect on how the patterns of their own lives might be seen in new ways. Kramer creates ways for artists to reinterpret their chosen art form, by asking them to deconstruct and reassemble their ideas about the nature of dramatic event. She argues that nothing that happens on the stage or screen can ever matter as much as the event of meaning that happens in the audience"--

Book Synopsis

" Reading and digesting the lessons in this book can be of greater value to an aspiring dramatist than years in an MFA program. Whether you are writing for the stage, screen or audio, this book is an invaluable teacher and guide to have by your side throughout the development and revision process."
Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig

"This book does what no other playwriting book in my experience has done, it offers a new way of seeing and conceiving how theatre makes meaning and carries emotional impact in performance."
Suzan Zeder, Professor Emerita and former Head Of Playwriting at University of Texas at Austin, USA

Combining a step-by-step analysis of the technique of writing for stage and screen with how the mystery, poetry, and emotional momentum is achieved for the audience, Sherry Kramer offers an empowering, original guide for emerging and established writers.

In this structured look at the way audience members progress through a work in real time, Sherry Kramer uses plain-spoken vocabulary to help you discover how to make work that will mean more to your audiences. By using examples drawn from plays, film, and streaming series, ranging from A Streetcar Named Desire to Fleabag to Pirates of the Caribbean, this study makes its concepts accessible to a wide range of artists who work in timebound art. The book also features multiple exercises, developed with MFA writers in The Iowa Playwrights Workshop and The Michener Center for Writers, where Kramer taught for the past 25 years, which provide entrance points to help you consider and create your work.

Review Quotes

"It's hard for me to think of anyone who has shaped the way I think about playwriting more than Sherry Kramer. While most of my education as a playwright was awash in silly rules surrounding plot mechanics, Sherry showed me how plays are organized in more meaningful and fundamental ways. While others taught me the structure of playwriting, she taught me the poetry of it." --Samuel D. Hunter, Playwright and 2014 MacArthur Fellow

"I have been waiting a decade for this book. Not since Lajos Egri's classic The Art of Dramatic Writing have I been so excited and inspired by and grateful for the ideas contained within a text on dramatic writing. Reading and digesting the lessons in this book can be of greater value to an aspiring dramatist than years in an MFA program. Whether you are writing for the stage, screen, or audio, this book is an invaluable teacher and guide to have by your side throughout the development and revision process." --Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, Playwright and Former Head of Playwriting, UC Santa Barbara, USA

"Sherry Kramer is a brilliant and uncommon mind, someone who mixes a keen understanding of narrative structure and mechanics with a reverence for theatrical magic. I will never forget the first time I heard her talk about the DNA of plays, how they code themselves line by line, how they reveal to an audience how to understand them-and, to their writer, how to be faithful to their core questions. As a former student, I'm still using the many tools she gave me, both when writing a new draft or when in the throes of rewrites. Sherry is an artist and a teacher, and her ability to harness pedagogy to illuminate instinct is one of her many unusual gifts." --Jen Silverman, Playwright, Author of We Play Ourselves and The Island Dwellers

"Sherry Kramer is the best kind of playwriting guide-generous, ingenious, and wise. She is an audience's best friend and the fairy godmother of storytelling. Without Sherry's big ideas on structure, magic, and perception shift, I'd be lost as a writer and teacher. I plagiarize her daily. Most books on the playwriting craft are derivative and oddly traditional-Sherry's guide is both the tornado and yellow brick road. You will never go back to thinking about drama the same way again." --Austin Bunn, Screenwriter, playwright, co-author of A Killer Life: How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and Beyond, and Associate Professor at Cornell University, USA

"Sherry Kramer has a singular, comprehensive approach to teaching playwriting. This book is both a toolbox and divining rod, giving playwrights tools and strategies to make their own unique theater magic. For years, students have raved about Sherry as a mentor and a teacher, sharing notes on her classes as though it was precious contraband. Having access to this 'Kramer Bible' is a major moment for playwrights, teachers and theater-lovers alike." --Lisa D'Amour, playwright, interdisciplinary artist, and Co-Artistic Director, PearlDamour

"This book does what no other playwriting book in my experience has done, it offers a new way of seeing and conceiving how theatre makes meaning and carries emotional impact in performance." --Suzan Zeder, Professor Emerita and former Head of Playwriting at University of Texas at Austin, USA

About the Author

Sherry Kramer is a playwright who has won numerous awards for her work and has written more than thirty plays, including David's RedHaired Death, When Something Wonderful Ends and The Wall of Water. She teaches playwriting at Bennington College, USA, and taught regularly in the MFA programs of The Michener Center for Writers UT Austin, TX, and the Iowa Playwrights' Workshop, where she was previously head of the workshop. She was the first national member of New Dramatists.