The definitive book on the creative process of writing a play. Applause Books, NYC, 1997.

Everyone agrees that learning to act requires some practice. But playwrights are often presumed somehow to spring forth full-grown like Athena from the head of Zeus. Playwrights are viewed as artists who must miraculously make something out of nothing. Facing a blank page or computer screen, this notion can be daunting. It's more useful for we playwrights to consider ourselves vessels or instruments, seismographs or channels through which energies may play.

   This Workbook provides writing exercises for playwrights in the way that acting schools provide acting exercises for actors...    Elements covered by the Workbook include creating characters, developing story or plot and writing in the natural rhythms of human speech. Along with theory, the Workbook develops the practice of playwriting through a series of exercises. Most of the exercises are executed with writing implements. But the practice and understanding of theater is also a physical and emotional affair. Plays are written from a visceral place as well as from the mind. The idea of the playwright as mere head and hands (with the actor as mindless body) is pernicious. Some of the best playwrights have been actors, including the ancient Greeks and Shakespeare. Performance experience deepens a playwright's knowledge of what is theatrical. So this Workbook includes topics not usually associated with writing, such as keeping physically fit and exercises which require getting up on your feet and using your voice. These exercises are designed to cut rapidly through years of mental habits that come between your best intentions and writing effective words.

"Jean-Claude is the only playwriting teacher I ever had." Tony Kushner.

"The first book ever to allow students to go beyond the well-made play into the heart and soul of the twentieth century…. An incomparable contribution to the field." Howard Stein, head, Dramatic Writing Programs, Yale Drama, Columbia.