The Forge

Dr. Melissa Hillman, Artistic Director of Impact Theatre in Berkeley, CA, from her blog "Bitter Gertrude."  

Please pay special attention to numbers 2, 4, and 6.  Told you I was right!

SIX THINGS PLAYWRIGHTS SHOULD STOP DOING

Because what says “HAPPY NEW YEAR” better than a judgmental listicle?

One thing I want to say right at the start is that this is a list borne out of my own personal experience. These are things I personally see early-career playwrights do over and over and over. I also expect that there will be people who disagree with me, or who say, “But [name of play] does that and it’s the BEST PLAY EVER.” Sure. A genius can take a tired trope and use it ingeniously. But these tropes, I’m telling you, are tired.

The second thing I want to say is that your play is not irrevocably in the suck pile if it uses some of these. I know you’ll iron these out in development. Brilliant writers make a lot of mistakes early in their careers, or copy what writers of the past did when these things were new or acceptable, without understanding that times have changed. A few mistakes don’t make a writer– or even that play– worthless. Rewrite and keep pushing forward.

All of that said, here’s my list. Dear Goddess of Theatre, may none of the plays I read in 2014 have these characteristics, as precisely ONE FARTILLION of the plays I read in 2013 did.

“Please, please tell me now, is there something I should know?”

1. Making a song a central trope. Emerging playwrights love to make a song THEY love into a central trope. The song is deeply meaningful to the characters; the song has a connection to their past and carries some exposition (“Mom always made us sing this song on road trips before the accident”); the song lyrics are quoted out of context; the song is played or sung at a climactic moment. Apart from the obvious– that this trope is overused– there are a few problems with this technique. Often the song that the playwright loves does not fit well within the world of the play. Sometimes the rights are not available for a certain song. But most importantly, early-career playwrights choose a song because it has a certain emotional content for THEM that other people do not necessarily share.

If you use a very well-known standard that has an undeniably certain context within American culture (Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” for example, or “God Bless America”), generally that context is understood by your audience, even if it is not shared. Personally, I hate “Born to Run,” but every time a playwright uses it, I understand what they’re trying to say. However, when you use a random song by, say, Neko Case, Leonard Cohen, or Joni Mitchell (all examples taken from real plays) most of the people in your audience will have never heard the song before. I know you don’t believe me (“EVERYONE knows that song!”) but I’m right. Everyone YOU KNOW knows that song, but imagine a theatre audience filled with strangers, many of whom are not from your social class, ethnicity, or generation. Most people do not know MOST SONGS, no matter how popular that song is within your particular social group. I’m not talking about every usage of a song in a play. I’m talking about relying on a song to carry a particular narrative function. Before you include a song in your play, ask yourself: “Can someone who has never heard this song before, or who dislikes it, still understand everything I need the audience to understand?” If the answer is YES, then by all means, include it. If the answer is, “No, but I don’t care about people outside of the subgroup who know and like this song,” then include it. Otherwise, find a clearer way to do what you need to do. And either way, you might want to consider a trope that’s less overused.

2. Spelling out accents. This one is highly controversial when it comes to “ethnic” accents, but it’s annoying whenever it happens. For one thing, I have yet to see a playwright do this accurately. No amount of mangled spelling is going to correctly convey all the complexities of ANY accent. Most importantly, you’re attempting to dictate to the actor how the lines are said. While the problems inherent in a white writer attempting this with an “ethnic” accent are clear, it’s a pain in the ass when any writer does it for any accent. It’s awkward to try to sound lines out through the mangled spelling you chose to reflect the accent, and while you may believe you’re accurately reflecting the accent even within the limitations of what spelling can do, you may not be in the context in which the line is said, or due to the position of a word creating elision, or any number of things about how an accent works in practice. Just write the lines out properly and let your actors handle the accent. (And YES, I know some great writers of the past have done this, but that doesn’t make it a good idea for you today. If these writers were writing today, would they still be spelling out accents? I will bet you a box of doughnuts and my Cherno Alpha action figure the answer is NO.) Just trust that actors and directors are skillful enough to handle the accent on their own without you having to painstakingly spell it out for them.

3. The Magical Person of Color and/or Drag Queen and/or Gay BFF and/or disabled person. Many writers will use race, sexuality, ability, or gender expression as a metaphor. You’ll often see this referred to as the “Magical Negro”– a black character with special insight or mystical knowledge who runs around helping white main characters with no narrative or objective of his/her own. I’m saying “Magical Person of Color” because writers will also use an Asian or Native American character (ANCIENT MYSTICAL KNOWLEDGE) or a Latino character (SEXUAL AWAKENING AND ALSO MINDBLOWING FOOD). And now we’re seeing the Magical Drag Queen and/or gay BFF as well (MAKEOVER! SASS! COCKTAILS! HELPING STRAIGHT PEOPLE FIND LOVE!). The Magical Drag Queen is more often than not also a person of color, so two-for-one! We’ve seen disability used this way forever. Two examples: Mystical Blind Person (HE CANNOT SEE BUT HE SEES YOUR FUTURE) and Beautiful Person With Disability That Does Not Impact Their Adherence to Beauty Standards (basically just a deaf Manic Pixie Dream Girl). All these tropes are so common that I’ve seen a number of plays engage brilliantly with them, disrupting them or interrogating them.

