About the Book:

A writer of plays, novels, television, and film, Theresa Rebeck holds a unique perspective on what it means to be a writer today. In her alternately soothing and scathing writing primer, Free Fire Zone, she deftly combines her quick-witted humour with personal anecdotes detailing both the glamorous and ugly sides of life as a playwright and Hollywood writer.

Theresa Rebeck is the most-produced woman playwright on Broadway. Her Off-Broadway successes include plays such as Spike Heels, The Family of Mann, and View of the Dome. Her play, Omnium Gatherum, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and she created the TV show Smash, as well as writing award-winning episodes of NYPD Blue and screenplays for independent and studio features.

Free Fire Zone is her writer's guide that is both a discussion of the writer's craft and a no-holds-barred discussion of the politics in the movie, television, and theatre worlds. Theresa Rebeck said she wrote the book as a "don't kid yourself" answer to the many young writers who ask her for advice. But the tone of the book matches her plays, the simultaneous search and demand for values and decency.

In a series of hilarious tales and provocative discussions covering all aspects of dramatic writing, Theresa Rebeck relates, with comic aplomb and barely concealed fury, a few dozen terrifying war stories from more than 30 years in the business. She attempts to address what she considers both of a writer's primary concerns – how to tell a story with truth and vision and how to maneuver as a dramatic writer in a dangerous world.

What people say:

"...she clearly knows how the savage, mercurial economics of the entertainment industry can shatter the fragile ego." — The New York Times

"Her memoir/guidebook Free Fire Zone is a juicy read about the hazards of writing not just for TV and movies ... but also in the supposedly noble, often insulting realm of the theater. Rebeck's first rule of showbiz survival, regardless of platform: Never look weak." — The Washington Post

"Many playwrights aspire to big money in TV, while many TV writers covet the artistic satisfaction only the stage seems to afford. Rebeck has worked in both the pressure-cooker world of Law and Order and L.A. Law and the slightly less pressured precincts of non-Broadway theater. Omnium Gatherum, the wise, witty meditation on the post-9/11 world that she wrote with Alexandra Gersten Vassilaros, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Still alive, nevertheless, she tells about it all in a delightful hybrid of soap-box harangue, memoir, and young writers' primer that may satisfy those wanting to learn about the craft of writing and those looking for dirt about life in la-la Land. Rebeck's riffs on the structures of well-made plays and TV episodes and the rewards and difficulties of working for various media should gratify aspiring writers. Meanwhile, as might be expected of the author of the hilarious play The Family of Mann, about off-camera backstabbing on a TV series, her trenchancy about surviving and thriving in L. A. will amuse and enlighten all comers." — Booklist

About the Author:

Theresa Rebeck is a leading American playwright, screenwriter and author. Her plays include Bad Dates, Omnium Gatherum (co-written, Pulitzer finalist), Spike Heels, and Mauritius, which won Boston's prestigious IRNE and Elliot Norton Awards. Her work in television includes NYPD Blue for which she has won the Peabody, the Writer's Guild, and the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar awards.