A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do" (Classical Greek: δράω, drao). The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a. These works are usually written to be performed in front of a live audience by actors. They may also be closet dramas A closet drama is a play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader or, sometimes, out loud in a small group. A related form, the "closet screenplay," developed during the twentieth century or literary works written using dramatic forms but not meant for performance.
The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder (as in a wheelwright or cartwright). Hence the prefix and the suffix combine to indicate someone who has wrought words, themes, and other elements into a dramatic form, someone who crafts plays. The homophone A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose and rose (past tense of "rise"), or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two, and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms. Homophones that are with write is in this case entirely coincidental.
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Early playwrights
The earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning the Archaic , Classical (c. 5th–4th centuries BC), and Hellenistic (c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD) periods of ancient Greece and the ancient world. It is predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek. Its Hellenistic phase is known as Koine (&. These early plays were written for annual Athenian The Greek capital has a population of 745,514 within its administrative limits and a land area of 39 km2 (15 sq mi). The urban area of Athens extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3,130,841 (in 2001) and a land area of 412 km2 (159 sq mi). According to Eurostat, the Athens Larger Urban Zone (LUZ) is the 8th most competitions among playwrights[1] held around the 5th century BC. Such notables as Aeschylus Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often recognized as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word αισχος (aischos), meaning "shame". According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in plays to allow for, Sophocles Sophocles (pronounced /ˈsɒfəkliːz/ Σοφοκλῆς Sophoklēs, his name was very likely pronounced /sopʰoklɛ̂ːs/; was the second of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides. According to the Suda, a 10th century encyclopedia,, Euripides Euripides (ca. 480 BC – 406 BC) was the last of the three great tragedians of classical Athens (the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles). Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias. Eighteen or nineteen of Euripides' plays have survived complete. There has, and Aristophanes Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a prolific and much acclaimed comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete. These, together with fragments of some of his other plays, provide the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, and they are in fact used to established forms still relied on by their modern counterparts.
The term playwright appears to have been coined by Ben Jonson Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best[citation needed], and his lyric poems. A man of vast reading and a seemingly insatiable appetite for in his Epigram 49, To Playwright,[2] as an insult, to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre. He always described himself as a poet, since plays during that time were always written in meter and so regarded as the provenance of poets. This view was held even as late as the early 19th century. The term later lost this negative connotation.
Contemporary playwrights
Contemporary playwrights in the United States often do not reach the same level of fame or cultural importance as some did in the past. No longer the only outlet for serious drama or entertaining comedies, theatrical productions must compete for audiences with films, television, and the Internet. In addition, the perilous state of funding for the arts in the United States and a growing reliance by non-profit A non-profit organization is an organization that does not distribute its surplus funds to owners or shareholders, but instead uses them to help pursue its goals. Examples of NPOs include charities (i.e. charitable organizations), trade unions, and public arts organizations. Most governments and government agencies meet this definition, but in theatres on ticket sales as a source of income has caused many of them to reduce the number of new works they produce. For example, Playwrights Horizons Playwrights Horizons is a not-for-profit Off-Broadway theater located in New York City dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American playwrights, composers, and lyricists, and to the production of their new work produced only six plays in the 2002-03 seasons, compared with thirty-one in 1973-74.[3] As revivals and large-scale production musicals become the de rigueur Broadway Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 large professional theatres with 500 seats or more located in the Theatre District, New York in Manhattan, New York City. Along with London's West End theatre, Broadway theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of (and even Off-Broadway Off Broadway theater is an umbrella term for a defined set of plays, musicals or revues performed in New York City but outside the definition of Broadway theatre) productions, playwrights find it difficult to earn livings in the business, let alone achieve major successes.
The most successful playwrights are often high-status figures in their industry, in stark contrast to the status of the screenwriter Screenwriters or scenarists or scriptwriters are people in a film crew who write/create the screenplays from which films and television programs are made in Hollywood Hollywood is a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California - situated west-northwest of Downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word "Hollywood" is often used as a metonym of American cinema, and is often interchangeably used to refer to the greater Los. This may be considered a result of the more literary approach that has characterised the theatre Theatre is a branch of the performing arts. While any performance may be considered theatre, as a performing art, it focuses almost exclusively on live performers creating a self contained drama. A performance qualifies as dramatic by creating a representational illusion. By this broad definition, theatre had existed since the dawn of man, as a since its roots in poetry Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning. Poetry may be written independently, as discrete poems, or may occur in conjunction with other arts, as in poetic drama, hymns, lyrics, or prose poetry. It is published in dedicated magazines (. According to the Dramatists Guild, the playwright has the final say on a production. In films, by contrast, the director has come to overrule the screenwriter as auteur In film criticism, the 1950s-era auteur theory holds that a director's films reflect that director's personal creative vision, as if he were the primary "auteur" . In spite of—and sometimes even because of—the films in question being made as part of an industrial process, the author's creative voice is distinctive enough to shine.
See also
- List of playwrights See also Literature; Drama; List of playwrights by nationality and date of birth; Lists of authors
- Play (theatre)
References
- ^ Fraser, Neil. "Theatre History Explained", The Cowood Press, 2004, page 11
- ^ Jonson, Ben, The Works of Ben Jonson, Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Co., 1853. page 788
- ^ Alexis Soloski, "The Plays What They Wrote: The Best Scripts Not Yet Mounted on a New York Stage", The Village Voice, May 21 - 27, 2003
External links
- The Playwriting Seminars, Virginia Commonwealth University
- "Guide to Plays and Playwrights", forum to discuss classic and contemporary playwrights and playwriting techniques.
- Free Play Scripts, D. M. Bocaz-Larson's Website providing free play scripts and resources on drama for educational purposes
- "Exit Stage Left... No, Your Left", Blog for tips on dramatic structure and theatre theory.
- "Tips for emerging writers", Snodger, Award-winning Australian playwrights offer advice
Categories: Dramatists and playwrights | Theatrical professions | Media occupation
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