Playwrights You Should Read

Today is my wedding day, I won’t be blogging as normal until 20th September. Instead, I’ve written some blogs in advance to make sure you have a steady stream of blogs whilst I get wed and go away on my honeymoon.

Today’s blog is short but I’d like to offer you the chance to catch up on your reading. I get really mad when people won’t buy plays. Plays are your training ground, even if you work in film, the playwright can teach you a lot about dealing with different writing styles.

These are some playwrights and their play I think you should read. This list is by no means exhaustive:

• Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Nights’ Dream.

• Dario Fo: Accidental Death of an Anarchist.

• David Hare: Skylight

• David Mamet: Oleanna

• Neil Labute: The Shape of Things

• Ann Marie di Mambro: Tally’s Blood

• Zinnie Harris: Further than the Furthest Thing.

• David Greig: The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union.

• Gregory Burke: Black Watch

• Moliere: Tartuffe

• Arthur Miller: All my Sons

• Mark Ravenhill: Paradise Lost

• Edward Albee: The Zoo Story

• Tennessee Williams – A Street Car Named Desire

• Caryl Churchill: A Number

• Howard Brenton: Magnificence

• Kwame Kwei-Armah: Elmina’s Kitchen

• Sophocles: Antigone

• Tony Kushner: Angels in America

• Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Ernest.

• John Patrick Shanley: Doubt, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.

• Henrik Ibsen: Ghosts

• August Strindberg: The Stronger

• Anton Chekhov: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya.

And that’s just to get you started. Come on, educate yourself!