The new web site of the Northwest Playwrights Guild is at NWPG
A place where guild members can share their thoughts about writing.
Michael Whelan
I write for myself but hope others will find value in my plays. Playwriting for me is hard work, joyous, frustrating, cathartic, and a voyage of discovery. By beginning with the individual and ending with a group it satisfies my need for balance. The creative process has a spiritual as well as an emotional and physical dimension. My place in theatre is central to the understanding and definition of who I am. By exploring myth and legend I find a home for myself not only in this world, but also in time.
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Z. Sharon Glantz
There's a dragon in my gut that roars when it doesn't have an outlet. So I write scripts. But this does not satisfy the dragon. No. I must work with others in sculpting what I write so that scripts transform into plays. But the dragon always wants more. The dragon insists on challenging audiences into thinking and feeling. Only then is the dragon satisfied. If I don't perform these tasks, the high drama I would put into a script takes over my life. Better to satisfy a roaring dragon and live a life of peace even if it seems contrary to the norm, then fight the dragon and become a character in a drama not of my own making.
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Sharon Whitney
I write because I can. I write because I must. It's the only way I know to leave my body. It's the only way I know to fall in love and not get into trouble with my husband. I write because I'm a voyeur, eavesdropping on the voices in my mind, as well as others loose upon the planet. I write because I think I'm funny, I've got something to say, and because I don't know what else to do with my sometime rage. I write because they told me children should be seen and not heard, and if I could find a way I never minded.
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David Golden
Not a manifesto; just some thoughts:
I don't do manifestos. Never have. Articulating why I write for someone else is like giving somebody direction in the wrong language: you're gonna end up going the wrong way anyway.
I write because I can. Most times I love it. Sometimes I hate it. I like to tell stories. I like to find out what's going to happen at the end. But, with only slight variations, you could say that about everyone who writes...they like it, they hate it, they do it. What else is there to say?
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Chris Mathews
For me, writing is like sneezing (except it takes longer). I have to do it. I feel better afterwards and it may be infectious. I believe that language is our greatest and most misused tool, so I try to use it to cause people to think, laugh and be sexually aroused (simultaneiously, if possible). I endeavor to communicate what is unique about myself in the hopes of connecting to what is common to all.
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Lorraine Bahr
I write because a living voice rises in me, speaking in words and images of action, rising no matter how fiercely I or others have worked to press it down. I write for the theatre because, on the stage, living breath and spirit course their livingness through my eyes, breath, spirit; only in this way is the play its full living self, alive (alive, not merely a record of life). I write plays that are questions because questions are the nature of living. For me. So far.
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Bryan Harnetiaux
I write because I must write. I write for others because I need to be heard. I write plays because I am most comfortable writing in this form. In my early writings, I wanted to fix things, harness life, solve problems. I'm over that -- I think. Now, I try to write truthfully about us. It feels better, more honest, human. (I still secretly search for illumination).
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Flip Wingrove
I write hoping to prick a few bubbles of self-righteousness. Our collective psyche is improved when humor and satire create a reason to take another look at our carefully protected biases and absolutes. A play is sucessful when it pries open a closed mind, to let in a little fresh air and light. I wish I could say that I write because I have to, but actually, I write because I enjoy it.
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Susan Goudy
I write because it makes me think, and learn, and pay attention to the world around me (even when I'd rather not). Sometimes what I write surprises me. That's why I tend to procrastinate!
Writing forces me to become aware, and when I've discovered something, I want to share it. I always hope to create a work that will open new doors, for myself and an audience.
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George Savage Jr.
I didn't really choose playwriting. My father was one. I apprenticed with him and when he died picked up the torch. The problems of the world are blamed on WASP males but I feel my ethnic culture and religion are from the stage where no ideas, beliefs, or sexual orientations are excluded, no people need go unportrayed and where truth is not what people want to hear or what they expect but always surprising. Being a playwright justifies taking any job, trying anything once, befriending the person who's from another place, and engaging in self-indulgent activity that if you weren't a playwright would get you called a bum.
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Merilee Karr, M.D.
I write about medicine from the inside to show people how their doctor got that way. In a stereotyped profession, I am tired of being misunderstood, tired of people making assumptions about me. My best defense is demystification.
Therefore, I leave tracks in my writing. I expect my audience to follow in my characters' footsteps, walk in their moccasins, see how they got that way.
My work is also my best resource as a writer. Medicine is a great profession for writers, because we are surrounded by material. Every clinic visit is a scene, and all my patients are acting. By the time I walk into that exam room, they have written a script, with heroes, villains, and lines for me. I have to figure out on the fly what my cues are, and whether my patients have been honest with themselves in writing their story. I write natural dialogue because I am interested in the way people really talk, and people talk to me all day.
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Sue Pace
Basically, I write plays for fun. Because the poems, novels, essays and short stories that I write do not provide the 'cutting edge of hysteria' feeling that I have come to associate with playwriting. The sinking in the pit of the guts, the can't take a breath, the jump off the edge of the world feeling. That's because plays are heavy on character and there is no chance to 'explain' what one wants or means or is trying to get across. And plays demand an audience response (or non-response). Plays are weighted for maximum impact in a minimum span of time. It's the density of the damn things, I guess. That may not be a manifesto, but the world needs a kind of desperate fun, I think. A laugh in the face of death. A whoop on the way down. So I write plays.