 Okay, go ahead and get started. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you all for being on time. I hope you had a good time wherever it was that you went last night. I know we saw a bunch of different shows. I wanted to give you a sense of how the day is going to work. For those of you who haven't been here, we use this kind of fishbowl format and it starts each topic is introduced by a conversation at the table and then we break out and then a different group of people will come to the table around a different topic. The underpinnings of this if I do the research dramaturgy about it this is actually a conversation style I have to tell you because I'm going to be self-conscious of it all day. I broke it two times last night. I'm going to be listing all day. It's fine. I have an appointment at the dentist later. You're going to hear me doing that. Is that what happened? No it wasn't. This style is something I'm borrowing from a conversation that happens every summer near Albuquerque. It's kind of an amazing meeting of native elders from around the world and western scientists. They're kind of mapped what they call the language of spirit. These great minds gather there and they're Nobel physicists and leaders of all sorts of indigenous communities around the globe. They sit at a table and they try to find a language bridge between native ways of knowing and western minds. They use this thing that David Bohm developed which is a concept of dialogue. His, Bohm is a quantum physicist believed that conversation actually exists in the universe and that it's trying to come into our lives and it comes through if you have the right people the conversation that needs to happen comes through that group of people. It comes through the group of people if we all sit and if we listen closely to what's said and we listen to what's not said and if we're the person who has the thing that's not said to contribute that's when the speaking happens and so it's a very kind of woo-woo concept but we've been using it and it kind of works. The way that it functions in this setting is that the people at the table, well I'll have a prompt your job at the table is to try to just feed into that prompt the thing that you know about what we're discussing, the thing that might not otherwise be said. It's not important that everybody speak, it's not important that everybody be at the table but if we're open to what needs to happen the conversation will grow up through the table. What happens then is that you on the listening circle you'll catch the things that aren't contributed by this particular group but in the breakouts bring those with you. So for example this morning we're going to be talking about this brawl of the literary office and so that current range of activities that are comprised of what is going on in the literary office. We talked about it as do we need a new name that's a little glib. I was a little glib about that it's because my experience of it is that we're doing so many things that the literary hold it all but I want to get at this morning what are all those things and which are the things that are most important that are related to what literary offices are meant to do? What are the things that need to be done and have just arrived? Jerry Patch talked about it on our phone call before we got started. He talked about the literary office as a kind of magnet and all these shavings just keep jumping onto it and it gets fuzzier and fuzzier and fuzzier as it sits there attracting more and more shavings. So I want to poke a little bit at what those shavings are. And so that's what this group is going to be discussing what's going on in these institutions, what's going on in the your experience of other institutions and then when we break out anything that we've left off the table, we've left out at the table should come up into the breakouts. We'll capture that, Janice will have access to all those notes and ultimately what we should have is a pretty complete discussion of what's going on right now in the world of literary offices and how so that we can start to identify the things that we want to keep, looking for the baby this morning. Alright, any questions about that? We'll go back and forth between the table and listening circle, each of you, and the sun will be with us all day from the looks of things, so sunglasses totally, you know, they're cool with us. Please do it, otherwise it can get painful. And sorry to everybody who's watching online, we're going to be wearing our sunglasses. Alright, so off we go. So this first question. And a lot of this comes from actually I should just go back for my own work, why this is on my mind, how it's been on my mind. When I took over the, when the artistic development office got created here at Arena Stage, which was actually when Mark Bly left he had been a senior dramaturg and the literary office lived in the world of the senior dramaturg. When he left, he wasn't replaced. And all that moved into one department called the Artistic Development Team. And Janine Sobek at the time was the, you were still the literary fellow at the time. Yeah, I was interim literary manager. Interim literary manager at that time. So we sat down to try to figure out what are we actually doing. It was new responsibility for me it was a new role for Janine. And the theater was moving into a whole new set of activities that were seem logical to pull into this office. And we pulled a lot into the office. And so I've been wondering all along what are the appropriate boundaries for what gets pulled into the office. I personally have had a very broad curiosity about the artistic life of the theater and the life of the conversation between the audience and the work on stage. And we've done a lot of work there. And it's in the