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The Collective Nothing: Postmodernism in the Modern Era
The Postmodernist Art movement honors the — Collective Nothing — because the genre doesn’t want to be tied to anything specific, verifiable, or humanly truthful. The most famous Postmodernist art...
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The Provenance of the Provincetown Playhouse as a Failed NYU Revival
The Provincetown Playhouse holds an important niche in early American Theater History as the staging point cradle of the great Playwright Eugene O’Neill’s earliest, and most challenging, plays and the...
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Why Frank Rich Really Quit the New York Times
Frank Rich quitting the New York Times to work at New York Magazine is hitting many Manhattan elitists as strangely odd and curious, but it makes sense to me in “Richian” sort of way. Here is Slates’...
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Dr. Howard Stein on Why Playwrights Must Experiment with the Audience
[Author’s Note: This is a portion of a speech I gave to the Southeast Theatre Conference in 2000.] In Robert Aulett’s play, Alberta Radiance, Alberta speaks the opening like, “I have this human life to...
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We Elect People to Take Things From Us: The Start of Dreams
Here at the Boles Blogs Network, we get hundreds of promotional emails a day asking us to write articles about people, products and issues. Sometimes we act on a tip that catches our fancy, but more...
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Howard Stein Rents a Revenge
As a graduate student at Columbia University, I recall one particularly challenging playwriting assignment from mentor, and teacher, Dr. Howard Stein: “Rent a Revenge.” “Rent a Revenge” was one of the...
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The Written, Rising, Art: On Writing Writing Prompts
A great joy of teaching is when your students surprise you with something unexpected. One good way to find out what students are thinking is to ask them to respond to a writing prompt. My favorite...
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The Nincompoop
Scene: A blackened room. Time: Yesterday. (THE ACADEMIC is shining an interrogation light suspended from the ceiling into the eyes of THE PUBLISHER — who is blindfolded and tightly lashed to a steel...
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I Just Wanted to Be Sure of You
My grandparents are long gone, my mother died in 1963, daddy died in 1986, and my stepmother died in 2010. I guess that, technically, I am a 66 year old orphan — but I am lucky enough to have a big...
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Sing for Hope with 88 Pianos in New York City
Street theatrics are the ultimate form of an Urban Semiotic, and this Summer, in the five boroughs of New York City, you can place your hands on 88 pianos dotting the city core and open your throat in...
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On Yawning
Are you already yawning while reading this? If you are speaking to someone — in a formal or informal setting — and they keep yawning in response, are you insulted that they are tired and not paying...
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From Page to Stage: Newark in Black and Blue in 2004
In the Fall of 2004, I was teaching a course at Rutgers University in Newark called “From Page to Stage” where the idea — as I was teaching the course — was to take original scripts written in class...
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Does a Play Exist Without Performance?
There’s an old saying in some theatrical circles that a play does not exist unless and until is has been performed on a live stage in front of an audience. You can imagine the heartache that creates...
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Using Online Charity Auctions to Buydown Broken Dreams
In my work as a script doctor at ScriptProfessor.com — I meet a lot of people with varying talent — the saddest stories belong to the abandoned and the broken-hearted, those who wished upon a star and...
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A Brand New Boles Book for the Playwright in Society
Yes, today is a Day for Fools — but there’s no joking around that I now have a brand new Boles Book for the Playwright in Society — available for purchase from David Boles Books Writing &...
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The Tale of the Most Insane Desk Ever: NO DRAWERS ALLOWED!
There once was a rather famous, if old timey, theatrical agent in New York City who had one hard and steadfast rule in his office: No drawers allowed! This no-drawer mandate mainly had to do with...
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Liviu Ciulei and Marlon Brando: Recoiling the Mortal Coil!
The great international stage and screen director and designer, Liviu Ciulei, and the divine stage and screen actor Marlon Brando both share something disturbing as it is true: They both believed in...
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Brander Matthews: Father of Dramatic Literature
Brander Matthews was one of the purist theatrical geniuses we’ve had in, and around, the intellectual American Stage. Brander rightly believed a play only existed in performance and that the...
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Don’t Drone Me, Dude!
“Don’t Tase Me, Bro!” will soon be out-hollered by us all in a new plea against the machine: “Don’t […]
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A Stone’s Throw: “That Abortion Play” 30 Years Later
Thirty years ago, as an undergraduate student at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, I wrote a play: A Stone’s Throw. The full-length drama was about the dilution of the human spirit forged against...
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