Praise for Decentered Playwriting
One of the great challenges for 21st century writers is how one forge's one's own poetics to resist the "realistic", well-made play, and the strictures of Aristotle and Stanislavski. How can we write for our communities and embrace the rich legacies of non-Aristotelian practice? What extraordinary conversations are gathered here in these pages.
— Paula Vogel
(Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of How I Learned to Drive and Indecent)
“Decentered Playwriting leaps over the anxiety and reductive thinking swirling around our “diversity problem” by showing how much we all have to gain by decolonizing our craft. There’s no theater maker or theater educator in this country not wrestling in some way with these issues right now. This book offers a revelatory and practical vision of the way forward.”
— Lisa Kron, Tony Award-Winning Lyricist of Fun Home
“Decentered Playwriting represents an extraordinary gathering of diverse scholars and artists, all posing fundamental questions about how drama might be conceived and created above, beyond, and without the hegemony of Aristotelian thinking. The collection addresses a deeply felt pedagogical need that has been left untended for far too long, and in this respect promises to become an essential text in the teaching of playwriting and dramaturgy. “
— Dr. Art Borreca, Co-chair of The University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop
“In Decentered Playwriting we will find some unavoidable and urgent questions: How can we construct our plays nowadays? Could we decolonize our playwriting? How? This book presents a collection of essays and exercises with alternative tools and techniques to broaden our horizons, to play-write with diverse approaches about a diverse world”
— María Prado, Learn More
“This is the kind of playwriting education I wish that I would have had. It makes me excited for the next generation of theater makers who will emerge from studying this book.”
— Larissa FastHorse (Sicangu Lakota) MacArthur Fellow and playwright of The Thanksgiving Play
"This book offers us a radically hopeful vision of how we might teach playwriting—and think about the well-making of plays—if we wish to disrupt the relationship between systems of oppression and systems of theater-making."
—Megan Sandberg-Zakian, Artistic Director of Boston Playwrights Theatre
"An invaluable resource for those looking to depart from received ways of play-making, either in pursuit of new collaborative approaches or alternative forms of storytelling. This will be a useful guidebook for those venturing off the beaten path."
—Alex McLean, Zuppa Theatre