literary office. I wonder what, if you could talk, what's it done? You're at Willy. And Willy also does a tremendous amount of work between the audience and the stage. Is that coming through literary? I mean it's coming through literary it's coming through a new department that we've actually created as well that sort of overlaps with literary that's called Connectivity. It overlaps but is separate from literary responsibility. It overlaps but is separate. And we've realized that connectivity overlaps not only with literary but also with marketing. And that each of those departments share various that we all have dramaturgical responsibilities, we all have connectivity responsibilities and we all also contribute to marketing in various ways. And what, so in your day you are the literary manager? The literary manager of Willy. And in your day what are the various things that are going for your time? Keeping up relationships with both agents and playwrights is a big part of my time reading scripts. It is very script centric. But it's also relationship centric I would say. And then it's also very heavy on sort of scouting work that maybe is more in the devised category of things opposed to things that are on the page and are being sent to us by agents and playwrights. So I guess that's my weekend in that show. I mean it's, you know, weeks vary in terms of what I'm actually doing in the office. And what's the bulk of your time spent? The bulk of my time is probably spent on I would say season planning. So script reading and soliciting scripts and maintaining the relationships. Those are what I spend my time doing for the most part during the week. But there are many, many other responsibilities of course. Who's doing the conversations with the audience after the show? That's a collaboration that happens. And it's an example of a collaboration that happens between the literary department. So between myself and Miriam, depending on who's the dramaturg on the show. And the connectivity department. So the idea is that we're creating playbills. We're creating an experience for the audience that includes a lobby experience, the actual show, and then discussions that might happen afterwards or beforehand. So it's really those two departments, the literary and connectivity departments, are tag teaming those responsibilities. And splitting up responsibilities when appropriate and when our interests take us. So for example, my interests with the university scene have led me down various paths working with universities in this community. On other shows, when I'm not the dramaturg, then connectivity sometimes takes up those responsibilities. So that's, yeah. What's happening at CTG Joy? Are you the literary associate? The literary associate. And how does that job? Mostly about reading scripts, season planning, developing work. We have a writers group that I love. You know that meets monthly. But we are also starting to explore some work about connecting that work to audiences. Giving audiences richer ways to kind of dive in. And these are recent conversations to a certain extent. But I actually believe that the work with the audience, allowing audiences to connect more fully and deeply, giving them ports of entry to that piece, actually think that that helps us in our season planning work. Because I personally believe that we have a lot of conventional wisdom in our field about what constitute risk and what audiences are interested in. That I don't believe are accurate. I actually think that very familiar, overly familiar work. I think you kind of hear yowls sometimes from the audience when they encounter unfamiliar work. That might just be certain outspoken people. Might not be reflective of the audience as a whole. And I also believe audiences don't like to feel stupid because sometimes they need permission to have their own experience of a play to piece together its meaning. They need to know that it's okay if they can't give a, like, rattle off a thesis about a play immediately afterwards. And are you as a literary associate having to make that okay? Is that part of what your I feel like, yeah, I think that, you know, we well, I'll tell you where this comes from. Is that when I was at Steppenwall I ran the Posto Discussion Program and I would actually leave the Posto Discussion during the period of each play. And I could literally see for certain plays that were not the type of work our audience was expecting to encounter. Over the course of the discussion as they had permission to kind of, to experience something that was new, you know, I could see actually their experience of the play changing through conversation. Like the mood of the conversation could totally shift and it's just about giving that permission. I mean I think ultimately it's the work of the entire theater. I mean I think the work is not just the work on the stage but it's also how we get people into the theater, how we get to prepare people for the experience and there's a lot of different ways that we do that. What takes up most of your time? Right now most of my time is it's reading plays. And are those, is that coming Agent Submissions? We do have a 10 page open submission policy. It's my intern that reads those plays. Those submissions. Lauren, I want to pull out a play right here. We haven't yet heard much from the players. Represent. What's your experience? I feel my sunglasses on. What's your experience of the literary office from your role as a playwright? Yeah, I've actually been making some interesting, well I find them interesting. Just kind of reactions, depending on what people are talking about. I think for me some of the interesting things literary managers and dramaturgs, so in production working as playwright orientation to an institution. So if you're working in a large