Have you thought about writing for the stage or about reading plays as a way to understand the role of dialog in moving a story forward and keeping your writing “in scene”? If either is true for you, you will find playwright Mara Lathrop’s experience and the resources she shares invaluable. If you haven’t yet considered what you can learn from playwrights, here’s your chance to find out about writing in this genre from a pro. Lathrop’s plays have received productions in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Toronto, and Rome amd won prizes including the Blackburn Prize, Richard Hugo House New Play 1st Prize), Best New Play, Seattle Footlight Awards and Mill Mountain Theatre New Play 2nd Prize, among others. She has received commissions from the Philadelphia Festival Theatre and Seattle’s A Contemporary Theatre. Currently, she is Literary Manager at Key City Public Theater in Port Townsend, WA.

Sheila
Mara, thank you for your time helping those of us who write from personal experience learn about the life and work of a playwright. How long have you been writing stage plays?

Mara
I wrote my first play in 1987, a one act called “Menstruating Waitress From Hell.”

Sheila
That’s quite a title. Please tell us more about the play’s inception and its staging and reception.

Mara
For a short while I waited tables at bistro that was, shall we say, a bit on the pretentious side. I quit abruptly one day – you’ll have to guess why — and “Menstruating Waitress” was this thing I wrote to salve my wounds. The play features a drunk cook, a dictatorial manager, a self-absorbed diner and a brave, plucky, very intelligent and terribly scape-goated waitress, who very coincidentally bears a striking resemblance to me. I got some actor friends together and we put it up in a festival. It won a prize and I thought, “That was fun.”

Sheila
What was  your path to becoming a practicing playwright after that first play?

Mara
Before I was a playwright, I was an actor. Early on, the relationships I already had with other actors, with directors and with theatre companies made it possible for me to get my work out into the world.

It always seems that being read and produced happens through a circuitous, obscure path that almost always has something to do with a chain of relationships. An early play, “Dreams of Baby,” wound up at the Philadelphia Festival Theatre for New Plays because the Literary Manager at Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York passed it on when his own Artistic Director wasn’t interested. And the EST Literary Manager read it because somebody gave it to his actress girlfriend who was looking for a new comedic audition monologue, and that friend, etc. etc…

Sheila
It’s good to hear about success in a field that many of us who write don’t really know to much about.

So, here’s a string of questions about getting started writing plays:

Should those of us interested in writing for the stage become involved in our local theaters? Do we have to act to write, do you think? Do you have suggestions for us on how to begin realizing a goal of writing stage plays?

Mara
No, I don’t think you have to act to write plays, or direct or design sets, lights or costumes, or work backstage as a stage manager or running the lights, or work in the box office, or volunteer to stuff envelopes for the season brochure, or any other theatre-related activity. BUT IT ALL HELPS. And it helps in multiple ways. Theatre is all about building relationships, as I’ve already mentioned, and pretty much every theatre production is made through the collaboration of many different people doing many different tasks. I can think of no better way to create /expand your theatre network – not to mention your ability as a writer to understand what all goes into creating magic onstage — then to jump into the fray.

Sheila
How did you know that being a playwright was the thing for you?

Mara
I think in voices.

Sheila
How do you translate that to the page?

Mara
Writing to me is an auditory experience. I hear the characters speaking in my head. The clickety-clickety of the keyboard is part of that experience, as is (often) the music I’m listening to as I write.

Sheila
Do you have experience with other genres as well playwriting?

Mara
I’ve written poetry, short fiction and essays.

Sheila
How does that experience in other genres influence your playwriting?

Mara
I often turn the fiction and essays into plays. They all tend to be heavy w/ dialogue. But then, I think in voices.

Sheila
What would you most like those contemplating playwriting to know?

Mara
Get ready for a lot of rejection. A LOT.

Sheila
Despite the difficulties of getting produced, you persisted. What do you enjoy most about being a playwright and what do you enjoy least?

Mara
What I enjoy most with a new play is sitting in the back of the house, watching the first audience watch it. What I enjoy least is that there’s never enough time for the production in rehearsal and development.

Sheila
Non-stage writers discuss their sense of audience and if they write with an audience in mind. The answers vary from not thinking at all about an audience to thinking of a particular person for whom your writing would be a gift.

But with playwriting, I imagine you have a sense from the beginning of the audience, almost as participant, from early on in the writing process.

