Praise for Young Playwrights 101...

Jonathan Dorf's comprehensive Young Playwrights 101 is an intelligent, practical, and highly accessible guide for young playwrights. His breadth of knowledge and humanity shine through the pages of this book. I like this text enormously.

Janet Neipris
Head, Graduate Studies, NYU's Tisch School of the Arts Department of Dramatic Writing and former Dramatists Guild of America Councilmember

In exacting detail, Dorf's book provides a kind of playwriting boot camp approach to craft that is perfect for middle school, high school, and undergraduate students who need a point of departure for hewing their plays. This book can aid the novice in navigating the many complicated dimensions of playwriting toward the hopeful creation of a play.

Velina Hasu Houston, Ph.D.
Professor of Theatre, Director of Dramatic Writing and Resident Playwright, University of Southern California


This is a complete playwriting course for teachers, and an essential read for any upcoming playwright. Highly recommended.

Liane Campbell, Scene, the quarterly journal of the International Schools Theatre Association


Jon Dorf's analysis of the art and career of playwriting is clear, concise and comprehensive. The greatest compliment that I can give any craft-centered book is that I took notes.

Ed Shockley, playwright and professor of playwriting at the University of the Arts and Rutgers University


More than any other playwriting text I know, this book addresses the real, practical issues facing young playwrights today.  Dorf never loses sight of the fact that the purpose of playwriting is production.  It's not about writing an opus that will live in a drawer--this book will help young people write plays that will actually be produced.  A must-read for any up-and-coming young dramatic voice.

Matt Buchanan, playwright and child drama specialist and creator of childdrama.com

Excellent.  Clear and crisply written and thoroughly comprehensive.  It covers pretty well every aspect of writing a play from the idea through to the production.  It's very well laid out and would be invaluable for a young playwright (or even an older one).  I wish I had it when I was a teenager - it would have saved me a lot of grief.

Peter Colley, creator of Great Dialogue software and author of I'll Be Back Before Midnight, called by the Toronto Globe & Mail the "most produced Canadian play ever"

I just wanted to let you know how much I LOVE your book.  I'm a high school drama teacher and am teaching a class on playwriting.  The book is so well written and gets right to the point.  It was the perfect book for what I was attempting to teach.  THANK YOU!!!

Rene BeVier Dill, Director of Drama Program
Northglenn High School, Northglenn, CO

And for Jon Dorf...

Some years ago, Jon was my valued, highly regarded student in Playwriting at UCLA, but in the years since, I've come to recognize him as a genuine colleague.  His ability to analyse scripts in detail and to work with playwrights with excruciating attention to every detail of a script is extraordinary; and the advice he can offer writers on their work is invaluable not only for the script at hand but for the further development of the writer as a professional.  Jon has the genuine quality of a mentor, someone whom a novice as well as an experienced writer can trust to be supportive, exacting, and genuinely nurturing of talent.  That, and his knowledge of the practical business of going about getting scripts read and accepted makes him about as terrific a resource as a writer is likely to find.  I have enormous admiration for the care with which he does his mentoring, for his solid knowledge of playwriting technique, and for his thorough professionalism.

Leon Katz, the David G. Frey Distinguished Professor of Dramatic Art at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, as well as the former Co-Chair of Dramaturgy at the Yale School of Drama (and a professor at both Carnegie Mellon and UCLA), has been called the "preeminent teacher and practitioner of American dramaturgy."

Jon Dorf is the voice of this generation's high school student. He has captured the inner and outward struggles that confront today’s youth and brings light to those issues that we deem important but are too afraid to broach. The significance of his work is far beyond that of his writing genius. It speaks to everyone on a personal level and gives a voice to a growing population that has so much to say. His plays have proven vital, not only to the growth of our young actors but also to the development of their young minds. We continue to use Jon’s works here at Choate Rosemary Hall and look forward to his next creation.

Paul Tines, Executive Director of the Paul Mellon Arts Center and Head of the Choate Rosemary Hall Arts Department