My Path to Playwriting Success
Make it Sparkle Video with Jonathan Dorf
Professional Playwright and Screenwriter
5:45 (runtime)
Director’s Notes
Jonathan Dorf began his journey into playwriting in high school, initially writing poetry and working on the school newspaper and literary magazine. His mentor, Tom Williams, encouraged him to try writing a play after Dorf had already experimented with various forms of writing.
Dorf wrote his first play, inspired by Eugene O'Neill's works, which he had been studying in his 11th-grade English class. This first play, titled "The Storm," was performed at a student one-act festival.
Dorf continued his interest in playwriting, penning a second play influenced by Sartre's "No Exit" and science fiction themes. Despite his own critical view of these early works, his plays were well-received.
He attended Harvard University, initially concentrating on English but eventually creating his own concentration in dramatic writing and literature. During his time at Harvard, he produced around 14 of his own shows.
Despite Harvard not having a formal theater department at the time, Dorf took advantage of the diverse spaces on campus to stage his works. This included the Loeb Theater Center, the Loeb Experimental Theater, and other unique locations such as basements and swimming pools.
Some of Dorf's works from his Harvard days were published and received positive reviews. He believes the process of writing often was a significant part of his learning experience in the craft of playwriting.
More About Jonathan
Playwright and screenwriter Jonathan Dorf has had more than 2000 play productions, including productions in every US state, as well as in Canada, Europe, Africa, Asia, Central and South America, Australia and New Zealand. He has been a finalist for the Actors Theatre of Louisville Heideman Award, the Hyperion One Act Award, the Weinberger Playwright Residency and the Interact and Charlotte Rep New Play festivals, and he has worked with such companies as the Walnut Street Theatre, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, Ensemble Studio Theatre – LA, Moving Arts and the Pittsburgh New Works Festival. He is co-founder and managing partner of YouthPLAYS, a publisher of plays and musicals for young actors and audiences at which over two dozen of his plays reside, with more than 25 other works published by such companies as Playscripts, Brooklyn Publishers, Heuer and Original Works, and monologues published in collections published by Meriwether, Playscripts and Smith & Kraus. He has been instrumental in the development of ProduceaPlay.com, the internet’s top “how to produce a play” resource site for prospective producers of theatre at all levels – schools, colleges, community and professional theatres.
He is chair emeritus of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, the former managing director of the Philadelphia Dramatists Center and was a longtime playwriting advisor to Final Draft (for whom he created the playwriting “Ask the Expert”) and The Writers Store (creator of Playwriting101.com, for many years Google’s top-ranked playwriting website, and a former playwriting instructor at Script University, where they still use his course). He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America’s Education Committee, as well as a longtime Guild member. For screen, he has written a trio of produced shorts, two of which he also directed. He is the author of Young Playwrights 101, a book for young playwrights and those who teach them, and conducts workshops at schools and festivals across the US and as far away as Japan, Malaysia and Singapore. He served as Visiting Associate Professor in the M.F.A. playwriting and children’s literature programs at Hollins University, and as United States Cultural Envoy to Barbados. He holds a B.A. in Dramatic Writing and Literature from Harvard University and an M.F.A. in Playwriting from UCLA.