Mara
It is true. As I write, I keep a small part of myself in the back row of the darkened theatre of my mind. That’s the audience version of me (or my version of the audience) who stays pretty aware of whether or not what I’m writing is playable.

Sheila
In a recent play of yours, In the Garden of Monsters, one of the characters has your name and the play, despite many scenes in the future and last decade, is very much steeped in the history of your ancestors during WWII. How much of yourself is in every play you write?

Mara
All of my plays are about me, at least metaphorically. I’ve often based characters on family members.

Sheila
What is the hardest part of using biographical information and settings and purpose?

Mara
The hardest part is finding the distance to allow the needs of the play to take precedence over the facts.

Sheila
Can you describe meeting up with that obstacle as you are writing?

Mara
I wrote a play several years ago based on my grandmother’s emigration from Russia to the US in 1914 at age sixteen. In the play, I made her fourteen years old and pregnant. When my mother saw the play, she asked, “Was it absolutely necessary to turn your grandma into an unwed mother?” And actually, it was.

Sheila
Have your family members seen your plays? How have their responses affected you?

Mara
Yes, they have. They never seem to recognize themselves, but they always recognize each other.

Sheila
That’s funny, but I think helpful to those of us who worry that in fictionalizing something we won’t stray far away enough from what we worry about people knowing about our perceptions of them.

But was there ever a time that anyone in your family or circle of friends asked you about the autobiographical aspects of your work?

Mara
I always tell them about it before they can ask me. One of my brothers once threatened to sue me for libel because he didn’t like a character who was partially based on him. My other brother thought it would be great for my career if Brother Number One did sue me – it would be the kind of thing they write articles about for People magazine and then I’d become famous!

Sheila
I think many of us are so used to watching television dramas, action adventure and comedy as well as going to the movies that we probably think we can sit down a write a script, and, yet, I know from experience that it isn’t by osmosis that screenwriters and playwrights learn the craft.

What are the most important lessons a playwright needs to learn?

Mara
That scripts aren’t an end in themselves: they are blueprints for action and how to read an audience.

Plays typically go through a development process and are often in front of audiences several times as readings (where actors sit on the stage and read the play) and workshops (where actors are still holding their scripts and use limited movement and design elements to help tell the story) before they are fully produced. These are opportunities to make the script work harder, better, leaner. If a line doesn’t get the laugh you anticipated, why? Is the punch line buried in the middle of a sentence? Is the audience restless, lots of coughing and rustling of programs? Is it that the scene is too long and they’ve become disengaged?

Sheila
What elements of writing craft are crucial to know when you write a script?

Mara
Playwriting is dialogue writing. And the words are there to support and further the sequence of actions undertaken by the characters as portrayed by the actors. No matter how glorious the words, if they get in the way of the action, you’ve got a scene that isn’t telling the story.

And with scene setting, don’t limit yourself — if you can think it up, good designers can figure out how to put it on a stage no matter how small the budget. But remember, it’s going on a stage, don’t clutter it up with too much reality. Also, if you and your characters get stuck in a scene, try transplanting the action to somewhere else and see what happens.

Sheila
That’s interesting about not worrying about too much reality. Is this because the actors/the audience will fill in what is necessary or suspend their disbelief? Tell us more about not cluttering up the stage with reality.

Mara
What I said was not too much reality. Delete from the stage that which is not absolutely necessary, in the writing (keep the action moving) as well as in the physical production. For example, my comedy about marriage, The Six Basic Rules, is set on the top layer of a wedding cake. It’s a metaphor for their life together. And audiences go along with it because it becomes funny that what’s going on for the bride and groom is 180 degrees away from the perfect Bride and Groom on top of a wedding cake.

Another important craft element is point of view: At some point in the writing process, I always track the play from each character’s POV.

Sheila
How does that help you write the play convincingly and entertainingly? Do you ultimately need a particular point of view to know whose story your play is telling?

Mara
Plays usually have a central protagonist who is transformed through the events of the play. Transformation is what audiences come to theatre to witness and vicariously experience (along with great acting, sets, costumes, and all the glitter and spectacle.)

Sheila
Are there other craft elements to consider?

Mara
Chronology and the sequence of events through which the story unfolds aren’t the same thing. But humans experience everything through time and every beat, scene and play has a beginning, middle and end.

