What Is a Playwright? A Brief History of Playwriting

A playwright is a theatre artist who writes scripts to be performed on a stage or in a theatrical setting. In theatre, they are the equivalent of the screenwriter for films. In the English language, William Shakespeare is perhaps the most famous playwright, penning well-known works such as Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet. While Shakespeare was the iconic Elizabethan dramatist, playwrights have also thrived long before and after his time: The art form goes back to the Ancient Greeks and continues today, with new plays appearing on Broadway and in regional theatres across the United States.

Playwrights, also known as dramatists or dramaturgs, have been revered cultural figures for thousands of years, writing plays that reflect contemporary politics, ideas, and characters.

• Greek tragedies: In Ancient Greece, citizens celebrated Dionysia, the festival that worshipped Dionysus, god of wine and theatre. The Theatre of Dionysus, an amphitheatre located in Athens, played host to a number of dramas; in the 400s BC, playwrights like Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus were revered tragedians, authoring works like Oedipus Rex (429 BC), Medea (431 BC), and The Oresteia (458 BC). These plays were often character studies of tragic figures and featured a Greek chorus commenting on the action in the play. Aristotle outlined these theatrical devices—plot, character, music, et cetera—in Poetics (c. 335 BC). These dramatic rules served as the blueprint for dramas as the form evolved.
• Religion and the Renaissance: At the end of the Medieval period, morality plays were in vogue. These works—religiously inspired as Christianity permeated much of Europe—dealt with vices and virtues, showing the temptation, fall, and redemption of a protagonist. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Renaissance saw a continuation of this style and also the evolution of farces, which showcased more comedic and less moralistic stories. Gil Vicente (c. 1465–c. 1536) was a famous Portuguese playwright during the Renaissance whose plays ranged in style and content.
• Shakespeare: William Shakespeare (1564–1616) made an indelible impact on theatre, taking the form’s potential to new heights with his comedies, tragedies, and histories. With a masterful command of the English language and a grasp on engineering tight plots, Shakespeare made theatre an amazingly popular art form and showed audiences the depths of the human condition. Some of his most well-known works include Romeo and Juliet (1597), Hamlet (1603), and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600).
• The birth of realism: In the nineteenth century, a new genre took hold of European theatre companies. Realism portrayed domestic life truthfully, aiming for verisimilitude. Design and acting were geared toward putting real life on stage. The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) and Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) were leaders of this movement, noted for their respective plays Three Sisters (1901) and A Doll’s House (1879). These plays infused elements of the well-made play, which had been the de facto style, prioritizing an inciting event that unspools a succession of plots. As American theatre came into its own, modern playwrights like Arthur Miller (1915–2005) and Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953) continued the tradition of realism.
• Contemporary playwrights: In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, underrepresented artists began receiving more recognition: Terrence McNally (1938–2020) chronicled the experience of gay men in his works, Lynn Nottage (born 1964) writes plays about marginalized people, and Tarell Alvin McCraney (born 1980) crafts contemporary portraits of Black Americans.

As with other forms of creative writing, there is no one clear path toward success in this field, but there are many ways in which scriptwriters can get their start:

• Take a playwriting class. College classes and theatres may offer playwriting courses. Alongside the theoretical and practical knowledge needed to craft plays, it is also important to read a wide variety of works—comedies, tragedies, absurdist plays, histories, two-handers, etc.—to best understand the importance of each writer’s unique voice.
• Go to the theatre. Attend plays at theatres that produce new works. This will give you a sense of what kinds of works the theatre tends to select and will offer a snapshot of the current landscape of contemporary theatre.
• Set up a writing group. Plays are meant to be read, so you can set up a writer’s group with fellow playwrights in which you swap plays, read works aloud, and provide and receive constructive feedback.
• Submit plays to festivals and theatres. In New York City and beyond, many theatres will have free open submission policies, meaning you can submit your play to the theatre and wait to hear back from the institution if they find your play is a good fit. Like so many careers, being a playwright is about professional connections, so you need to network to get your foot in the door.

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