institution having, because it's hard enough to develop a new piece of work. If you're not working with a director you know well or actors you know well. So it can be very, you're already working on something new in a new place with new people. So how can your team be team like and get to know each other so that there is the safest place to develop that work so that playwrights feel, have a bit of kind of inside or sneaky information about how it actually works. So that if there is something God forbid that's wrong or there are stressors that are coming out there's a way to know how to deal with them. Even if that's kind of like make it seem like it's her idea and it'll have you get in those conversations. Right. And just you know how the coffee maker is weird too. That's very helpful as well. So I think that's one thing that we haven't talked about because it might feel more like I don't know if it's babysitting but kind of, but that's helpful too. Babysitters are very nice as well. So I loved what John was talking about this connectivity department. I find that really exciting being a words person as we all are. I just love that. I think that's the playwrights should be there. That sounds like the department I want to be in. And I think when you talked about lobby experience I've been thinking a lot about going into a theater. I mean and some of them are as beautiful as this building which kind of is an experience in and of itself. But I wonder how playwrights might be involved in that the imagining of that. Because that might be you know a lot of my plays say are science based or I'm from the south and so some of them have this southern thing. And I can go here three things that would be awesome if you're doing a play about science or if you're doing a play about the south you have to have boiled peanuts in the lobby or you know something that could really give people an extra little, I don't know, but something they can take away and swag like. And right now in the places that you've had productions and you've had a number of them this year where would you go with that energy? Would you take it to the literary? Is your concierge really the literary office? So two of the smaller companies it would be their ADs. So Rachel May at Synchronicity and Marissa Wolf at Crowded Fire. Their companies are small enough where they are the kind of they steer things. So I would take them and sometimes we've actually worked. We've done some fun stuff. Particularly in Synchronicity I was involved in their marketing outreach which got a little bizarre which was wonderful and I think perfectly toned to the play we were doing. So that was neat to see that. And then others yeah I think it goes to, again it's that the orienteering that happens with the literary manager too that can go I have this idea I don't know where to go with it. I don't know if it would require three levels of board approval or if we can just make it happen. So I think that's great. I also think playwrights have a lot of opinions I'm going to speak for all of you, sorry, about marketing. So I would say I mean the literary office of the future might be the way for the playwright to say please God let me help you pick the logo or the design or the picture or the font or let me for Bear I immediately, and this was actually a writing exercise I was doing while I was trying to find the tone of it anyway, but it ended up writing some what ended up being very useful material to describe the play that a lot of theaters have used so the exact phrasing which you know I approve of that so sure everybody use it. So I think that's another thing. I've also been thinking about from a playwright's perspective the literary department being the source of the invitation usually, the source of the welcome and whether that's something as lovely as commissions or development and readings and festivals and all of that and also this idea of lobby experiencing and all of the experiences around the play I think playwrights have a hectic ton of ideas and opinions about that I mean it's the world started with us so we get it in a way that maybe there's some side features that we can add or main features and one thing that was very impressive to me when I was working with the Kennedy Center was they paid for my earliest ideas so it wasn't a here's a commission or we're thinking about commissioning you go ahead and write the first 10 pages or write a big one thing they actually paid for three significant at least page to two page long summaries of brand new ideas and they gave me actual American money for that which I think a lot of playwrights would agree that's hard coming up with the brand new idea it's not just the time to write the full play like that's the hard work too is where do I even start and how am I going to crack into this and so I really appreciated that and that was the end of what they had their expectation of it and if they were going to continue with it they would do something they said here's we're hoping to commission you we're looking for science plays about science plays for their theater for young audiences apartments so Greg Henry and Peter Kovak were behind that and it was just here are three ideas and I spent a lot of time on them and I did you know when you're drafting ideas I tend to fall into dramatic writing sometimes would be a little bit of this and then here's a couple bits of the song and then here's one of the scenes and here's a big moment I think it's hard work that's real work that's what playwrights do so it was nice to be compensated as well as and then it went on to be a full commission for production but before that point just to go this isn't just the free stuff that we do which I think so much of the especially for those playwrights who don't have those relationships you do