If you’re writing a play where the main characters are able-bodied, white, and straight, and you want to include a person of color, an LGBT person, a drag queen, or a disabled person, high five! Now your play looks more like the world most of us live in. But think for a moment: If you have a character who is an active part of the narrative with objectives of their own, excellent. If your white main character runs into a Black homeless man who Imparts Words of Wisdom, or has a drag queen neighbor who appears in one scene to give her a makeover and Impart Words of Wisdom, or goes to the blind Asian psychic who magically solves a problem with Words of Wisdom, you have a tired (and problematic) trope on your hands.

4. Writing a play like you’re writing for film. There are some things film does much, much better than theatre does, and vice versa. I don’t get my knickers in a twist like some do about the difference between “theatrical writing” and “cinematic writing” when it comes to things like realism, or certain kinds of narrative. I don’t mind if you write a play about a family that primarily takes place in their living room and has a linear narrative. A play can be all those things and deeply moving, brilliant, and transformative. I’m talking about technical or structural things that can be done easily in film but present enormous difficulties in the theatre. One thing I see quite often is the use of microscenes of a line or two (or fewer) that shift back and forth from place to place requiring a detailed set change or a massive playing space. Here’s an example inspired by every play I’ve ever read that does this, and before you think I’m exaggerating for comic effect, I assure you that I am not.

Lights up on Josh in his hospital bed, sleeping. The phone rings. He wakes up and struggles with his IV as he attempts to answer it. He is too late– the line is dead. He sinks back on his pillow. Sung, the ancient and wizened former Kung Fu master in the next bed, slowly rises and looks at Josh thoughtfully. Lights out on the hospital as lights up on Katie’s office, a drab but busy downtown cube farm. Katie is sitting in her office cubicle, staring at the phone receiver in her hand as Terrence, sitting in the cubicle next to hers, leans across the aisle between them and hands her a piece of chocolate. Janeen, sitting in the desk behind Katie, slowly appears over the wall of Katie’s cubicle, shaking her head, while through the office window we see a delivery truck arriving. Terrence sees this and jumps up, crosses to Mr. Taylor’s office door, and opens it, through which we see Mr. Taylor in a compromising position on his desk with a young woman whose face we can’t see. Blackout.

And of course this is the only time in the play we see either the hospital room or Katie’s office. The next scene takes place on the bench outside the hospital or in the office break room. I’ve seen examples like these dozens of times, and while there’s a way to do almost anything if the playwright is fine with stylization, more often than not a play with this kind of writing is filmic in many other ways as well.

If you’re requiring on onstage fire that must be set, rage out of control, and then get put out, for example, or a character who “suddenly transforms into a glorious angel of light” onstage, please at least throw in a sentence or two somewhere about how realistic you need this to look. If you’re imagining actual fire, or an actual being of light, you’re imagining a film.

5. Older characters whose sole purpose is to impede the awesome young characters from whatever the hell it is they want to do because old people JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND. I can get all I need of this trope through Scooby Doo and 80s movies.

6. Prostitutes, Porn Stars, and Strippers. Sex workers are not a marker for all women everywhere. If you’re writing a play about ACTUAL SEX WORKERS, then carry on, my wayward son. But if you’re writing a play about, oh, a young man trying to find himself, or a middle-aged man who’s vaguely dissatisfied with life, or a man whose wife just doesn’t understand him and constantly asks him to do horrible things like pay attention to her or fold his own laundry, then inserting a Magical Prostitute who swans into his life and shows him The Way to Happiness, or the Broken Flower Stripper who needs the man to save her from herself and show her that college exists, then I am looking at you with crankyface. Are you writing a play with a sex worker in it? Ask yourself: WHY is she a sex worker? Are you writing about sex workers, or do you just want a naked version of the Magical Person of Color? Does she have objectives of her own that aren’t there just for the male protagonist to correct? Does she have a character, or is she just a racktacular vector for Words of Wisdom?

I could write an entire blog post on this one.

And now . . . to end on a positive note, FOUR THINGS PLAYWRIGHTS DO THAT I LOVE.

1. Send me their own work and recommend other writers to me. I have had excellent luck with writers I know through the theatre community, social media, or other channels who know what we do, understand our aesthetic, and send me their work. But I have had even better luck with writers who send me SOMEONE ELSE’S work. I think this is because playwrights are out there marketing themselves as hard as they can, and will send their current play to a wide variety of theatres in case something sticks, even if the play may not be the best fit for that theatre, because who knows? Maybe they’re looking to branch out in some way. But when a playwright sends me someone else’s play, it’s because they believe that play is a particularly good fit for my company. They read the play and it made them think of my company. This is THE BEST. When I get an email from a playwright saying, “Have you read [title of play]? I think you’d love it” I get The Tingles.

2. Pull no punches. The highest compliment I have for actors is “fearless.” I think there’s an aspect of that in writing plays as well. I received a play last year that was so fearless, so completely full of its unique approach to story and theatricality, just SO INTENSELY WHAT IT WAS, that I had to get up and walk around the room for a bit in excitement before I could finish reading it. Is it a perfect play? Fuck no. What is? But I fell in love with it because it’s 100% what it’s meant to be. It is not “nice.” It is not concerned with soft-pedalling its world view. Its unique voice jumps off the page and sits on your face. Either I will stage this play one day or I will make someone else do it.

