Many thanks go out to Mariangela Saavedra of Storytellers Theater for hosting a terrific new show showcase last night at Gorilla Tango Theater. This was an opportunity for three playwrights to show off parts of their works and hope to get picked up by a company. I look forward to working with Mariangela again in the future as well as other events like this.
Mariangela was kind enough to allow me to speak about the project a little before the showcase and the response of people wanting more information was incredible. I look forward to them poking their heads in as I start to talk more about the project in the next few weeks as we near launch of the prototype. If all goes well, we are aiming for things to go live by mid-May, which is incredibly exciting for me and I hope for you as well.
So starting in the next couple of days, I will start to talk more about the methodology we're using. The true test, of course, is whether the project has value to you, the playwrights and producers, so I will be encouraging as much feedback as possible throughout the project.
Next topic: The Playwright Interface
Friday, April 25, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
The Best Is Yet To Come
For those of you that don't read comments, I was asked a very good question. Several of you are likely anxiously waiting for my "Big Project" to be unveiled and wondering if this is it.
This is not it.
I am as anxious as anyone to reveal the prototype of the site when it is ready. The design is done now, and my development team at the Center for Arts Management and Technology is busily putting together the code to run the back-end of the site. Even as just a prototype, I think there will be a ton of exciting features and processes that will be of incredible value to both playwrights and producers.
I'll be talking more about the details of what's to come as the launch approaches, but in the meantime, I wanted to start a dialogue with the people that will be the focus of the site. If there is something in particular you would like to know or talk about, please let me know. I'd rather this blog be useful until the site is up and useful on its own.
This is not it.
I am as anxious as anyone to reveal the prototype of the site when it is ready. The design is done now, and my development team at the Center for Arts Management and Technology is busily putting together the code to run the back-end of the site. Even as just a prototype, I think there will be a ton of exciting features and processes that will be of incredible value to both playwrights and producers.
I'll be talking more about the details of what's to come as the launch approaches, but in the meantime, I wanted to start a dialogue with the people that will be the focus of the site. If there is something in particular you would like to know or talk about, please let me know. I'd rather this blog be useful until the site is up and useful on its own.
Attracting Audiences
Even though I have been woefully bad in keeping up with the show, "How I Met Your Mother" on CBS is some of the most entertaining stuff on TV these days. Neil Patrick Harris, formerly of Doogie Howser fame, and Alyson Hannigan, who played Willow (and more importantly Evil Willow... mmm Evil Willow...) on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, were part of the reason that I picked up on this show. The other part being the raves I heard from my friends.
And here we find Neil Patrick Harris complaining about how the recent appearance of Britney Spears in a cameo role lowered the artistic integrity of the show. It feels a little ironic for me, but it's not that he doesn't have a point.
Now, noone will claim that Britney got the role because of her fantastic acting skills. She wasn't horrible in the role, but there are others that could have done better, no doubt. But she brought in a million extra viewers. A million more people watching the shows (and the commercials which keep the show on the air and so forth) is nothing to sneeze at.
So where is the line between artistic integrity and selling out? The ensemble cast of the show is fantastic, but more people now know just how fantastic they are because of Britney's brief appearance. Arguably, the show has a chance to last longer with a greater audience for its messages now. That's a whole lot of TV writers with greater job security.
If it were me calling the shots, I'd be happy to have guest appearances of popular people in my shows. I'd just want them to be better actors than Britney (ok, that's not saying much, but you get the idea). There's a happy medium in there somewhere.
And here we find Neil Patrick Harris complaining about how the recent appearance of Britney Spears in a cameo role lowered the artistic integrity of the show. It feels a little ironic for me, but it's not that he doesn't have a point.
Now, noone will claim that Britney got the role because of her fantastic acting skills. She wasn't horrible in the role, but there are others that could have done better, no doubt. But she brought in a million extra viewers. A million more people watching the shows (and the commercials which keep the show on the air and so forth) is nothing to sneeze at.
So where is the line between artistic integrity and selling out? The ensemble cast of the show is fantastic, but more people now know just how fantastic they are because of Britney's brief appearance. Arguably, the show has a chance to last longer with a greater audience for its messages now. That's a whole lot of TV writers with greater job security.
