FSWW Online Academy - Write Plays that Get Produced!

How a Play Gets Chosen

Think about the last play you saw. Before the lights went down, someone sat in a small office with a stack of scripts and picked that one.

That moment decides almost everything, and it is one of the least discussed parts of the American theater. Far more new plays are written each year than any theater can produce, and many are set down within the first few pages.

That sounds cruel until you meet someone who does the reading. They are not skimming out of contempt. After a few hundred scripts, a reader knows what they are looking for and can tell quickly whether it is there.

What almost nobody tells the playwright is that there was a reason their script got set down, and the reason is knowable.

The four questions

A practiced reader is not primarily asking whether the writing is good. Good writing is more common than people think. What is rare is a play that answers four questions early.

Whose play is this? Not who speaks most. Whose want drives the action, and does the reader know what it is yet? Three interesting people and no engine is a conversation, not a drama.

What has already happened? A play begins in the middle of something that started before the lights came up. If nothing is at stake when the audience arrives, the first act is a prologue.

What is the event? Something must happen early that cannot be undone. If it can be put back the way it was, it was not an event.

Why this, now? Why does this story need a stage, in front of living people, this season? Artistic directors ask that one out loud. Readers ask it silently, on page four.

Clear answers clear a bar many submissions never reach. No answers get a form letter with no notes in it, and the writer is left to guess.

Guessing is the real problem

Rejection without explanation is not just discouraging. It's misleading. So the writer sharpens the dialogue, which was probably fine, or adds a scene to explain something, which usually makes it worse, and sends it to a different theater, where a different reader sets it down on page nine for the same reason as the first. Years can go by like that.

That is an information problem, not a talent problem, and information problems are fixable. The skill that closes the gap is not writing but reading: learning to see your own play the way the person deciding about it sees it. Writers are the worst readers of their own work, because they can see what they meant. The reader sees only what is on the page.

The Course

What Makes a Good Play: Write Plays That Get Produced is a six-session course with Dr. Vera J. Katz. Every produced play works for reasons you can name. Most writers can tell when a play isn't working; far fewer can say why. That's what Dr. Katz teaches. Over six live Sunday sessions she takes selected plays apart (how structure carries tension, how character drives the action, why an ending lands) and then turns the same lens on students' own work. The goal is more than notes on one draft. It's learning to read your own play the way a director does, on this script and every one after it.

Dr. Vera J. Katz is Professor Emerita in the Department of Theatre Arts at Howard University, where she taught acting and directing for 32 years. For 24 years she also taught acting at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. She has directed more than 50 productions, originally working under Joe Hyman, producer of the famed playwright-director-author Moss Hart, on Broadway. In 2023, Howard University honored her with the Bison Honors Living Legend Award. Her former students include Phylicia Rashad, Chadwick Boseman, Taraji P. Henson and Debbie Allen.

Details

Six live sessions on Zoom, Sundays, 3–5 PM ET / 12–2 PM PT:Oct. 11 · Nov. 8 · Nov. 22 · Nov. 29 · Dec. 6 · Dec. 13, 2026

Sessions are recorded for enrolled students. No script required. Twelve seats.

Early-bird tuition is $395 through Monday, Oct. 5, or until sold out; $500 after. Because sessions are recorded, late enrollment stays open through Oct. 25.

Reserve your seat → https://fswwonline.newzenler.com/courses/what-makes-a-good-play

The Frank Silvera Writers' Workshop has developed new plays and playwrights since it was founded in Harlem in 1973. This fall, FSWW Online brings Dr. Katz's approach to writers anywhere.

Garland Thompson, Jr. is Executive Artistic Director of the Frank Silvera Writers' Workshop.