3. State in the character list that they are open to diversity of all types. Look, sometimes a play is about race, ethnicity, sexuality, or what have you in a way that demands a certain kind of casting. If you’re staging Frances Cowhig’s [410]GONE (AND YOU SHOULD), you really need Asian actors. But often a play isn’t about race, ethnicity, or sexuality; it’s about friends who help each other escape an abusive situation, or people who work in politics, or a family trying to get over a death. When you put on the character description page something like “Please feel free to cast these roles with diverse actors. I’m open to a mixed-race family, a disabled lead, or actors of size. We don’t live in a world full of skinny, able-bodied white people, so I have no need for my play to be filled with them,” I LOVE YOU. I would have done it anyway, but when you state that openly, I just freaking LOVE YOU.

4. Believe me when I ask for more work. Most of the plays I read, like seriously 99.999%, aren’t right for my company for the current season I’m slotting. However, many of those plays are still excellent, or intriguing, or display a style or a voice we find compelling that might potentially be a good match for us. We don’t ask everyone to send us something else, so when playwrights believe me, and then ACTUALLY SEND ME SOMETHING ELSE, I am excited. We staged a play this season that I received for just that reason. “Please continue to submit to us” is not a polite brush-off. It means we’re keeping an eye on you because we think you’re worth keeping an eye on.

And PS, you magnificent bastards, I’m in the middle of season planning, so right now this minute (like seriously in the next few days) is an excellent time to send me your plays. Our wonderful literary manager can be reached at lynda (at) impacttheatre (dot) com.

I've once again stumbled upon someone else saying something that I say all the time, which I take as evidence of how brilliant we both are:  

5 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Became a Playwright by Rachael Stanford

Oct 18 2013 | 1 comments

I stumbled into playwriting. I was a semi-successful poet who was getting her Master’s in Technical Writing and happened to have a couple slots open in her schedule. A playwriting class sounded like a fun, easy three credits. Quickly, however, I got sucked in. And within a few months, and a bit of beginner’s luck in a local playwriting contest, I was hooked on the art.

Looking back, though I do wish I knew a few things. It definitely would have made the first few years of my career smoother:

1)      What sounds amazing in your head doesn’t always sound amazing out loud

Coming from a prose and poetry background, I thought for certain that I had a grasp on how my words sounded. But after my first work was performed, that quickly changed. Jokes that I thought were funny fell flat. Parts that I thought wouldn’t get laughs were hilarious. I had made one huge mistake. I didn’t have people read my work aloud first. Grab some actors or your friends and have them read your script in front of you. You will be surprised how your work changes .

2)      Your vision of your play will not match the director’s or actors’ vision and that’s ok.

The first time I had a play performed, I was shocked. The vision in my head, so carefully crafted did not meet the reality I was viewing. It was unsettling, until I realized this was part of the transitive wonder of the theatre. You aren’t the only artist who contributes. A multitude of voices comes together to make a piece of art that can, the next night, drastically change. It’s unique to the genre sometimes frustrating but an amazing process to take part of.

3)      Buddy up with your local theatre.

Local theatre is a perfect place for you to start as an artist. Many local theatres are easily approachable and open to performing plays from local playwrights. Even if your work isn’t performed, volunteering with the play (or even going to see plays) is going to help you understand all aspects of theatre better which will vastly improve your writing.

4)      Rejection is a part of daily life.

There’s no easy way to say this. No matter how good your work is, someone out there is going to hate it. Thus, take rejection with a grain of salt. If your play doesn’t make the cut, review your work, but don’t fixate.

5)      Practice! Practice! Practice!

I think artists forget sometimes that art is a skill. Instead, after reading amazing works, it’s easy to think instead of a skill that art is a divine talent, a naturally born skill that you either have or you don’t. While there is no denying that inherent skill does play a factor, never forget practice makes perfect. So what if you wrote a play and a week later you think it stinks. It’s helping you along the way to your perfect script. Besides, later on you can compare earlier works to your later works and see how much you have grown.

I've spent the past three days recovering from our two weeks HAMLETing in Milan, the last two specifically at the desktop weeding through emails that got missed while I was otherwise engaged.  During this endeavor I stumbled across this review of ALL THE WAY, a new play by Robert Schenkkan of THE KENTUCKY CYCLE fame.  

I haven't seen or read ALL THE WAY, so have no idea whether or not I agree with Charles Isherwood's assessment.  I share Mr. Isherwood's review here because he highlights very succinctly some of the problems with writing plays (1) with a lot of characters; (2) that rely on doubling or tripling the actors to facilitate production; (3) that are based on actual historic events or real people, living or dead.  

I have often made these very same remarks at Playsmiths, where they are often pooh-poohed and tut-tutted.  In fact, however, these three elements will leap to a potential producer's eye and almost certainly give hesitation.  

These pitfalls are real, and if a playwright as accomplished and regarded as Mr. Schenkkan has trouble overcoming them, I think they should be taken more seriously by emerging playwrights.  

For the record, Mr. Isherwood also highlights the very real 21st Century fact that if your leading actor is a big draw, you can sell out your entire run regardless of whether the play has problems -- and no disrespect to Mr. Cranston should be inferred by that.  I think Bryan Cranston is one of the finest actors working today -- and if he can't make a 3 hour LBJ play "rewarding to the audience," no one can.    

Ann Farthing  

Bolded emphasis mine:

September 25, 2013    NEW YORK TIMES THEATER REVIEW

An Arm-Twister in the Oval Office

By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The crowds excitedly filing in to the American Repertory Theater here are not, I am willing to bet, panting at the prospect of hearing words like “filibuster” and “cloture” tossed into their laps. Nor are they eager to watch politicians fulminating and pontificating in front of microphones. For such diversions, after all, we have cable news, and with the government slouching toward yet another partisan smackdown, it’s showtime 24/7.