If it were me calling the shots, I'd be happy to have guest appearances of popular people in my shows. I'd just want them to be better actors than Britney (ok, that's not saying much, but you get the idea). There's a happy medium in there somewhere.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Four Places
I had the distinct pleasure of going to opening night this past Monday of Victory Gardens Theater's new world premiere, "Four Places," by resident playwright, Joel Drake Johnson. I found this play extremely provocative as it explored what it means to have "secret lives" and how we are effected when others are let into those "secret lives," often without welcome.
Victory Gardens made a name for itself while doing very intimate work in its formerly small space at what is now its Greenhouse, which still supports brilliant work by small companies that generally don't have their own space as well as one or two resident companies. It was wonderful to see them approach a piece that is traditionally right up their alley and be able to utilize their newfound high-class theater space in the refurbished Biograph Theater.
What I appreciate most about Victory Gardens is their commitment to only doing new works. Their playwrights ensemble certainly gives those playwrights an advantage in being part of that "established" circle that I spoke of last time, but they do not pull exclusively from that ensemble for their seasons. It is the daring and risk-taking of theater companies like Victory Gardens that helps me have faith that their are more than enough theater companies out there to keep playwrights from all parts working full-time if we can help connect playwrights to those producing companies in a more sensible way.
Victory Gardens made a name for itself while doing very intimate work in its formerly small space at what is now its Greenhouse, which still supports brilliant work by small companies that generally don't have their own space as well as one or two resident companies. It was wonderful to see them approach a piece that is traditionally right up their alley and be able to utilize their newfound high-class theater space in the refurbished Biograph Theater.
What I appreciate most about Victory Gardens is their commitment to only doing new works. Their playwrights ensemble certainly gives those playwrights an advantage in being part of that "established" circle that I spoke of last time, but they do not pull exclusively from that ensemble for their seasons. It is the daring and risk-taking of theater companies like Victory Gardens that helps me have faith that their are more than enough theater companies out there to keep playwrights from all parts working full-time if we can help connect playwrights to those producing companies in a more sensible way.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Familiarity
I've been having a fantastic conversation about the role of familiarity in overcoming barriers between people and cultures. Naturally, my thoughts turned to theatre as I mulled this over.
My friend defines familiarity as knowing someone so well that there is no longer a need to question who that person is. You simply accept them. As I look back over some of the greatest, most powerful characters that have walked the boards, this concept resonates well. We've all had heroes, villians, and, best of all, ordinary people that have come into our lives through the vehicle of the stage that have become familiar to us.
How do you feel about those characters? How do you feel about the people that they represent? Can spending an hour or two in the audience of a play allow us to accept those people when we walk into the real world?
My friend defines familiarity as knowing someone so well that there is no longer a need to question who that person is. You simply accept them. As I look back over some of the greatest, most powerful characters that have walked the boards, this concept resonates well. We've all had heroes, villians, and, best of all, ordinary people that have come into our lives through the vehicle of the stage that have become familiar to us.
How do you feel about those characters? How do you feel about the people that they represent? Can spending an hour or two in the audience of a play allow us to accept those people when we walk into the real world?
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
The Three Ways to Being Produced
It is my firm belief that more and more we live in a society where we have an opportunity because of technology to all be able to do what we are passionate about and to make a living doing it. Technology has opened the gateways of what is possible for any of us to achieve. For artists, the most important gateway to open is the potential to find an audience for just about any kind of expression. I mean, if Rick Astley can find a hallowed place in our culture, there's hope for all of us.
A bypass on the current system is needed if we hope to see new voices have a chance at a career which is what I'm hoping to provide in the weeks to come. I think it's important to understand how things work now before we look at where things will go. After talking for a few months with people in the industry, I gathered a rather bleak picture of how plays enter into the public consciousness. There are essentially three ways at present that plays get widely distributed.
The first way is that a playwright is "established" and has a relationship with one or more theater companies. This is the dream of many playwrights that hope to make a living as a writer. It's the low-risk option for producers and audiences as these are known quantities. It's a lower-risk affair. Your play is guaranteed at least a first run, and if the company is at all reputable and in one of the major cities that the major play catalogs' agents run, it will likely also get seen and picked up in said catalog.
This way requires little outside assistance. Hopefully, the agents will recommend the play to other companies so that it generates more revenues for the playwright, but otherwise, it at least has a chance of being picked up at some point.
The second way is for the playwright to fund a production of the play themselves. The advantage here is that the playwright has nearly unlimited creative control. The disadvantages range from the hundreds or thousands that it can cost to mount most productions that aren't just a one-man show with a stool and street clothes to the possibility of never attracting an agent to see the show, especially if you're off the beaten path in a place like West Virginia. I often wonder how many great playwrights are languishing in places where they won't ever be discovered right now.
