JOHN DAVID WESTBY PLAYWRIGHT | SCREENWRITER | ACTOR | DIRECTOR | NEW PLAYS AVAILABLE
a midwest-playwright exploring truth, identity, and the power of storytelling
A look behind the curtain
Who Am I?
A playwright, actor, and director, I explore reinvention, regret, and the secrets we keep. My writing blends emotional depth with sharp humor, often centering on family, outsiders, and unspoken truths. Many of my plays are about families. I'm especially interested in working with theatres with new plays available for development and production
Full-length works include most recently Dear Abigail/Dear John: Incandescent Match, produced for streaming, Random Theft & Other Acts, and #Christmas Makeover A Modern Christmas Carol, among others. I have two full-length plays in the works at once and a few 10-minute short works as well.
I earned a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois and earned my MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen from Lesley University.
I'm a proud member of the Dramatists Guild, The Playwrights’ Center, and Chicago Dramatists.
my Creative Process
I write about what we hide and what it costs us to keep those things buried
Like many Midwest playwrights, my characters continually try to reinvent themselves, rewrite history, or just survive the stories they’ve been told their whole lives. A lot of my work lives in that space between truth and performance, such as what happens when our fabricated selves start to crack and ooze truth. This is especially true in my plays about families.
Sometimes that takes the form of a ghost, sometimes a memory, sometimes a moment of magical realism. And sometimes just a conversation between siblings that turns wildly and hits a nerve like a long-covered power line. I like tension that simmers, until it can’t.
The importance of craft
My process usually starts with an image or a line that won’t leave me alone. I’ll build around that, let the characters talk to each other (and to me), and see where it goes. Often I rely on the tried and true, Aristotle’s Six Pillars of Drama, to build out my imagined world.
I write scenes in order and sometimes not and out of those build the structure. I read my work aloud, listening for breath, friction, humor, and music. I revise constantly. And I’m always looking for the moment when the play surprises me. It’s when I know I’m onto something.
Making sense of things
Theatre is one of the last places where people sit in a space together and collectively strive to make sense of things.
I want my plays to stay with audiences long after they leave the theatre. Even more, I love when they lean forward into the conflicts and the stakes of the stories as they experience them. I hope they find something in the language, in the silence, or in an emotional turn that catches in the heart and hangs around. I feel that intensity especially in plays about families.
Though imperfect, theatre is intimate, and always alive. That’s the world I want to share.
And so I keep writing.