No, the reason “All the Way,” a new historical drama by Robert Schenkkan (“The Kentucky Cycle”), has sold out its entire run has everything to do with the man who spends much of the evening in an oval-shaped space at center stage. Bryan Cranston, who racked up three Emmys as the chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin in the obsessively adored cable series “Breaking Bad,” stars as President Lyndon Baines Johnson, fighting to assert himself as a figure of authority, both moral and political, in the tumultuous months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

To immediately address the question of Mr. Cranston’s own authority: yes, onstage he cuts a vigorous, imposing figure as L.B.J., employing a drawl as wide as the Rio Grande as the new president backslaps and backstabs his way through the rough waters of a Washington that, in its deep divisions, bears a depressing resemblance to our own.

Mr. Cranston’s Johnson glitters with an almost salacious ruthlessness when he senses a chance to do a little arm-twisting to lock down another vote for a bill he wants passed. And in Mr. Schenkkan’s sharply outlined portrait, Johnson spouts down-home truths, Southern-fried parables and the occasional blue tale like a geyser gushing oil in his native Texas. Mr. Cranston delivers them all with the jovial ease of a man spinning yarns to his buddies on the front porch. (Still, after the umpteenth such serving of corn pone, I began to wonder how Johnson ever found time to do any actual politicking.)

This winning star turn can go only so far, however, to give dramatic thrust to Mr. Schenkkan’s play, which is directed by Bill Rauch, the artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where the play had its premiere (without Mr. Cranston) last year. “All the Way” sprawls across three hours of stage time as it covers an imposingly wide swath of territory.

Concentrating on two parallel story lines — Johnson’s fight to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and his maneuvering to secure a full term as president — the play dangles more subplots than a Congressional bill has earmarks: the sordid attempts by J. Edgar Hoover (Michael McKean) to discredit the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (Brandon J. Dirden); the infamous killing of three young men seeking to register black voters in Mississippi; the battle to seat black delegates from Mississippi at the 1964 Democratic National Convention that followed; and even comparatively minor incidents like the arrest of Johnson’s longtime aide-de-camp, Walter Jenkins (Christopher Liam Moore), for having sex in a men’s room.

“All the Way” works just fine as a PowerPoint lesson in political history, but it ultimately accrues minimal dramatic momentum. (The polished wooden set by Christopher Acebo is designed to suggest a Congressional chamber.) For policy wonks with an avid interest in the backroom deal making that doesn’t turn up on C-Span, the play will offer plenty to chew on. And yet for all its admirable attention to the complex currents of the period it covers, the wide focus drains the play of the narrative drive that makes for engrossing theater. (A countdown clock, noting the number of days to the presidential election, cannot really engender much suspense, since most in the audience will know how that contest ended.)

The play begins in the hours immediately after Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963 as Johnson is winging toward Washington on Air Force One. He knows he has to hit the tarmac running: the next election is less than a year away, and after three years of being virtually powerless as Kennedy’s vice president, Johnson needs to quickly show that he has the leadership qualities necessary to bring the country through a troubled time.

Kennedy had already sent the civil rights bill to Congress, where its foes were confidently expecting to gut it, as they had another such bill in 1957, when Johnson was the Senate majority leader, or to let it die. Johnson seizes on the bill as a necessary means both to win popular approval — the country was largely in favor of it — and to win over the Kennedy liberals who never believed in Johnson’s bona fides on the issue. Mr. Schenkkan shows him working the phones relentlessly when he’s not working over a stubborn foe in person, the smiling mask of the good ol’ boy slipping frequently to reveal a bared-tooth snarl.

Mr. Rauch has assembled a first-rate supporting cast to fill out the more than 40 roles in the play, with most actors playing two or three parts (sometimes a little confusingly). Among the standouts: Mr. McKean oozing bland, oily menace as Hoover; Reed Birney as a put upon but loyal Hubert H. Humphrey, whom Johnson dispatches to do much of his behind-the-scenes politicking, holding out the promise of a vice-presidential slot; Dakin Matthews as Senator Richard B. Russell Jr., Democrat of Georgia, an ardent segregationist whom Johnson is shown using all his wiles to bring around; and William Jackson Harper as a doggedly determined Stokely Carmichael, of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, in scenes that depict the internecine warfare among the several black-led groups fighting for civil rights.

Fine though the acting is throughout, the abundance of characters means that few have any time to be explored in much depth. Even Johnson does not have the layers of shading that I had hoped for. You come away from Mr. Schenkkan’s play with admiration for Johnson’s peerless political skills, his ability to bend a recalcitrant Congress to his will by means both subtle and blunt, but with little sense of where he truly stood, morally, on the great issues of the day. (In the traffic jam of the play’s dense plot, the Great Society project gets little more than a couple of muted toots on the horn.) Mr. Schenkkan’s portrait leaves the impression that even when Johnson had ascended to the presidency, his primary interest was securing power for his own sake, a portrait at odds with the more complicated, humane one drawn by Robert A. Caro in his majestic, four-volumes-and-counting biography of Johnson.

Theater rooted in history always faces a fundamental problem. Hew too closely to the complicated crosscurrents of the story and you risk shapelessness; take too many liberties in streamlining the drama and you’re no longer in the realm of fact. With the exception of his comparatively unshaded portrait of Johnson, Mr. Schenkkan comes down firmly on the side of complexity, which may be the honorable path, but not necessarily the more rewarding one for the audience.

