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Review title: You've got to be kidding! (How to Write an Unwatchable Play)
Product review: A book on modern playwriting techniques? What a great idea! This book, though, ain't it.The techniques the author mentions may be legitimate...but his understanding of them is...well, bizarre. Worst of all: the book is BADLY WRITTEN. Not only are his theatrical concepts ludicrous, he can't even explain them. Along the way he makes up some ridiculous terminology in an attempt to legitimize these vague and poorly-thought out concepts. The exercises he suggests are a joke! (Basically they tell the reader to read a specific monologue and then to write one just like it. Whoever heard of learning playwriting by rote?) If one were to write a play the way this author suggests, the end result would be unendurable and inscrutable.(As a side note: almost none of the techniques he covers are "new". They were developed by the likes of Beckett, Strindberg, Brecht, Thorton Wilder and somebody named Shakespeare.)