a lot of work before you hit send or submit and that's that should be acknowledged as well a great work that's going on here is sometimes before we actually get to handle it to anybody could you talk maybe you don't have to do it now because keep a list running in your head of some of the bright spots for you in terms of literary offices that have really piqued your interest or supported you well Liz what's the literary office for me in terms of what I spend most of my time on I feel like it's two parts I feel like it's reading scripts so I tend to only have time to read one script a day but going out and sort of the general scouting I mean from New York there are tons of readings to go to so it's going to readings or making sure other people from my office go to the readings if I'm not going I'm making sure we're covering what we should be covering in New York and requesting scripts that sound interesting than I'm reading about in some context that are happening outside of the city and keeping up relationships often meeting with writers I don't know or having a sort of catch up meeting with writers I do know but I haven't seen in a while or you know or meeting agents I don't know or catching up with them and a lot of that sort of thing and getting back to people about plays once we've read them and considered them and then I also run our emerging writers group so just the administration of that takes up a lot of time and I do a lot of getting trying to get the work of those writers out into the industry so that also takes up a lot of time as well oh yes definitely so I feel like the sort of the general literary office in the emerging writers group are sort of the two general baskets for my time but then the other full-time employees very much part of the literary office is our artistic associate Jesse Alec and he certainly does a lot of script reading and keeping in touch with artists in the same way and he does a lot of work on the emerging writers group but then he also has other parts of his job like running the post-show discussion series we have for our public lab shows which is something I used to do and then when that job was created it moved over there and he works on our public forum series and does a variety of other things and then we also have other people who plan our readings and workshops and those people in the literary office they're in some other technically not but I think we all know there's obviously a lot of overlap and it's certainly not just the people who work physically in the literary office for us who are covering shows and reporting back on them and the whole artistic staff but you know at a certain level we'll get involved in reading a script and having an opinion on it and the person who's planning our readings and workshops you know there's obviously a lot of overlap between what she's doing in the literary office Madeline your job, your title's not literary Not any more What is it now? Now it's director of the ground floor and so a big smile and a big smile Talk about that Is it fair to say that people at this table have two people in your literary office? I have been the literary office myself since I've been at Berkeley Rep so I've been the literary manager and the dramaturg and that's been a giant issue because my day was largely taken up with stuff relating to the season so the script piles just piles, they just kept going and we so Berkeley Rep just opened a new play development center called the ground floor. I've become the director of that new play development center which is something I'm thrilled about and so excited about and when we were making this transition we had long conversations actually related to submission policy when your announcement came out, twittering talking and we really thought hard about what we wanted and what was right for us and it became clear that it was important for us not to close submissions so we went through all the arguments that make perfect sense to us about are our letters genuine are we really helping people, are we leading people on in a way that isn't fair and despite all the flaws in the system we feel like something Tanya was saying yesterday about what is our responsibility to our community, we feel really strongly that that is a point of access for playwrights that if we shut that down we don't know what else to offer them and we don't have a better alternative and we just sort of think that that's an important avenue to keep open even despite all of its potential for falseness and we do our best to mitigate that so with that we decided that it became very clear that we needed help in the literary office so we've hired a literary associate and her job now is largely to deal with the script pile and I'm a little nervous about that because I feel like that's a finite amount of time that she's going to be excited about that because we all know like the amount and volume of scripts that you're reading they're not all going to be fantastic and we're very excited when we find ones we like but reading scripts that we don't like is a little challenging so we'll see what that turns into in the future because I'm hoping to keep her interested in growing that's her job. My job now I actually get to focus on the work that we're doing which is great and I'm thrilled about that so I mean I'm in the middle of what we're building the program so I'm thinking about things like what does the website look like what the grant floor is funded by a grant from the Irvine Foundation largely and also some money and some other bits and pieces and one of the stipulations of the grant is this audience relationship piece of it which is actually a really tricky thing because ground floor is about process we have no the big centerpiece is our residency lab in July and we have no requirement