All the Way

By Robert Schenkkan; directed by Bill Rauch; sets by Christopher Acebo; costumes by Deborah M. Dryden; lighting by Jane Cox; music and sound by Paul James Prendergast; projections by Shawn Sagady; dramaturge, Tom Bryant; dialect coach, Rebecca Clark Carey; associate director, Emily Sophia Knapp; production stage manager, Matthew Farrell. Presented by American Repertory Theater, Diane Paulus, artistic director. At the Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass.; (617) 547-8300; americanrepertorytheater.org. Through Oct. 12. Running time: 3 hours.

SUBMISSION OPPORTUNITIES  

Please note:  questions should be directed to the entities, not Playsmiths.  Thanks!

ATHENA PROJECT Athena Project is proud to announce the call for submissions for its 2014 Plays in Progress Series (PIP Series).  This Series will take place in Denver at The Aurora Fox Studio Theatre over the course of 3 long weekends, March 14-30, 2014, as part of a larger arts festival celebrating the Voices of Women Artists, including the World Premiere of Government Issued Long Johns by Erin Wagoner, winner of this year’s PIP Series. 

Four new plays will be selected based on a blind submission process and given a dramaturg, director, cast and workshop level production during the Festival.  One play from the PIP Series 2014 will win a full production in March of 2015 based on a combination of a panel of judges and audience vote. Scripts are being accepted from now until midnight, August 1, 2013.

Visit www.athenaprojectfestival.org to submit your script.  Submission Guidelines are as follows:  1.  Playwright must be female and may only submit ONE full-length script.

2.  The play must not have ever had a fully mounted production.  Prior workshop presentations are okay, but the script must be a new version since the time of the workshop.

3.  Submission must include:

Full copy of script (without playwright contact info*)

Character breakdown (without playwright contact info*)

Short synopsis of script (300 word limit, without playwright contact info*)

Resume

Cover letter addressing what the playwright would like to accomplish with the workshop presentation and how she heard about the call for submissions

4. Plays submitted without all supporting materials included will be disqualified.

5. We recommend the playwright be able to travel to the area for rehearsals as needed if selected, and for at least one workshop production performance at their own expense. We will select 4 playwrights to participate in the PIP Series and hope to strike a balance between local and national work.  Exact rehearsal and performance schedules will be worked out with the director, dramaturg, and playwright after all plays are selected.

Please contact us at [email protected] if you have any questions about submitting.  You will receive a confirmation upon receipt of materials.

*Contact info must be listed ONLY on resume and cover letter, not on script or any other documents (submissions will be read blind).  All documents should include the Title of the Play, but no playwright contact information.

Timeline: Deadline to submit all materials is midnight, August 1, 2013 Four finalists will be selected in October 2013 Directors and Dramaturgs will be selected in November 2013 Rehearsals will begin in January 2014 Plays in Progress Series (part of Athena Project’s Arts Festival) opens March 14, 2014

CALL FOR OTHER ARTISTS’ SUBMISSIONS FOR FESTIVAL WILL BE LATER THIS FALL. PLEASE CHECK BACK ON OUR WEBSITE FOR FURTHER INFO OR SIGN UP TO RECEIVE OUR NEWSLETTERS FOR THE MOST UP TO DATE INFORMATION.

Visit www.athenaprojectfestival.org to submit your script.

THE BALTIMORE PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL BPF Accepting Submission of New Plays for Season XXXIII 

The Baltimore Playwrights Festival, www.baltplayfest.org, will accept submissions of new plays for its 33rd Season through July 31, 2013. Any playwright currently residing or working in Maryland or the District of Columbia, or who has previously lived or worked within Maryland or D.C., is eligible to submit.  Plays must not have received a staged production at any time prior to or at the time of submission. Only electronic submissions of plays via the BPF website will be accepted. There is a $10 submission fee for each script submitted, and each playwright may only submit one script for consideration. Complete submission guidelines are provided at www.baltplayfest.org. (PLEASE NOTE: The end date of July 31st, and the limit of one script per playwright, are new for this season.) Those scripts chosen for production during the summer of 2014 will be judged by a panel of independent judges during production. Cash awards will be presented to the winners at an annual Awards Celebration: $250 for First Place, $100 for Second Place and $50 for Third Place Script. During the last 32 years, The Baltimore Playwrights Festival has presented over 282 productions by 173 playwrights at 27 different theaters. The BPF nurtures the talents of Maryland and DC playwrights through public readings, discussions, critiques and workshopping of new plays. Participating local theaters offer productions of several of the submitted scripts during their summer season. Further information can be found on the BPF website, www.baltplayfest.org.

IATI THEATER’S CIMIENTOS From June 1st to June 30th, 2013, IATI Theater is accepting scripts for its 2013-2014 Cimientos Season. Submissions are only accepted through the electronic form–see link below. For more information: iatitheater.org

IATI Theater’s Play Development Program, Cimientos, provides playwrights the opportunity to develop new, never-before produced plays through a community of cutting-edge theater artists. Cimientos amplifies, as clearly as possible, the voice of the creational author who lays the foundations from which a dramatic work is conceived. Like IATI Theater, Cimientos is committed to supporting playwrights and works that push conventions and explore the avant-garde. We recognize, however, that what is different and innovative is not always what is unconventional and therefore, we do not discriminate against naturalistic works.

