Playwriting with a Purpose: An Interview with Jackie Goldfinger
by Jordan Flores Schwartz
Jordan: I recently had the chance to meet with Jackie Goldfinger and discuss the new edition of her beloved book, Playwriting with a Purpose, which comes out June 16th through Routledge. This incredible text is a singularly comprehensive resource designed for both practitioners and academics alike. In addition to Jackie’s own involvement with LMDA, she also collaborated with former LMDA President Martine Kei-Green Rogers, Hayes Award Winner Edward Sobel, and LMDA member-dramaturg Alix Rosenfeld to bring her vision for this book to life. Whether you are looking to add some writing exercises to your theatrical toolkit, expand your mental library of plays and playwrights, update your syllabus, or start writing your own play, this new edition has what you need and is approachable for all levels of experience. Playwriting with Purpose has been described as empowering, refreshing, straightforward, and a gift. I hope you enjoy our conversation and will consider taking advantage of all this amazing text has to offer!
Keep reading for a sneak peek of the book via conversation with the author herself.
Jordan: Thank you so much for taking time to share about your book! What inspired you to revisit Playwriting with Purpose?
Jackie: I wrote Playwriting with Purpose during the first lockdown of COVID, mainly because I had, for a couple of years, created all–generated all these materials. I taught at a number of different schools. So, I had a lot of different types of resources for playwrights with different experience levels. I’d been encouraged by some of my fellow faculty members to put it in a book because they hadn’t found a book that was as flexible, and a number of them were already using my materials. I’m a big fan of sharing resources, and there was no live performance happening, so I had time to sit down and really think about it and parse it out. I pitched it to Routledge, and they realized that they didn’t have playwriting books like this.
Jordan: Absolutely! I’d love to hear a little bit more about what inspirations for the book came from your dramaturgical practice and from your practice as an educator.
Jackie: We needed something that people could plug into at different experience levels and that would elevate them from meeting them and then helping them improve rather than expecting them to have all this background that they may or may not have. That’s always been my philosophy. A lot of the inspiration for the book came from trying to find a place where you can learn and function as a writer in an academic environment. But then, that translates into real world practice. My dramaturgical brain that was like, “Okay, of all the playwrights I’ve worked with and all of these different situations from high school to community college to college to the professional world, like, as a dramaturg, what are some of the things that I think people need to know in order to grow as playwrights? What are some of the things we might struggle with?” The goal was to give people something they can learn from but also use in the rehearsal room. For example, in Playwriting with Purpose, instead of just covering one structure, my book covers five different structures, because I found that if you try and force everyone into the well-made play structure, that often really smart, really engaged students don’t fit into that structure… and then also as a dramaturg, I have also seen playwrights struggle with that.
Jordan: And I feel like too, having this wider variety of structures also incorporates a multicultural approach too, where you're opening up playwriting to different storytelling structures and traditions from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences.
Jackie: That was definitely the goal! Acknowledging I am a white writer: I’m a white American, middle class and upper middle class writer… I’m a woman writer. I am not going to claim anyone else’s practice at all, but in the book, I can give writers a broader range of cultural practices and ideas to pull from. I use examples of craft elements from around the world that are culturally and specifically appropriate but also show a wider range of what a play is. For the purposes of the book, I define a play as “a text made to be performed.” So, that encompasses a huge spectrum of what we do. The western way of thinking is not the whole picture, and my hope is to give readers some options of things they can explore by themselves outside of the book. My hope is that it feels really enriching and fulfilling, empowering a wider range of artists.
Jordan: I’m curious if there are any favorite exercises or prompts from the workbook portion of the text that you use a lot in your own teaching or in your own dramaturgical practice?
Jackie: Absolutely. So, some of the writing prompts are mine, and then I’ve asked some educators I know who have great prompts if I can use theirs and get their permission. One of the things that I find key, especially when I’m seeing writers that are less experienced, are lists to start out the writing practice. And so, in the book, I start out with a list of prompts. But I say, “If you have more experience and this is not useful for you, go to page X.” And you can start by writing prompts where you do monologues, or you can start with reading prompts that are for scenes.
Jordan: I think lists are very helpful, too. In the first edition, I remember one of the suggestions was to pull a picture out of a magazine of someone – a little more visual. I appreciate that there are definitely a variety of exercises for where you’re at in the process and what works best for your creativity. Thinking about that, I would love to hear more about the collaborative side of writing this book , who you reached out to and what some of those conversations looked like as you were getting their input on the book. I think you list them as artistic advisors.
