You have twenty-five minutes, a dressing room that smells faintly of coffee, and a playwright who has already answered the question "So what's your play about?" four times today. What you do in the next ten minutes decides whether your interview reads like a press release or like something a reader will still remember next week.
The difference is rarely talent. It is preparation and a handful of habits. The best student interviews about theatre tend to come from journalists who have read the script closely enough to ask about a specific line, who know which draft is on stage, and who understand that the plot is the one thing the audience can already get from the programme. Everything below is aimed at getting you into that position — and keeping you there when the conversation starts to drift.
The first pass is as an audience member. Let yourself be bored, confused, moved. The second pass is as a journalist, pencil in hand, and it should be slower and slightly ruthless. Mark the places where you laughed, the places where you got lost, the phrases a character repeats, the stage direction that must be difficult to stage. Those marks are your question bank.
While you read, pay attention to the architecture rather than the story. Where does the play refuse to give information? Which scene feels shorter than it should be? Which character disappears for twenty pages? A question built on a specific observation — "The mother leaves in the second scene and doesn't come back until the last page; did you always know she'd be absent that long?" — is almost impossible to answer with a slogan. That is the point.
Also do the boring homework. Find out whether this is a premiere, a revival, or a workshop; who directed it; whether a dramaturg worked on it; whether the playwright was in the rehearsal room. The answer to that last question alone will shape half your interview.
"Where do you get your ideas?" is a polite way of ending a conversation. It invites a vague answer about a newspaper clipping or a dream, and you will have to build a paragraph out of it. Replace it with questions that have edges.
Notice that none of these ask for a summary. They ask for chronology, decisions, and obstacles. A playwright who is tired of explaining the plot will usually wake up when asked about the mechanics of it.
Revision is where theatre interviews earn their keep, because it is the part of the work the audience never encounters. Resist the urge to fixate on numbers — "how many drafts?" produces a number and a shrug. Ask instead what changed between them.
Good territory: readings. Ask what the playwright heard in a cold reading that they could not hear at their desk. Ask about the note they refused, and why. Ask what a director or dramaturg said that shifted the script, and whether they resisted it at first. If the play has been through more than one production, ask what a previous cast taught them about a scene, and whether they have revised since.
There is also the question of the ending. Many student journalists ask playwrights to explain what the last scene "means." A better version: Was there a version where the last scene resolved more than it does now? That respects the ambiguity while still getting you a craft answer, and it saves you from a quote in which the writer patiently explains their own play to death.
Once the text is covered, move to the building. Casting is a reliable door: ask what a particular actor brought that was not on the page. Design is another: ask what the set forced the play to do — a steep rake, a single door, a wall of windows all impose behaviour. If the playwright was present in previews, ask about the first night an audience laughed somewhere unexpected.
One question worth keeping in your pocket for the end: Was there a moment in performance where something you were certain about stopped working? The answer tends to be specific, slightly uncomfortable, and exactly the kind of material that makes a piece feel reported rather than assembled.
Plot will creep in, and that is fine as an entry point. The trick is to use it as a doorway rather than a destination. When a playwright describes what happens in a scene, follow up with how: how did you write it, what did the first version look like, what did you try that failed? Two or three follow-ups will usually take you from summary to process.
Use silence. After an answer, count to three before speaking. Playwrights are used to thinking in pauses, and the second sentence of an answer is often the honest one. Avoid yes-or-no questions, avoid flattery dressed as a question ("This play is so brave — do you agree?"), and avoid asking the writer to do the critic's job by declaring what the play is about. Ask what choices were available and which one they took.
Before: read the script twice, mark three specific moments, check the production credits, and write twelve questions knowing you will use six. During: open with something concrete, follow up at least twice on any answer that interests you, get names and spellings, and ask permission to record. After: transcribe within a day while the room is still in your head, check every quote against the recording, and send a short thank-you note with any factual questions.
Then build the piece around three or four answers rather than the chronology of the conversation. The interview is not the article; it is the raw material. A reader should finish your piece knowing how this play was made, what it cost to make, and what the writer is still uncertain about — and none of that requires a single paragraph of plot.
Photo: RonaldoReyz / Pixabay
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