The 2013-2014 Cimientos will consist of two main components:

PPP (Pal Playwrights Panel): Playwrights accepted to the program, IATI Theater’s artistic staff and other specially invited theater professionals will converge in workshop meetings to discuss the new works that make up the particular season. Every meeting will be dedicated to a single playwright in the program, the focus being in further advancing the text before it is presented in front of a live audience. SRP (Staged Reading Presentation): Each playwright in the program will be given the opportunity to present his/her play in a directed, professionally acted staged reading.  Thus, the piece will be exposed to a receptive audience that further develops the featured script through a post-reading talkback.

Submission Guidelines : There is no submission fee for Cimientos. Submissions lacking any of the following guidelines will not be considered. 

Submission will only be accepted through the online form.  

Submissions must be the author's own work. The piece shall be free from copyright restrictions and the author agrees to hold IATI Theater and directors free and harmless from all copyright claims.

The playwright must commit to be present for the staged reading performance of his/her work.

The playwright must commit to be present on the PPP (Pal Playwrights Panel) assigned to his/her work.

This program is open to authors from anywhere in the world with original works in English or Spanish who are interested in a New York audience feedback. However, because of the PPP (Pal Playwrights Panel), every playwright must be present to take part in the monthly meetings or commit to presenting feedback electronically or in written form on the dates of the PPPs and with no delay.

Only one play may be submitted per playwright, per season.

Submissions must not exceed 90 minutes in length.

The play must require 5 actors or less.  Plays that have more than 5 actors and do not provide a clear and stageable doubling explanation will not be reviewed. If doubling is possible, it must be expressed clearly on the online form.

The submission must be a completed full-length play that has not previously been produced in any setting. If the play has undergone a workshop, staged reading or development of any kind, the playwright must inform IATI Theater of the specifics on the online form.

The author’s name(s) should be nowhere within the script, any authorship information must not be visible in the play document.  Scripts will be read ‘blind’.

Submissions for the 2013-2014 Season will only be accepted from June 1 to June 30, 2013.

To submit:  iatitheater.wufoo.com/forms/z7p9k5/

Qualifying submissions will be read by a staff committee. The committee will select the playwrights to be featured in the 2013-2014 Cimientos Play Development Season. IATI Theater will provide a meeting place and personnel for the monthly PPP (Pal Playwrights Panel) and cover the costs of the SRP's (Staged Reading Presentation) venue, director and actors.

INDRA’S NET THEATER COMPANY Indra's Net Theatre Company  is dedicated to developing and promoting promising new works for the theatre that focus on science and its philosophical and ethical implications. Indra’s Net Theater Company (http://www.indrasnettheater.com) welcomes submissions of new works, including plays, adaptations and translations. 

Indra’s Net Theater produces professional quality plays that explore the “big questions” at the modern intersection of science and philosophy. We seek to serve the greater scholarly and intellectually engaged community through the highest quality productions of challenging plays about the world we live in, what we know and how we know it. This includes the inquiries of science, what it may say about who we are, and what the world around us (and within us) is really like. Selected scripts will undergo a developmental process, which includes: Staged reading in Berkeley, CA for invited audience, often including industry professionals; professional actors; Pre-performance response and suggested re-writes from company producing artistic director, Bruce Coughran ; Post-performance audience feedback. Writers must be able and willing to engage fully in developmental process, including re-writing parts of the script where appropriate, traveling to Berkeley for rehearsals and performances, and responding constructively to feedback. 

Accepting full-length plays on an ongoing basis. Scripts submitted by September 15 will be considered for development beginning the following spring and summer. Scripts should be emailed to: [email protected] Scripts should be sent to:           Indra’s Net Theater Company 1933 Russell Street, #A Berkeley, CA 94703

PLAY CLUB WEST The Unknown Artists' Play Club West is currently accepting submissions of new works for its 2013-2014 reading series. Play Club West fosters a community of actors, writers, and performing artists by sponsoring readings of new and established works. We strive to enhance the performing arts community of Los Angeles by offering weekly table readings, monthly staged readings, and affordable classes and workshops.

We have been thrilled to read 7 plays submitted for our 2012-2013 series and produce 2 of them for full productions. 

PLAY CLUB meets weekly on Tuesday evenings at 7:00 pm at J.E.T. Studios (5126 Lankershim Blvd). We are a group of primarily 30 something, comic-loving actors. For previous productions, check out http://uaplayclubwest.wordpress.com/past-productions/. We are most interested in forming relationships with LA based playwrights. Scripts from LA based playwrights will be given preferential treatment.

Material accepted: Any full length plays or one acts (must be longer than 40 pages). 

If selected, Unknown Artists will present your piece during a Tuesday night reading. We will provide:  • A cast • A theatre space • A reading free of charge to audience members • A talk-back session 

The Unknown Artists' mission is to provide opportunities for talented, unknown individuals to thrive on a stage enabling them to show off their gifts of music, acting, dance, comedy, film and all categories of art. Founded in 2007 by Emily Clark and Pamela Eberhardt, the Unknown Artists search far and wide for an explosive amount of talent that is of a specific, unheard of, untraveled artistry.

Submission guidelines: • Submit a PDF of your work to [email protected]. Only PDFs are accepted. No other formats are read. • Please make sure title page with author email adress and character breakdown is included within the script PDF. Please do not send these or synopsis as separate files. • Please do not send reviews of past productions. We are only interested in the script itself. 