Jackie: Yes. So, for artistic advisors, this is where my dramaturgical brain kicked in. I wanted advisors who have different specialties so I could talk about a wide cross section of types of work. I wanted people who would not be afraid to push back. Part of it was acknowledging where I may not be the strongest and finding people to fill in those, those gaps. For example, David Thompson, who I called a senior advisor because he very kindly looked at the whole book line by line, has a specific focus in the history of theatre. He paid special attention to every historical bit to make sure that I was appropriately contextualizing it for the writers and then found a way to move that bit of history into practice. I was very grateful to have people who are willing to come in and hold me to account for their specialties. I think it made the book much, much stronger.
Jordan: As you were working with your artistic advisors to update the book, was there anything surprising that you learned? Any big, exciting updates for the new book?
Jackie: Yes! I will say about 80% of it’s new. One of the things when I first talked to the advisors was that the first edition was really about how I was teaching at the university, so it was sometimes hard to follow. So structurally, I learned that it needed to be rewritten for clarity. Also, I was thrilled that people were embracing and excited about diversifying the book. Often, playwriting books will say, “read these two full length plays, or this full-length play, and then I’m going to give you examples from those plays,” right? But if you want something that’s diverse, that’s more expansive and accessible, then you can’t have people just read one play or two plays. So, the biggest lesson was that I need–instead of giving just two or three full play examples–I needed to find specific examples that work in the context that come from a lot of different places. So, I had to write a short synopsis, and then talk about the context, and then talk about the lesson that we’re learning, and give a writing assignment. This made the book over 400 pages long when I just did that – it was insane – but my advisors said it’s the right direction. This is something they’d never seen in a playwriting text before. Then, it was a matter of them giving me their feedback about what needed to be called back and me then trying to cut that in half. In the end, you still have the modularity to use specific examples from specific cultures at different periods within an important context attached to a writing prompt, but it was a lot more condensed and streamlined. That was something I was very proud of, that by the end of the process, the artistic advisors felt it been done really well and distinguished this from any other playwriting book out there.
Jordan: Is there anything else that we didn’t touch on that you wanted to share about the book or about your process?
Jackie: One thing I wanna make sure is very clear, and I have already, is that for every example, I place it in its time and um…cultural context. I don’t want people to think that I’m trying to flatten everything. I think it’s very clear in the book that I do that, but I know there’s a tendency in Western playwriting books, especially American playwriting books, that can make everything equal and the same. And that is not what the book does. In my process for the book, I started working with my dramaturg and educator brains working together. I realized as I was writing I was really writing the book that I wish I had growing up, as someone who grew up in a rural area with no access to professional theatre. I saw almost no theatre ’till college, but I learned everything that I knew about playwriting up in that time from reading, reading books from the library, especially things like Tennessee Williams, whose plays were very accessible. I had a literary, English major understanding of playwriting. Not a theatrical one, not one in practice. And so I realized I was writing a book that I wish I would’ve had in high school and college and slightly beyond because it really opens up the idea of what is a play and, to ask the basic question, what is theatrical?
Jordan: I think especially in today’s world, it’s so important that students graduating with arts degrees feel prepared to enter the workforce and have some of these more tangible skills and are familiar with some of the logistics of getting their work published and produced, as well as the artistic side of it. And this blending of it, I think is so, is just so timely and I think so many students and educators will really benefit from this approach. I think that’s what we’re really evolving towards with higher arts education.
Jackie: I completely agree because I wasted so much time doing the business part badly. That’s why the last 20% of the book is the business. Why aren’t we just giving these people information straight out of the gate?
Jordan: Absolutely. And you are not the only person I know who feels that way, who feels that there were so many things they wish they had known coming out of university. I think it’s important for that knowledge and that wisdom to be distributed in a way that has the credentials behind it and is respected in these academic spaces. Those practical skills are so often shoved to the side with internships or practicum credits, not really centered in the curriculum.
Jackie: 100%. One of the things I did to make this more accessible is I negotiated a lower price with Routledge.
Jordan: That’s amazing! One last thing I’m curious about too is whether you feel the book is complete, or if you do feel that there is more of a future evolution coming with the book down the road?
Jackie: Oh, my goodness. I hope the book is complete and not just because I’m exhausted. I feel like I’ve done what I set out to do, and I hope that people use this book for like the next 10 years, and another better, more updated playwriting book comes out that speaks to where we are in 10 years and everyone uses that. I don’t think we have to use the same book over and over forever, especially in the arts. I think we do that, and I think we do ourselves a disservice and our students a disservice because it should always evolve.
Jordan: Absolutely! Well, I am very excited about the new edition. It was great to catch up. Thank you so much for making time to talk!
Jackie: Thank you, Jordan! Please do reach out at any time!
If you use the book in your class, Jackie has kindly offered a free 30-minute Zoom where students can ask questions and/or have a discussion about a topic of your choice. Reach out to jacqueline.goldfinger@gmail.com if you have any questions.
You can go ahead and read free sample pages of the book here.
If you’re interested in purchasing, visit Routledge’s webpage. Use the discount code WQZRMB82T to save 20%!