PRAISE for Playwrights on Television

“Hillary Miller’s riveting interviews with eighteen dramatists demonstrate how writing for television is reshaping contemporary play writing. In wide-ranging conversations, writers talk about the artistic, economic, and social reasons they compose for the small screen. The interviews coalesce into a beautifully textured picture of the modern playwright’s education―from formal training to early successes to the seemingly inevitable invitation from Hollywood. Framed with sharp analyses from Miller, this collection will be essential reading for anyone who loves Peak TV or who cares about the American theater.” – Derek Miller, author of Copyright and the Value of Performance, 1770-1911

“Where do we locate the labour of the playwright in a world dominated by digital downloads and binge-streaming? What might a dramatist writing for both stage and (small) screen have to tell us about the cultural shifts our world has undergone in the past 20 years, the stories we increasingly dismiss or hunger for? How can you train for a successful cross-platform writing career, and what challenges should you expect to face? This compelling, readable book traverses these questions in 18 interviews with playwright-showrunners; it’s essential reading for drama teachers, media scholars, super-fans, aspiring writers – and anyone who loves both the West End and The Wire” 

-Kim Solga, author of A Cultural History of Theatre in the Modern Age

PRAISE for Drop Dead:

“In her exciting study, named for the Daily News headline of 1975 protesting the federal refusal to help out New York City, Hillary Miller combines urban geography and theater history to focus on the cash-starved performing arts in New York’s fiscal crisis of the 1970s. Reversing the traditional zero-sum picture of New York theater, Miller takes little interest in the commercial stages of midtown Manhattan and focuses instead on Brooklyn, street and neighborhood performance across the city, and the downtown emergence of La MaMa and the Public. The reader is left almost aching with nostalgia for the bad old times.”

—Elinor Fuchs, author of The Death of Character: Perspectives on Theater after Modernism

“Drop Dead makes a distinctive and valuable contribution to theatre and performance studies scholarship. It is careful and nuanced in its approach to theatre-historical practices, and introduces an urban frame that changes how these practices have commonly been narrated and understood.”

— Michael McKinnie, author of City Stages: Theatre and Urban Space in a Global City