PREMIERE STAGES AT KEAN UNIVERSITY Premiere Stages, the professional theatre in residence at Kean University, is committed to supporting emerging playwrights through the development and production of new plays. Under the umbrella of the Premiere Stages Play Festival, Premiere produces a biannual commissioning program for New Jersey playwrights entitled Liberty Live. Liberty Live is a unique new partnership with the Liberty Hall Museum (www.kean.edu/libertyhall) that features the production of a new play that celebrates New Jersey history, tours of the Museum, interactive displays, workshops for children and talk-backs with local historians.  

The focus of the 2013/2014 Liberty Live project will be The 350th Anniversary of New Jersey and will be part of the statewide NJ 350 Initiative. Aspiring and established playwrights are invited to submit proposals for new one-act plays to Premiere Stages.  Playwrights must be current residents of New Jersey. The commissioned writer will be awarded $1000, and the script will be developed in 2013 and professionally produced in November 2014 at Kean University’s Liberty Hall Museum. Premiere seeks proposals for 45 - 60 minute plays that explore an event or events of historical significance that celebrate New Jersey’s rich and diverse history. The selection panel is particularly interested in the dramatization of events that happened in the township of Elizabeth, given that Elizabeth will also be celebrating its 350th anniversary in 2014. Premiere will provide research materials with historical background to interested applicants. Three of the submitted proposals will be selected as finalists and playwrights will be interviewed.  The proposal deadline has been extended to June 30, 2013. There is no fee to apply. To download the full submission guidelines please visit: http://www.kean.edu/premierestages/liberty.asp

RAVEN THEATRE Raven Theatre in Chicago announces the theme of its 2014 New Play Workshop: Dark Laughter - Comedies about the seriousness of contemporary American life.

Submissions will be accepted from July 15 - September 1, 2013. The selected play will receive a workshop presentation in June 2014. For complete submission guidelines, go to www.RavenTheatre.com.

THE UMASS NEW PLAY LAB The Umass New Play Lab  is now accepting play submissions for two paid residencies (March 24 – April 5, 2014). Our mission is to develop two exceptional new scripts per year in cooperation with visionary playwrights. The Play Lab is, in essence, a writer's playground: a stimulating and constructive artistic environment founded on three guiding principles of engagement, collaboration, and discovery. The UMass Amherst Department of Theater's commitment to new play development is internationally recognized, from our groundbreaking work with New WORLD Theater to our recent collaborations with artists like Will Power, Marcus Gardley, and Constance Congdon. We approach new play development with rigor, focus, and sensitivity—and we're seeking playwrights who are as passionate about this process as we are.

For more information, including our submission link, visit: http://www.umass.edu/theater/newplaylab.php

WAREHOUSE PAC Warehouse PAC is seeking submissions for its third short comedy fest. Guidelines are as follows:

1. Plays should take place in a "salon," of sorts. The set will consist of three 1960s/70s salon hair dryers, one styling chair, a counter, etc... Although the location is a "beauty, barber, and bait shoppe," writers need not include references to all. Nor does "Eunice" need to be present. 2. Five characters or less. (Quirky characters and situations welcome.) 3. Must be comedies. 4. Plays must be 10-minutes running time. 5. Thank you.

Submission Requirements: Please submit three scripts with title only. Please bind each script with a paper clip—no staples or binders. Include a separate page with title and contact information.

Send to: The Warehouse PAC 9216-A Westmoreland Rd. Cornelius, NC 28031 ATTN: Short-play fest

Your play is too long, your play has too many characters, your play is too expensive to produce. It’s an article by Christopher Isherwood about Tim Sanford of Playwrights Horizons sort of kinda apologizing while he defends Annie Baker’s “The Flick.” Isherwood keenly examines the balancing act that non-profit theater has to make today…this caught my eye:

And for the record, this is on my list of THINGS I WISH I'D WRITTEN.  

THINGS I WISH I HAD BEEN TOLD

IN THEATRE SCHOOL

Posted by Callam Rodya on March 17, 2013 · 103 Comments 

Theatre school was great. It is great. But it can omit some of the more fundamental and important career lessons. School is, after all, a bubble. It’s not a natural professional environment.

So, with what little wisdom I have regarding a career as an actor, here’s a list of some things I wish somebody had told me in theatre school. Some of these lessons, I had to learn the hard way. Others simply would have saved me a bit of time.

“Stealing the show” is not a compliment. The ensemble is more important than your “moments”.

You’d be surprised how few people are willing to pay for theatre tickets when they aren’t your friends and family and have no personal connection to you whatsoever.

No, you can’t actually play forty and fifty-year-olds in your twenties. At least, no one will pay you to do it.

By the same token, there are very few roles in the theatre for twenty-year-olds.

The stage manager always works much harder than you. And technically, you work for him/her, not the other way around.

Most people don’t get drunk on Opening Night…because they have a show the next day…idiot. Oh, and cast parties are more likely to be cast dinners.

Developing and producing your own work is the single MOST important thing you can do after you graduate.

Background film roles don’t do shit for your career.

Unions are awesome and the worst at the same time.

When people said you would be poor thanks to your brilliant career choice, what they really meant was “completely fucking destitute.” And that’s okay.

Auditions are on one level. Knowing the right people is a completely different level altogether.

Directors, casting agents, and producers care as much about how easy you will be to work with as they do about how good you are for the role. If not more so.

Remember how you used to have five weeks to get off book? NOPE. Get off book NOW.

Save up a certifiable shit-ton of money if you’re going to move to Toronto. Like, a ridiculous amount. Student-loan worthy. That is, if you want to actually be able to go for auditions, take classes, network, and you know, any of those other career-building essentials.

