UC Santa Cruz

Playwrights use writing support tools to craft scripts for the stage. However, these tools are not attuned to the challenges of creating live performance and navigating theater ecosystems, instead complicating and constraining playwrights' processes. To understand how playwrights' creative needs and communities inform their tool use and how they adapt to tools that fail to meet their needs, I conducted workshops and interviews with playwrights to design Playground, a playwriting version management tool. Through thematic analysis of these studies and reflection on the development of playwriting tools, I found four themes in playwriting processes: scaffolding communities of practice, incorporating voice and body into writing processes, managing script elasticity across the theater lifecycle, and writing through collage of collected and created materials. I discuss lenses of embodied practice, non-normative time, and practice-led methodology through which researchers can better understand creative writers' overlooked writing behaviors and processes. To guide the development of playwriting support tools, I offer design considerations around enabling speech, visualizing performers, contextualizing version management, and moving textual material.