that anybody do anything public so we're not having a reading culmination of the end providing people from around the country we're not having a professional week and we're not doing anything like that because we feel like it changes the process and we would like playwrights to just be where they are so if people want an audience and they are ready to hear a response then we're going to give them an audience but if they don't that's fine so the questions are becoming how do we communicate what we're doing to interested people and how do we talk about something that's in a very nascent stage if for some reason the writer wants to keep it private how do we get people interested and understanding the process of what it takes to get something from that tiny idea to a production somewhere down the line maybe up there or maybe somewhere else and I'm finding this very challenging so if anybody has thoughts about that so you're not, are you the supervisor of the literary opposite is there a literary associate and someone else and you? there's a literary associate a fellow and me correct so yes I am the supervisor and then the pieces that relate to this audience engagement around what's on the season are those also in the literary office those are also in a place of flux that I'm hoping to iron out in the next little while I've been living with the marketing department only because I couldn't do it I just didn't have time and this no one's really been particularly happy with that the marketing department's done a great job but they're very aware that they don't have access to the art the way I do and they don't have access to the actual people making the art so the intentions behind it how it gets created those kinds of questions they just can't really take ownership of even if somebody tells them the answer that's been a little tricky so we have somebody who's sort of, she's our multimedia manager which is in marketing position but she's starting to be our connectivity person and she and I are now working together to do things like pre-show, music, lobby displays, that kind of stuff so it's now living in a joint land which I think is going to work really well let's get a couple other things and then I don't have to call on you, jump in when you have the thing to say but Jojo and Patrick are both at the table, they're both an NPN folks and John, oh wow, an NPN at the table what's happening for your member theaters and are you functioning as a literary office for the member theaters? there are 25 theaters across the U.S. and their smallest one is two staff members Kitchen Dog and Dallas and I guess Orlando and earlier probably one of our largest members so it's sort of this wide range of theaters and we've had these, Jason who's in Australia and sadly could not be here, likes to call it a collaborative literary management so we have various programs that allow the sharing of scripts so we have an online reading room where any member can put and download scripts and share ones that they're excited about we have a national showcase each year where we have six world premiere readings of brand new scripts where people can share it that way, we have an MFA Playwrights Workshop with the Kennedy Center every summer so it's all of these so the various programs that are pipelines to each other and then sort of our flagship program is the Rolling World Premiere, our continued Life of the Plays Fund so three world premieres within a year play three separate audiences and three separate design teams and builds momentum to have a continued life after it so sort of through those programs we have a literary management that all of the staff members and I guess the two of you can jump in at any time No you're doing it, just fine. Thanks. But the hope is that we're going to have some sort of system in place within the next year or two that we have more of a online database for this collaborative literary management where we're not taking any how we're away from the individual literary managers or dramaturgs and they of course would maintain those relationships with their playwrights but I mean sort of what it seems a lot of people are talking about this idea of replication that a theater, Marin Theater in San Francisco is reading a lot of the same scripts that Interact and Philly is and so rather than having them read the same scripts we have sort of an online database where you can gather reactions from a couple people and then use that to sort of window down which ones you want and I think the strength of NNPN is that there's only 25 of us and so you really know the aesthetic of the other theaters and so through our programs like the National Showcase you get excited about a script and then spread it to somebody else who you also think would do it which is why the rolling world premiere works really well so we talked about yesterday a bunch and it keeps coming back here as the primary role the reading of the scripts and that seems to be the the biggest time spent for most of you and you move by what you said about we don't know what else to offer and so what we do is mitigate the potential for lack of authenticity there but what I guess what's the state of your hearts around the reading that's happening is it where you're on fire is it the grunt work is it what Delana you have got so at Company One in Boston we don't have a literary office I very forcefully advocated when I joined the staff which by the way it's a professional theater it's a small mid-sized company but we have a staff of under 15 people and we all do this professionally but it's all unpaid so it's all professional volunteer which I think is a big surprise to the people in our community because all the money that we get goes into the productions and some small amount of it so when I came on last spring