And, of course, there’s story arc and plot points and structure — the classic three act, two act and one-act structures.

Sheila
Can you share titles of some books we might read that have been worthwhile to you? I think learning from playwrights can help all prose writers write better scenes.

Mara
The Art and Craft of Playwriting by Jeffrey Hatcher
The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri
Act One by Moss Heart
Poetics by Aristotle

Sheila
Am I correct in assuming that writing one-acts is a good way to start out in the field? Can you recommend sources for reading about one-act plays?

Mara
Perfect 10: Writing and Producing the 10-Minute Play by Gary Garrison

Sheila
Thank you. What is the best training for playwrights?

Mara
In terms of career advancement, the best training is an MFA program at a really good school, followed by at least five years in New York.

Sheila
Did you have that training?

Mara
Absolutely not. I was one of the theatre geeks in high school, studied medieval history at a state university, returned to acting in my mid-thirties, and wrote my first full-length play because I thought it would be a good part for me. The play was awful and never left my house, btw.

Sheila
What can you do if you can’t get that training?

Mara
I took great classes with visiting playwrights like Jean Claude Van Italie and Irene Fornes, I also joined a playwriting group. When it collapsed, I started another playwriting group. I went to opening nights and stayed to schmooze with all the theatre folks at the parties afterwards. I lent my hand whenever I had a chance to other people’s projects. I kept writing. I sent my plays out to every theatre that would take them over the transom, I followed up on my submissions, I used my measly connections to get my work in front of artistic directors and producers. and I tried really hard to never complain when I wasn’t getting what I wanted.

Sheila
Are there any additional resources that we can find online for playwriting and/or reading plays?

Mara
Some great organizations for playwrights:

The Playwrights Center
Theatre Commons
International Centre for Women Playwrights

There are lots of places to read plays online, from the Gutenberg Project to online publishers to self-published plays on individual playwrights’ blogs. Four of my plays – The Six Basic Rules, The Visible Horse, The Garden of Monsters and Dreams of Baby are published online at Indie Theater Now.

Sheila
Who do you send plays out to? It sounds like it is harder to get a play read and performed than to publish in print or online. Are there journals that publish plays? Online sites? If so, what do you think of them?

Mara
Actually, there’s quite a lot of play publishing going these days. Traditional play publishers like Samuel French and Dramatists are interested in publishing scripts that have been produced and have a track record. These houses license productions and collect the playwright’s royalties.

There are smaller houses like Smith & Kraus who publish collections of plays but don’t license productions for the writers. There are also houses that publish collections of monologues and scenes for actors, and they often accept material that hasn’t yet been produced.

There are a number of journals that put out regular calls for one act plays. An interesting new development is that online publishers, like Indie Theater Now, which I mentioned having my plays available, make plays available to buy and read through an online reader.

Sheila
You’ve given us a lot to pursue! How can we find your work on stage or in print?

Mara
Next up for me is a production of The Six Basic Rules at Key City Public Theatre in Port Townsend, WA where I’m also the Literary Manager.

I think the following are all still in print

The Six Basic Rules (excerpt) Audition Arsenal For Women In Their 30’s, edited by Janet Milstein, Smith & Kraus, Lyme, NH, 2005

Tales From the Salt Mines (excerpt), Monologues For Women By Women, edited by Tori Haring-Smith and Liz Engelman, Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH, 2004

The Visible Horse, Women Playwrights: Best Plays of 2001, Smith & Kraus, Lyme, NH 2002

The Visible Horse (excerpt) Audition Monologues for Student Actors II, Meriwether
Publishers, 2001

Fantasy Land, Best Monologues for Women 1998, Smith & Kraus, Lyme, NH, 1999

The Visible Horse (excerpt) Great Monologues for Young Actors, Vol. II, Smith & Kraus, Lyme, NH, 1999

I’ve also contributed to The New Family Home by Jim Tolpin from The Taunton Press, Newtown, CT.

Sheila
What is inspiring another play from you at this point in your career?

Mara
My plays are all about the search for love and connection. The play I’m working on right now pushes these ideas in a slightly different direction, but I prefer to write happy endings.

Sheila
I look forward to seeing this play — or possible lending my voice to a workshop reading of it, whether it has a happy ending or not. Again, thanks so much for this interview rich in resources and experience.