The third way is to go to Kinko's, make a few hundred copies, spend a whole lot on postage, and send mostly unsolicited copies across the country to the theater companies you happen to know about or can find in a Google search. Naturally, many major companies won't take unsolicited scripts. How could they? They'd be buried with a decades-long backlog of scripts of extremely varying quality and topic with no way to find what they need. Even the less-known companies that do accept unsolicited material are likely to miss a hidden gem or overlook the perfect script for their season with no real efficient way to manage that process. And I trust I won't ruffle too many feathers when I say that most theater companies are not models of efficiency. Even those companies that accept unsolicited scripts, though, are more likely in the end to go with a playwright they know, a commissioned work, or any number of other submissions that aren't yours that randomly caught someone's attention for unknown reasons.
And the truth of the matter is that there is no shortage of producers producing new plays. A Google search last night for "theater company that produced new plays" brought up 845,000 hits. If even just .1% of those hits are unique companies devoted to new works (and I strongly suspect that it's more than that), that's an incredible wealth of companies needing your show to fill part of their season. They just need a way to find your writing without the current bottlenecks on the system.
A bypass on the current system is needed if we hope to see new voices have a chance at a career which is what I'm hoping to provide in the weeks to come. I think it's important to understand how things work now before we look at where things will go. After talking for a few months with people in the industry, I gathered a rather bleak picture of how plays enter into the public consciousness. There are essentially three ways at present that plays get widely distributed.
The first way is that a playwright is "established" and has a relationship with one or more theater companies. This is the dream of many playwrights that hope to make a living as a writer. It's the low-risk option for producers and audiences as these are known quantities. It's a lower-risk affair. Your play is guaranteed at least a first run, and if the company is at all reputable and in one of the major cities that the major play catalogs' agents run, it will likely also get seen and picked up in said catalog.
This way requires little outside assistance. Hopefully, the agents will recommend the play to other companies so that it generates more revenues for the playwright, but otherwise, it at least has a chance of being picked up at some point.
The second way is for the playwright to fund a production of the play themselves. The advantage here is that the playwright has nearly unlimited creative control. The disadvantages range from the hundreds or thousands that it can cost to mount most productions that aren't just a one-man show with a stool and street clothes to the possibility of never attracting an agent to see the show, especially if you're off the beaten path in a place like West Virginia. I often wonder how many great playwrights are languishing in places where they won't ever be discovered right now.
The third way is to go to Kinko's, make a few hundred copies, spend a whole lot on postage, and send mostly unsolicited copies across the country to the theater companies you happen to know about or can find in a Google search. Naturally, many major companies won't take unsolicited scripts. How could they? They'd be buried with a decades-long backlog of scripts of extremely varying quality and topic with no way to find what they need. Even the less-known companies that do accept unsolicited material are likely to miss a hidden gem or overlook the perfect script for their season with no real efficient way to manage that process. And I trust I won't ruffle too many feathers when I say that most theater companies are not models of efficiency. Even those companies that accept unsolicited scripts, though, are more likely in the end to go with a playwright they know, a commissioned work, or any number of other submissions that aren't yours that randomly caught someone's attention for unknown reasons.
And the truth of the matter is that there is no shortage of producers producing new plays. A Google search last night for "theater company that produced new plays" brought up 845,000 hits. If even just .1% of those hits are unique companies devoted to new works (and I strongly suspect that it's more than that), that's an incredible wealth of companies needing your show to fill part of their season. They just need a way to find your writing without the current bottlenecks on the system.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Humana Festival for New American Plays
I love this time of year. The snow is melting with any luck. There's more sunlight in my day. Best of all, the Humana Festival turns the heads of America towards Louisville and focuses it on new works.
Let us not be mistaken. Actors Theatre of Louisville is not by any stretch of the imagination the only company that is so devoted to new works. I'm a subscriber at two theater companies right here in Chicago, Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Victory Gardens Theater, that are renown for their devotion to new works. I find gems in all sorts of places like the charming Sansculottes Theater's 13 Dead Husbands.
But when I was still just a pure consumer of new plays many, many years ago in the cultural wasteland of my youth, it was the Humana Festival that I knew by name. Don't be surprised if that's the name most casual consumers also equate with excellence in new works.