there was a desire from the company to be more fully dramaturgical as a practice across the staff and so I came in and created a we don't have a literary office we have team dramaturg it's me and five young pre-professional dramaturgs and they make up a reading committee in addition to being production dramaturgs on season shows and being in charge of populating and brainstorming around audience outreach events our theater is really mission driven around social and civic issues aiming to put theater on Boston stages that reflects the multiplicity of communities in Boston so we don't do a lot of plays with white people essentially because a lot of other theaters in Boston do that so we try and do things that reflect the other communities that we don't get represented as a result the plays that we read we read a lot of great plays that we aren't going to do because they're not mission specific and so the way that we kind of try to deal with how do we get the plays we're interested in how do we reach out and find things is that my dramaturgs my young pre-professional dramaturgs comprise a reading committee and we use the literarymanager.org software I don't know if anyone else here has heard of that it's really great it's a software system online and you upload plays and you give all your readers account login information and you can assign your readers to certain plays and give them a due date and they get reminders that get sent out from the website and all of the reader reports are hosted right there and you can look at them all and you can see like three different readers may have read one play and then those readers can also get interested in other plays that are in the pile depending on what they've seen and what they've read before or is it the general pile? It's the general pile it's the pile of plays we share the task of finding scripts between myself our artistic director and associate artistic director and then my literary assistant who's one of my dramaturgs on my team and so all of us are sort of looking widely at things we're sort of keeping our ear to the ground all over the place and they go into our pile we do we have in the past accepted unsolicited submissions right now we're in the middle of refining our policy so we put a bit of a hold on it but one thing that we probably will keep from our previous iteration of that is that people weren't just allowed to submit a play they had to fill out an application that asked them to talk very specifically about where they felt their play matched our mission because we were getting a lot of plays that weren't mission specific and we are a really tiny company of reading the stash pile I have other things like I've got production dramaturgy and doing big thinking and season planning and all kinds of other stuff so we have been asking playwrights to bear the brunt of talking to us about why they want to work with us rather than just sort of that machine gun strafe effect of like I'll send my play out to 20 theaters and hopefully one of them will bite we don't have enough capacity to deal with that so right now we're in this place where essentially we have a lot of people doing the literary work and we have no literary manager which I'm really enjoying because I don't want to be the literary manager I spent a long time as a literary manager as like Madeline did in one person literary department at a major regional theater and it was soul sucking in a way that I can barely describe so I think this stuff around like how do you deal with the pile and how much do you spend reading oh man I mean I spend a lot of time reading but I'm reading stuff that is more curated along with what she said we allow our playwrights to self select in a way based upon our mission we look for plays that are about historic events persons advances in science in particular and that tends to limit how many plays come in the front door to begin with they can decide whether to send to you or not we have an open submission process and I don't want to shut that door we find a lot of our writers through the open submission process in particular mid career writers Kathleen Cahill Bill Downs William Zury Downs for example our two writers Bill just we just had his play The Exit Interview and in the showcase 2009 at the for an MPN so far we have six theaters on board for rolling world premiere through that and that was an open process that brought that play to us How many scripts are you reading are coming through that self selecting we do the ten page thing myself and my associate artistic people are submitting yes and bio and yada yada that you know and we ask for a cast let's break down so we can see if it's even doable and Mark my associate director new played about and I split that reading of those initial submissions and then we ask so we usually get between two and three hundred of those and that's really kind of doable you know that's not a huge amount of initial submission for you know 15 pages total each between the two of us and then we open we ask for full submissions we let them we ask them to submit those electronically and then we actually sort of farm them out to the staff and we have a check out system and we have all that so we track them and know where they all are and you know we have certain staff members we know we can trust we have certain staff members that we go I better look at that one and that's more you know I actually look at all of them when it's not something that we directly look at but something else I wanted to mention too and this is about an MPN is which I think is really important is that we also have an import-export policy within MPN so in terms of being our own litter in a way our own literary department we are expected within I think is it three years to either import or export a play