Don’t do everything. Seriously. Know when to turn something down. And believe me, you’ll know.

It’s not unreasonable to expect to be paid for your work. And you should be. But you won’t always be. So when you do work for free, which will be a lot, make sure it’s work that you’re passionate about or will really be a career booster. And honestly, it should be both.

Ninety percent of casting decisions have nothing to do with how you perform in your audition.

Most of the time, when you don’t get the part, it’s not because you suck, but because of some other (probably superficial) reason altogether. Unless you suck.

Energy is more important than appearance. So get more sleep instead of wasting your time making yourself look good. After all, there’s always a hair and makeup person on set. There’s rarely a person to spoon-feed you caffeine and cocaine.

Take your “me” time. And cherish it. Because the pursuit of an acting career will totally consume your life.

Don’t hide your “physical flaws.” Embrace them. And learn how to look at yourself objectively.

Your “hit” is no joke. It’s what you’re selling. Either be okay with it, or figure out a way to change it and still look like a real human being.

No matter how big of a star you were in school, out here, you are just a part of a team. So act like it. And give credit where credit is due at every opportunity.

Acting is actually easier than you want to believe it is. And more people can actually do it than you want to believe. And most people behind the scenes work harder than you do. So don’t be a diva.

You are replaceable.

The camera really does add ten pounds. No shit.

Stage and screen are completely different worlds requiring completely different approaches and are cast in completely different ways.

You thought there was “technique” to acting on stage? Just wait till you get some serious face time with the camera.

Rehearsals are a luxury. Don’t waste them.

It is not okay to be drunk, stoned, high, or any other kind of intoxicated while you work. Not for “professionalism” reasons. But because you are, in fact, worse.

Try not to get discouraged/cynical/jaded/resentful too early. This is a tough business. That’s just the way it is, and it’s not going to change any time soon. So be tough. Or get out.

And finally, don’t go down this path just because you’re “good enough” to be a professional actor. For the love of God, do it ONLY because you cannot do anything else.

Always be brave and bold.

I recently saw a production of ISAAC'S EYE at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, and, while the play was great, there's a particular aspect of the experience on which I'd like to ruminate, here.  Since we aren't exactly a site that reviews theatre, I'm not going to discuss the strengths of the play, itself, instead choosing to bring to the forefront an aspect of theatre commonly left unnoticed, using ISAAC'S EYE as a, well, lens.

The staging of the piece, surely created after great amounts of work by  scenic designer Nick Francone and technical director Derek Dickinson (et al., I'm sure), creates a theatrical space that, when viewed from a bird's eye perspective, can only be truly appreciated as a work of fine art.  Not just the set, but the placement of chairs, the empty space behind them, and the glorious column that occupies the center of the EST main stage, are all brushstrokes in what comes together to be a fantastic painting of clever design.

I can't do justice to the work of the EST team, but I'll try to describe what the ISAAC'S EYE folks have set up:  A small stage area up front, not raised, where actors are essentially up against a bare wall that is garnished with an oft-used chalkboard for a lot of the show's action.  The audience seating, on risers, form a V-shape as they extend from the "wings" of the staging area towards the column at the center of the space.  So, the stage and the seating (in a V) ultimately take up about half of the net staging area of the EST main stage.  Thus, behind the audience, lies the empty other half of the space, which audience members can file in and out of with plenty of room.  Imagine something like this:

____  <--stage 

  V      <--seating

  O      <--column (actually at the vertex of the V)

____

____   <--empty space

As I said, I can't do it justice, except to say, see the play to take this in for yourself.  But, before you do, let me elaborate on why this is novel.  There are two reasons:

One, the EST design team have applied imagery worthy of a great painter.  ISAAC'S EYE is, in brief, about Isaac Newton and his famous experiment in which he put a needle in his tear duct to (as the play speculates - we don't know the real reason) bend his eye in such a way that he could distort the light absorbed on the retina.  The brilliance of this set design is that it seats us directly in the eyeball.  "Where's the subject?"  Well it's that stage that's right in front of you.  "Where's the retina?"  You're it.  "And, most importantly, where's the needle?"  See that column over there?  The one right behind you, bending you toward it?  There it is.  "Is it distorting your view at all?"  Actually, seeing such a close stage on such a slant does kind of change my perspective, yes.  "Good.  That's the play.  At a glance."  Behind this eyeball theatre is the brain, the void, the place where you and your friends come and go, topping off this most apt metaphor.

Two, the second act of the play utilizes a very important symbol.  I won't elaborate, except to say that the figure is one of a Y with two strikes across the stem.  Imagine the symbol used to denote the Yen.  That's it.  Now, take another look at this stage set up: Seats in a V formation, empty space behind where two strikes could easily run perpendicular, and, wait a minute, where's the stem?  Oh yeah, it's us.  All the symbol of this show needs, then, to be complete, is its audience.  And don't we all, ISAAC'S EYE?  Don't we all.

The goldmine of artistic merit that rests in this design is up there with a Van Rijn or a Turner.  It essentially gives you the play, before you've even seen the thing.  This is perhaps the greatest example of smart set/house design that I've ever had the pleasure of digesting.  Don't cast it off into the wings.  Appreciate the artistry of such a seemingly functional set-up.  The text has been rightly lauded in many outlets, but this hasn't.  And it's a shame.  What are all those pesky words, anyway, in the face of this masterful image? 

From Big Think:

via The Dish, Tauriq Moosa examines how we can bust the stereotyping of villains: