Jonathan Dorf’s plays have been produced in more than half of the states in the US, as well as abroad. His work is published by Brooklyn Publishers, Eldridge, Meriwether, and soon Smith & Kraus. He is co-chair of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, the resident playwriting expert for Final Draft and The Writers Store, and a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. He formerly directed the theatre program at The Haverford School, and spent three years at Choate Rosemary Hall Summer Arts Conservatory as playwright-in-residence. He holds a BA in Dramatic Writing and Literature from Harvard University and an MFA in Playwriting from UCLA. He is available to playwrights and screenwriters as a script consultant (and works with writers of books and articles as well) and can be found on the web at www.jondorf.com or emailed directly at jon@jondorf.com.

How did you start writing? When did you know that you wanted to specialize in drama and not, for example, poetry? Why writing, and why drama?

I have always been an avid reader-- actually, more so when I was younger-- perhaps influenced by the fact that my father was librarian. In fact, taking a trip across the United States with my parents when I was ten years old, we had to stop to buy more books:  I had gone through everything we had bought. At that time I was reading the Great Brain series, and soon went through the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series and Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

The first creative writing I can remember doing was a heavily sci-fi influenced (“Battlestar Galactica” was a big favorite of mine) short story in maybe the third or the fourth grade. It won recognition in a young writers contest, and from there I wrote a few more short stories. At some point, probably early in high school, I started writing simply for the sake of writing-- not just for school-sponsored contests or assignments.

During my sophomore year in high school, I met a teacher named Thom Williams, who was the advisor to the student newspaper (Mar News), the literary magazine, and the yearbook. When at the end of the year I took over as editor of the newspaper, I started almost living in the Mar News Room, where lots of kids gathered to play chess, talk about writing, and simply hang out. Kind of Marple Newtown Senior High School’s Greenwich Village, I suppose. Thom was and still is an award-winning poet (haiku especially), and he got me writing poetry. My interest in short stories gradually faded, and for a while, I focused on writing relatively short, free verse poems. I also, of course, wrote articles for the school paper, and even covered sports (my first paid writing gigs!) for a local weekly, The County Press.

During my junior year, Thom, who is still a good friend to this day, suggested that since I had written short stories and poetry and song lyrics and essays and newspaper articles, why not try writing a play? So I did. More on that later.

When I got to college, I still thought I was going to be a lawyer. But sitting in the audience at Harvard Law School’s famed moot court (my cousin Michael, now a well-known professor of law at Columbia, was a participant), while I thought law was fascinating, I realized that I didn’t want to practice it. In the meantime, I had student productions of fourteen different plays of mine as an undergrad. A few I directed, most I didn’t-- but playwriting became my artistic medium of choice. I think what has hooked me since high school is the immediacy of it, and the live audience. There’s nothing like sitting in the back of the house while actors speak the words and play the actions you wrote, and the people in the audience react to them. Everyone who works on a play is there because you wrote it-- that’s quite a feeling, and it’s unlike the feeling you get from any other art form. So here I am, still writing plays.

What inspires you to write? How often are you visited by the muse? What about writer’s block? How do you deal with that?

I’m not sure if I’d reduce writing to “inspiration,” because it makes it sound as if writers get struck by a bolt from above. Personally, I tend to write when I come upon an interesting character (in my head or otherwise) or situation. For example, in the last few years I’ve been increasingly fascinated by American pop iconography. I’d been carrying around the idea of a Winnebago-- I wanted a play with a Winnebago in it. I also wanted to write a play about squeegee people, those often-homeless folks who will clean your car windows. And then the 2000 election happened, with its uniquely inconclusive result. All of these elements mixed together, the presidents eventually became mayors of New York City, and Shining Sea was born.

To me, it’s not so much an issue of being visited by a “muse” or being inspired (this is not to say that one isn’t struck by good/great ideas from time to time), but rather one of time and mindspace. When I was an undergrad, my meals were downstairs in the dining hall, my bills were paid, I didn’t have a TV, and the Internet wasn’t the distraction (for better or worse) that it now is. All I had to do was get up and write. I had days when I would crank out twenty or twenty-five pages. Entire one-acts. I once wrote a feature film script in seven days.

The problem now is that sitting down and writing isn’t my only responsibility. Nobody makes my meals anymore, nor takes care of paying my electric or credit card bills on time. Now I do own a television, and I like to go to the gym. And having a writing career isn’t just about the writing. One needs to market it, which often means maintaining a website, and doing mailings or e-mailings of scripts. And then there are the occasional guest artist visits, or because I do a lot of consulting on other people’s scripts and for companies like Final Draft and the Writers Store, I get a lot of emails requesting one kind of writing help or another. It takes a lot of time out of my schedule, and it makes it harder to write.

I don’t believe in writer’s block. But I do believe that before I can write productively, my mindspace needs to be clear. What some call “writer’s block” is simply an indication that you haven’t had enough time to clear out your head from your other responsibilities, all the things that have nothing to do with writing. Take some time to do them, or just decide that you’re not going to deal with them at all for a day or two. Go out and waste some time if you need to-- I find it’s a good way to clear your head. Personally, when I need to get something done, I usually leave my apartment and go to a café, or if I really need a concerted period of writing, I go out of town.

You produce plays as well. How do you like that? Do you prefer producing all of your own plays? Why? What about direction? Have you ever wanted to do that, why or why not? Do you take a hand in directing your plays or are you content to let another person do that?

Producing plays is an entirely different animal from writing them. It’s mostly about raising money, and getting personnel, a space, marketing. In other words, it’s mostly business. I’m organized, and so for better or for worse, I’m good at producing, but it’s not something I do much of anymore, nor is it something I have a burning desire to do. I’d rather just write. And when I was producing, it was rarely my own work anyway.

Of course, producing your own work gives you more control, but it’s a huge investment of time, effort and most likely, money. My theory in general is that if my play is good enough, there has to be someone out there who will pay me to produce it. This is not to say I wouldn’t ever produce any of my plays again, but it would have to be something that I really wanted to be involved in. The one play of the current crop that comes to mind is Yard Wars, my one-man backyard wrestling play. It would make a great late-night or festival show, and it would be a ton of fun to work on. So I’ve been keeping my eyes open, and we’ll see what happens.

As for directing, I think it’s usually a terrible idea for playwrights to direct their own work, or at least a first production. Why? Because as the playwright, the entire play is clear to you (let’s hope). But while it’s obvious to you because you wrote it, it may not be obvious to everyone else. A director who is not the playwright will go out of his way to make these tricky moments clear to all, but the “playwright as director” won’t realize they’re tricky in the first place. Also, I always like to have a collaborator who can bring some fresh eyes and insight to a play that I’ve lived with for some time. 

What would you consider the best and worst part about writing? Why?

For me, the biggest joy during the actual writing process is typing the words “end of play” after I finish a first draft. I know that’s just the beginning of the work, and that I’ve got many months (or even years) and drafts to go, but there’s a certain sense of accomplishment at having “given birth” to a new play.

Probably the toughest thing about writing is after I finish that first draft and I’ve gotten some feedback or had a reading or two of the play, when I realize that I have to rewrite an enormous chunk of it. Yes, I know I’m improving the play in the long run, but it feels like running a marathon, and just when you think you’ve reached the finish line, you realize it’s only the starting line for another marathon.

Is there an ideal project, a dream play… something you wish to pen but have not been able to do so yet? Can you tell us a little about it if so?

I don’t believe that there’s such a thing as one ideal project or “dream play,” because then what would I do once I’d written it? At any given moment, I’m usually working on several projects, and I have at least three or four ideas “on deck.” The hope is that while I’m writing Play A, I can be thinking about Play B, thinking about its characters and what they want, the world in which they live-- so that by the time I’m finished writing Play A, I’m ready to tackle a draft of Play B.