from another member theater so in that way we also keep the ball rolling. And the vast majority of the theaters import and export at least one year if not more. You're on the hot seat in the because I'm not talking about it the close submission that arena how many plays are you reading in literary art? Well it's an interesting question for me too because I think so much of this conversation is very specific to an organization's mission and vision of what they're doing and because at arena we do also focus on a great deal on kind of classics whether they be lost classics or musicals and making them contemporary there's kind of a split of the reading as far as new work as well as many classics that I certainly have not been as familiar with than I'm trying to do for it so I mean it's very hard to say a number just because I think that it certainly happens as part of the rolling season planning process and my kind of continual investigation of it but so much of the work now has been dedicated to kind of this relationship with the audience and the engagement of the work at hand and I really love what Madeline said about kind of being able to focus on the current work of the season in a way because I feel like that's broadened as far as having more dedication in for each show for what the dialogue is with the audience and then also the piece of institutional dramaturgy as far as what's the dialogue with the staff and so I think that that has increased so I don't know Is it ten? It's more definitely more than ten. Is it hundreds? Yeah I'd probably say hundred if not you know a little more than that. Well new plays and of lost classics So I have a question maybe Lauren for you we talk about this the pile and it has a lot of different monikers. How does it feel to you to hear about the pile? I'm very glad you asked that I tell all of my students and anyone who would bother to ask me but also colleagues we don't really submit in that fashion to institutional theaters because I kind of why I submit to Madeline because Madeline is a friend and a colleague and I trust her opinion and you know I submit to Pat because Pat knows my work but it's not like I'm just going to send it to Steppenwolf and go I can't wait for them to respond It's when there are such incredible specifically designed play new play development institutions so submit to O'Neill, Ohai, Sundance, I mean on and on and on and a lot of these institutions of course all of you know have development programs within so if you're not submitting to Ground on the Floor which that is an open submission development that's an entry point that they say please knock on the store whereas the other ones it's like we love you please don't put the pile there so I'm not afraid of the pile because I don't find myself in it in that way I think when I find myself connecting with new theaters it's either recommendation Madeline tells Liz or something and we start a conversation or you know my agent will set up a meeting when I'm in a new city and I'm like oh you know I've always wanted to meet the folks at Old Globe or I've always wanted to meet the folks at etc. and then I start a personal relationship with them and just ask them specifically what are you excited about what's going on I don't even try not to talk about I want to know what's up there because each institution is a different personality wise and it is based on relationships again that's what I keep thinking is like the pile doesn't really do that much good now Pat's one of the few people that I've said that I've heard that has found new relationships out of that pile but everywhere else it's like let's talk about a new idea or meet at the O'Neill or in the swing around the bonfire those conversations seem to be more productive than I'm going to submit those 10 pages We can't be friends with every writer but we can be friends with a lot of writers and we were talking about this last night in terms of letting playwrights be their advocates for other writers as well and you know Steve Yackey was I told this story yesterday was so kind as you recommend Lauren and Ross Maxwell another writer that actually is a friend of yours as well to us and you know to his detriment because they got accepted into our festival last year and Steve did and he was really pissed off he was thrilled for you guys, he really was but no it's true that's my favorite thing to talk about besides the new play Smokere which I love to talk about is other plays playing playwrights that I adore and that I'm secretly jealous slash inspired by those writers and I think it's a good thing to ask playwrights I'm excited about who you're reading so you might find some new Don't we owe something as theaters to the writers who don't have the benefit of being far enough along to have that privilege I mean I think you have a definite privilege which I think is amazing and also is shared by a lot of playwrights which is those personal connections and certainly as somebody who works in this drama I so value those personal relationships with playwrights because that's how I figure out what's going on I also feel like if I'm not, if I can't find a way to get access to the playwrights who don't have other entry points and I can't find a way to do that in an organized fashion that makes it not onerous for me so that I don't end up hating those unnamed playwrights who keep sending me their work, like I don't know yet how to figure out the best way to do that. But that's the O'Neill and that's the places that say please send us your stuff and we'll read it blind submit there, I tell everybody, there are 10 websites of places that say submit, submit, submit, submit, don't bother sending it to the alliance or the major lord theater in your city, send it to those places and because it's not just there