Development
Dramaturgy
Editorial Work
I have workshopped, developed, edited and consulted on more than one hundred written projects— plays, screenplays, novels, solo pieces, and essays.
I begin every project by listening to the words on the page.
What is the writer saying?
What does the writer want to be saying?
My work is to help align these answers, bringing them as close together as possible. And, in the course of the work, one or both of these answers might change.
“Abigail Deser has an understanding of plays and theater that is profoundly impressive. You see this in the plays she's directed, and you see it when she talks to you about a script. She is a brilliant first reader, last reader, and everything-in-between reader. Her grasp of what needs to happen for a play to work is both intuitive and practical. There's no one whose advice I value more”
— Jay Martel (Winner of Emmy, Peabody, WGA & American Comedy Awards.)
“Abigail has a way of cutting through the noise of a piece, asking the essential questions, while still holding space for surprising and unexpected turns in the creative process. She brings an uncanny mixture of radical candor, optimistic exploration, dry humor, and a never-settling, ever-curious mindset.
With Abigail, building, workshopping, or editing a play ... feels like constantly asking what really matters, how and where you can dig deeper, what you care about, and ultimately finding what the audience is most going to connect with (or be surprised by). It’s a rewarding, refreshing, gratifying, energizing process. And I might add: She’s funny as hell, so it’s very fun, too.”
— Doug Harvey (Writer, Solo Performer, Actor)