So yes, I do have a number of plays that are on my writing wish list, but I don’t talk about things I haven’t written yet. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I’m still working out their shapes in my head, and also that there’s a certain psychic energy needed to write plays, and I don’t want to discharge it prematurely or talk these “plays to be” to death before they’re born.

There are links on your homepage for young playwrights, suggesting a reading list for them, and helping them out in general with their writing. How far would you say you have been successful in providing this kind of help to people who wish to write drama? How exactly do you go about helping them?

I’ve always been interested in helping young writers. I like teaching, and while I’m not in a classroom full-time at the moment, the Young Playwrights Page is my way of helping the next generation of playwrights. It’s considered by many to be the most comprehensive resource site for young playwrights on the web, and not only do I get periodic emails from teachers asking to use excerpts from the site in their classes, but what’s even more flattering is when I’ll randomly come upon a link to my site that a teacher has put on his or her page, instructing students to go there for playwriting help. I remember discovering a link to my site from a small public school in a remote part of Queensland, Australia, instructing the sixth grade students to visit for help with their playwriting assignment. I’ve found similar links on American school sites, even on a British school blog. (The beauty of my web hosting statistics is that they tell me what links my visitors followed to get to me.)

I’ve also been a guest artist at a number of schools, and I would love to do that more. It’s exciting to come to a new place (I like traveling anyway), and in a few days, change the way the students look at writing.

Playwriting can be a really transformative art form. I spent a year working with an elementary school class in northeast Philadelphia as part of the Philadelphia Young Playwrights program. At the end of the year, we had professional actors come in and do script-in-hand readings of the best of the plays-- it was this incredible high for the students (and their families). Only nine or ten years old, and already exposed to that hard to describe but oh-so-amazing feeling of watching people performing your work, and watching others react to it. That’s something those kids will keep with them, and who knows what impact this playwriting experience will have.

The Young Playwrights Page is a complete resource, in that it guides you all the way from idea (it even talks about where ideas come from) to what to do with your “finished” play. In other words, even if you have no other playwriting instruction, you should be able to use the site as a guide to write your first play.

My philosophy of teaching writing has been influenced by some of my own mentors over the years. The late William Alfred used to talk about each play finding its own “incontrovertible form,” and in my grad school years, Leon Katz showed us how to meet plays on their own terms, rather than insist (as many teachers and texts seem to do) that all plays be created through some particular method, or have the same structure or purpose. 

In addition to the Young Playwrights Page, I also run a Yahoo groups email list for young playwrights (and their teachers) through which I’ll answer general questions about writing. And then there are a number of other resources I created, not specifically for young writers but certainly of use to them. I wrote the content for a site called www.playwriting101.com, and I have a bunch of columns on the Final Draft website, www.finaldraft.com. Also, if you happen to own Final Draft 7 (and subsequent versions, I would expect, will contain it also), you’ll find “Ask the Expert” playwriting (the legendary Syd Field handles screenwriting), with basic instruction, troubleshooting and advanced dramaturgical tips, by yours truly.

Of course, my favorite thing to do is to work with writers of all ages one-on-one. When I taught at The Haverford School, I created a specialized dramatic writing course, and my students won contests at the local level, nationally, and even abroad, but more important, they developed an understanding of how playwriting works on a practical level, and some of them are still writing away today. 

Do you think young writers now have better opportunities than they did when you had entered this field? How is it different? Tell us a little about your first play; what it was about and how it got produced. Also, in all the work you have done to date, what is it that you are most proud of, why?

The biggest difference between resources and opportunities for young writers when I started and resources and opportunities now is the Internet. Between e-mail and the World Wide Web, it’s suddenly become easy to publicize a contest that previously only the locals would have known about. My Young Playwrights Page contains links to dozens of submission opportunities for young writers worldwide-- only a few years ago, to come up with such a list would have been impossible. So it’s hard to say whether the number of contests has proliferated in recent years, or whether we simply didn’t know about most of the ones beyond our doorstep. Of course, it’s also possible that some contests have sprung up because the Internet has made publicizing them so much easier.

My first play was in response to Thom Williams suggesting that since I’d written everything else, I should try writing a play. And so I did-- my junior year in high school. The play was called The Storm, and it was a pretty blatant rip-off of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, which made perfect sense considering that I had written my junior English paper on O’Neill and had been reading a number of his plays. The Storm was about some people stuck in a New England bar during a blizzard. I don’t remember much else about it (I think it was something of a tragedy), but there was a one-act festival at my high school at the end of every year, and the seniors who were most active in the drama program directed the plays.  Somehow, one of them decided to direct my play as part of the festival-- I think he was a Mar News guy. Maybe Thom Williams brought the play to his attention. Supposedly it was the first student-written one-act ever to be produced at the festival, but in any case, the reception was very positive.

Of course, The Storm (and everything else I wrote during my high school years) is somewhere hidden away on a disk and has about as much chance of being seen (much less produced by anyone) as Jimmy Hoffa.

But a play that came along just a few years after is still probably closest to my heart, perhaps just because I’ve lived with it so long: Ben. I wrote Ben somewhere around my sophomore year at Harvard, beginning it in Adrienne Kennedy’s class and then finishing it later that school year. Over the years, I’ve watched the play evolve in so many ways, with the cast size shrinking from about ten to seven, scenes disappearing and new ones appearing, and what Bill Alfred would call its “incontrovertible form” emerging. Ben, a homeless teen living in Harvard Square, is looking for the woman he thinks is his mother, but instead he finds a surrogate father in a gay restaurant owner. At some point Baxter, the restaurant owner, became a gay character (for nearly ten years he wasn’t), and when he did, everything slipped into place. Ben and Baxter’s relationship is central, and the restaurant owner’s being gay created an instant source of tension: Ben, because of his life experiences, assumes Baxter must be after something. At the same time, Ben becomes Baxter’s substitute for the son from which he’s estranged. The advantage of Baxter having been straight in the original conception of the character is that he’s written as a blue-collar guy, which is what he still is, rather than as the stereotypical gay character.

Ben had a workshop production at Harvard directed by Scott Schwartz (who has gone on to direct the New York productions of Bat Boy, Golda’s Balcony and tick tick…BOOM), and then several readings of various stripes. It was supposed to have a workshop production in New York in fall 2003, but that and a concert reading at one of the National New Play Network theatres fell apart due to financial reasons. It’s currently waiting for a promised staged reading at one of the good small theatre companies in LA, and I’m confident that sooner or later, it’ll find a production.

Tell us about writers you admire. Why do you admire them and do you try to emulate their style?

My favorite writers are probably Edward Albee and Harold Pinter. Albee’s The Zoo Story, to my thinking, is the perfect one-act. The way the play’s structure precisely mirrors Jerry’s long detour (“sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly”) is nothing short of brilliant. His most famous play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, is likewise masterful, its dialogue like music. I remember Leon Katz working through the play’s various movements in a grad school class, treating it like a symphony. Both Albee and Pinter (his The Homecoming is scorching) are darkly funny, which I always enjoy, and they imbue their work with great menace. Not just the words, but also the spaces between them, have meaning and impact (of course, the Pinter pause is legendary). And each dramatist, in his own way, isn’t afraid to push his characters into ridiculous, almost expressionistic situations.

I also admire Mamet’s skill with dialogue. He always gets credit for writing the most realistic dialogue, but the fact is he doesn’t. Rather, he writes such realistic rhythms that he’s able to hide that his characters are not speaking as we would in real life. It’s an intensely edited version of real-life dialogue, with a cadence so tightly written that it passes for absolutely real.

I also admire Shepard’s heightened dialogue and situations, the imagination of Kushner, the cleverness of Stoppard, the expansive spareness of Beckett, the human poetry of the best of Tennessee Williams and O’Neill. Steven Dietz’s Lonely Planet is a beautiful play, and of course, so are plays like Marlowe’s Edward the Second and almost anything Shakespeare (my particular favorite is probably Richard III).

I don’t try to emulate the style of any one writer in particular. But, of course, we’re all a product of our influences: every play I’ve ever read or seen, films and TV, art, the newspaper, events I’ve witnessed-- the list goes on and on. All of these may potentially find their way into my writing, and the hope is that I’ll synthesize the best that each has to offer.

Shakespeare’s plays were universal because he wrote about human traits and failings that are the same world over, Brecht’s plays dealt more with social and political issues, and Beckett wrote about the absurdity of human existence. Other playwrights have also been famous because of the mood or theme their plays were built around. Would you call yourself a realist, surrealist, expressionist, absurdist or something else? Do you think drama is a reflection of our times/values/environment? How? Have your plays ever questioned the world we live in, why it is the way it is, or anything of the sort? Why or why not?

Stylistically, I don’t like to box myself in. I’ve written some plays that are simply two people in a room (e.g. Newt Gingrich Visits a Residential Youth Facility Not Near Omaha or You’re Next), and others where the characters seem real, but the world around them is heightened (Shining Sea), and still others where characters self-consciously become other characters and real time gets bent in expressionistic ways (Neverland or Bookends). Some of my plays are written specifically for young actors and audiences (Dear Chuck or After Math), while others have more mature situations. In other words, I don’t exist in one constant place stylistically (of course, I have inclinations and preferences), in my concerns (I prefer that word to “themes”) or in my intended audience. Perhaps some of that is to keep things fresh for myself, and also because as we grow as people, our interests change. I’m not the playwright I was ten years ago, nor will I be the same playwright in another ten.

In graduate school I took a course called the Background of Theatrical Art, and it was a study of plays as the forces that shape them. Drama is definitely a product of its time period, though there are many ingredients to factor in: cultural factors, politics, religion, economics, etc. Often playwrights are ahead of the curve, writing pieces that are shocking to audiences of their time, giving society and the human existence a long hard look in a way that many may not be ready to do. Plays like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf or Ibsen’s A Doll’s House or Kushner’s Angels in America caused their share of shock waves when they appeared, shedding light on some of mankind’s darker corners, but all have come to be accepted as classics.

Most playwrights, unless they write purely to entertain, question the world in which we live to some extent. Personally, I don’t sit there and decide I’m going to write a play about abortion or freedom of speech or health care or religion or any number of other “issues” in order to put forth my point of view or “the answer.” Instead, through my characters and their situations, I try to write plays that bring up questions.

For instance, Shining Sea is set in a New York City that’s being torn apart by a failed mayoral election. A trio of squeegee people, a “family” of sorts, come upon an abandoned Winnebago, and it’s their chance to escape, to drive their way to the American Dream. Do certain elements of the play resonate with the 2000 American presidential election? Sure. But the play is about the squeegee people:  the rioting, dueling mayors, and run-amok parking authority are merely the backdrop to their lives. In After Math, a student, Emmett, disappears in the middle of a math test. Through scenes and monologues, those left behind try to figure out where he’s gone, and as the play unfolds, we realize that no one really knew him, and that only in his absence has he become a presence in their lives. The hope is that maybe through viewing Emmett’s situation, the audience will take away some new insight into their own lives or the world around them.

You are also a screenwriter. How do you find that sort of writing? What is more fulfilling, writing a play or a screenplay? How is it different? Why do you like more what it is that you like more?

Screenwriting and playwriting are probably best described as cousins. Both media require good storytelling, but screenwriting is more visually intensive. People sometimes forget, however, that playwriting is much more than dialogue, and in fact has a significant visual component of its own. 

I enjoy writing screenplays, but I don’t always feel as free writing them. On the stage, I can have characters turn into other characters before our eyes, craft the most expressionistic moments imaginable, and tell a story using any number of structures. Screenwriting, on the other hand-- and much of this seems to be because of the Hollywood mentality-- pretty much boils down to Aristotelian three-act structure. Everyone wants to know what your acts are, or your plot points (some books will even tell you they need to be on specific pages), or you’ll hear someone talk about rising or falling action: your script can feel more like a connect-the-dots than a writing project if you’re not careful. One problem is that many of the people who work in the business don’t have a real background in dramatic structure or writing, so there’s a lot of clinging to oversimplified writing models.

Part of the cookie-cutter attitude we see in film is probably because it costs so much to produce one (unless you shoot it yourself) that it’s rare for people to take a chance on something. On the other hand, a little experimental theatre can put up your play for next to nothing, and there will be much more opportunity to attack things creatively on stage in terms of direction and design.

This is not to say that I don’t like writing screenplays. It’s fun to tell stories with images, and that kind of intensely visual work presents its own challenges. I actually like to switch back and forth between stage and screen, as each type of writing informs the other and keeps me fresh. If I could only write one, I’d probably pick stage plays, simply because there is no better high than sitting in the back of a dark theatre watching the audience watch live actors perform your work. The other big difference is that in the theatre, playwrights own the work, and consequently are treated much better. In film, you’re paid more, but you’re pretty much a hired gun: they own your work (unless you’re also producing).

What are your plans for the future? Where do you want to go from here, why, and how will you get there?

My goals for the future are simple: more, bigger, better. I’ve got several pieces on the docket for this year, including a pair of screenplays and a rock musical. I’ve written one musical to date, a piece called Day One that’s written specifically for teen performers, and I very much enjoyed the process. There’s something exciting about music on stage, an infectious energy, and I want to experience that more.

I also want to continue my writing for young people. On the one hand, I want to do some hip, contemporary one-act versions of the classics, because it’s a great way to get them interested in the works of the Greeks, Shakespeare, and others in a “non-threatening” way.  But I also enjoy writing plays that look at the way young people live their lives today, or deal with issues they face in ways that don’t preach, and use humor and theatricality to engage them.

As far as my work for young actors and audiences goes, I’m in a good place, because I’ve found several publishers who seem to share my taste, and the hope is to continue to put more and more plays on the market. Of course, I also want non-youth productions in the larger mainstream theatres, whether in New York or regionally. And I need to find representation again. I had a manager for a while, but I felt as if I were working for her more than the other way around. Several of the screenplay projects I’m working on may speed that process, but I’m always on the lookout for the right person to advance my career. Representation is less crucial for playwrights, but it’s certainly quite necessary in the screenwriting world.

Any advice for budding playwrights or screenwriters? How should they go about their writing, how can they make it public, and how can they make it sell?

It’s hard not to give advice that doesn’t sound cliché. “Believe in your work.” “Be persistent.” That’s nice, but it’s not very practical. But here are five tips that are:

1.  Don’t send out work too early. If you’ve written a play, make sure it’s had at least a reading or two and you’ve had some time to sit with it before you send it out. Ditto with a screenplay. Too many people send out their scripts too early, and once you send someone a script that’s not ready, they’re that much less likely to read your next piece.

2.  Write scripts that you would enjoy seeing. Don’t write for the market, because by the time you’re finished, the market may have changed. Remember that by the time a screenplay makes it to the screen, at least a year or two has passed since it was bought. I try to write scripts that I think will hold up over time, particularly as a playwright, because I want them to be produced over and over.

3.  Proofread your work, and learn proper format. There’s nothing more annoying than a script that’s littered with typos, or that looks like the writer didn’t study format at all. If you don’t care about your work, why should anyone else?

4.  Learn how to market yourself, and how to approach people about your work. That means writing query and cover letters that sell you as a professional without your sounding off about how great you or your script is. 

5.  Do at least one thing to advance your career every day. That may be writing a new scene, submitting a script to a theatre or contest, or building a website to market yourself.

Writing is definitely a long distance race, and if there’s anything else you could see yourself doing, you should do that instead.

Originally from Pakistan, where she worked in the publications department of an organization, Mehroo Siddiqui is currently doing her Masters from George Mason University in Virginia.