I have to admit that part of my love affair with Humana may be the personal connection I feel to them even though I have yet to attend a single festival (which I fully intend to fix by next year, I assure you). I briefly knew Marc Masterson, their artistic director, when he was still one of the most innovative minds in theatre at City Theatre in Pittsburgh. Jennifer Bielstein, the Managing Director, has strong roots to the aforementioned Steppenwolf and so many other theater companies here in Chicago. Neither of them would likely know me by name or face at the moment, but I still love to root for the home-town heroes.
All of that is to say, what comes out of that festival is pure gold, if not commercially then certainly as part of a process that has mitigated a great deal of risk in producing new plays by a long campaign of excellence and good marketing on the festival's part.
The New York Times review of this year's festival gives us all a little peek into what we can hope graces our stages in the coming years. It wasn't the main focus of the article, but I'm probably most looking forward to seeing someone else produce "This Beautiful City" here in Chicago. I'm not a member of the religious right by any stretch of the imagination, but here is a play that dedicates itself to helping me understand a point of view and a lifestyle that is completely foreign to me.
I love that sort of piece that challenges my schemas. Let me understand all of that through an honest heartfelt piece like what is described there. Through understanding comes the potential for dialogue and common ground. Through dialogue and common ground, maybe can find a place for all our diverse cultures in this country with resorting to mass-assimilation.
Many kudos go though to Gina Gionfriddo whose "Becky Shaw" received the grand lion's share of the accolades this year. I highly appreciate any play and playwright that is getting compared favorably to a Chicago-born show like "August: Osage County" by Tracy Letts. (There's Steppenwolf stepping into the picture again...) It's her action twists, turns of phrase, and one-liners/zingers that seem to capture Mr. Isherwood's attention the most and dub it with that highly-sought-after designation as being "Broadway-bound".
So I leave you today with some questions. Let me into your process. I find it fascinating to talk about. It need not be rhetorical. What do you seek for your audience to walk away with? How are you making your message memorable? Are witty one-liners the only way?
Let us not be mistaken. Actors Theatre of Louisville is not by any stretch of the imagination the only company that is so devoted to new works. I'm a subscriber at two theater companies right here in Chicago, Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Victory Gardens Theater, that are renown for their devotion to new works. I find gems in all sorts of places like the charming Sansculottes Theater's 13 Dead Husbands.
But when I was still just a pure consumer of new plays many, many years ago in the cultural wasteland of my youth, it was the Humana Festival that I knew by name. Don't be surprised if that's the name most casual consumers also equate with excellence in new works.
I have to admit that part of my love affair with Humana may be the personal connection I feel to them even though I have yet to attend a single festival (which I fully intend to fix by next year, I assure you). I briefly knew Marc Masterson, their artistic director, when he was still one of the most innovative minds in theatre at City Theatre in Pittsburgh. Jennifer Bielstein, the Managing Director, has strong roots to the aforementioned Steppenwolf and so many other theater companies here in Chicago. Neither of them would likely know me by name or face at the moment, but I still love to root for the home-town heroes.
All of that is to say, what comes out of that festival is pure gold, if not commercially then certainly as part of a process that has mitigated a great deal of risk in producing new plays by a long campaign of excellence and good marketing on the festival's part.
The New York Times review of this year's festival gives us all a little peek into what we can hope graces our stages in the coming years. It wasn't the main focus of the article, but I'm probably most looking forward to seeing someone else produce "This Beautiful City" here in Chicago. I'm not a member of the religious right by any stretch of the imagination, but here is a play that dedicates itself to helping me understand a point of view and a lifestyle that is completely foreign to me.
I love that sort of piece that challenges my schemas. Let me understand all of that through an honest heartfelt piece like what is described there. Through understanding comes the potential for dialogue and common ground. Through dialogue and common ground, maybe can find a place for all our diverse cultures in this country with resorting to mass-assimilation.
Many kudos go though to Gina Gionfriddo whose "Becky Shaw" received the grand lion's share of the accolades this year. I highly appreciate any play and playwright that is getting compared favorably to a Chicago-born show like "August: Osage County" by Tracy Letts. (There's Steppenwolf stepping into the picture again...) It's her action twists, turns of phrase, and one-liners/zingers that seem to capture Mr. Isherwood's attention the most and dub it with that highly-sought-after designation as being "Broadway-bound".
So I leave you today with some questions. Let me into your process. I find it fascinating to talk about. It need not be rhetorical. What do you seek for your audience to walk away with? How are you making your message memorable? Are witty one-liners the only way?
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