is an open submission politics because y'all know what you're doing, the point is to find those new voices and I didn't have that privilege when I was growing up in Atlanta my doubt, I will submit to Bay Area playwrights every year and O'Neill every year and I'll submit all of these places and that's where I started those earliest relationships was in that context I'm also the casting director at Orlando Shakes so I really am oriented towards people, I see people as people and not a script or a headshot and resume and we have an open casting call as well and every year I find new people in that way too, it's not just agent submissions, I like the idea of there's got to be a way to control the flood water but also you know, quality will rise and that's how the opportunities arise too I think. We're going to need to break out here in a couple minutes but I need to get two more questions on the table so bear with me and if I cut you off because I got it out in the air and I want to keep going but soul sucking comes up and I wonder, people talk about it somewhat in the past sometimes or like Madeleine you talk about you have a new job and you light up, is that condition of the literary office that we just have to accept as endemic to the literary office, what's the soul sucking thing do you have a... Well I guess I just feel the opposite I mean I feel very fortunate to work at the public and I feel fortunate in relation to literary offices having enough staff to read all the piles so I think for me it hasn't been soul sucking and I still have faith in the pile but I can imagine many situations in which it would be and I understand So maybe it's a thing where part of what you're talking about Lauren is find the places that have faith in the pile and engage there and there are places and for all sorts of good reasons that theater is called the public theater the job of O'Neill, the Sun Dance, Ohio you named some of it I think that the soul sucking comes when the pile is disconnected from the artistic director and then when the pile is disconnected from the work that you're actually doing in the theater it is about faith in the pile because if you feel like stuff that you read is going to actually have an avenue to go somewhere then you have that energy but if you know that what you're reading is never going to go anywhere and you're just doing it in a bubble I think that's where the soul sucking comes from So we didn't talk at all about this as a sprawling set of responsibilities this is really focused on a very small set of responsibilities not that they're not overwhelming in terms of how much work it is not the case that in the role of the literary office is blurry and sprawling I think in our theater well as I said no literary office but the dramaturgical team there is a lot of sprawl but it's by design so it's because we want that sprawl because we're trying to create a dramaturgical sensibility within the company as a whole that moves out into all the departments and I've been really lucky that the staff I work with at company one has been really they instigated that they brought me in to do that as opposed to me not getting on the door and demanding that there be dramaturgical sensibility but as a result it also means that as I said I have five pre-professional dramaturgs one of whom is in charge of outreach, one of whom is in charge of literary, one of whom is in charge of being on the staff community outreach and the cultivation of events that are outside of the walls of the theater so like out in the community so there is a ton of sprawl and we do like a lot of video work as well these days thanks to Raphael who inspired us last summer and there's a lot of stuff we're doing but I think it makes us stronger and actually makes the reading that we're doing more specific like when we're reading through the submissions because the entire reading department is in charge of all of this sort of dramaturgical work of the company and the community it means that every single person who's reading feels really connected to mission and so we're doing way better I think. We're reading more slowly now but I think we're reading more fully. You're sprawling, is that just my sprawling? Totally sprawling, yes. Yeah, I think definitely a lot of sprawl and it's been very interesting to navigate because I feel like so much of it is in this experimental phase that we're really testing all of these things out that we either imitate or steal from other companies and thank them for it or we're working on our own and it's really been exciting for me to at least see the different dimensions in which dramaturgy can permeate in that sense I do think what's really interesting about this whole conversation that we keep on getting back to is this notion of kind of the scarcity and abundance of the office and how that can pertain to the overall support of the mission and the vision because I definitely agree that I think being in an office with you and Aaron and now we have Laura and other fellows and interns who are populating it which is awesome but I mean to try to manage the notion of open submission policy with all of the engagement with all of these different things when you have a few people or a handful of people trying to dictate that I think for me it was more of a following a direct choice of well let's try something that we feel our energy really gravitates towards knowing that it does maybe lose something in the process but feels more connected to the mission and the vision of where arena is at this time but it is a curiosity mind as far as if you were to have more people just generally kind of in this dramaturgy literary staff could we accomplish everything or is there still an issue as far as John and Lily you birthed a new department and so the way you're dealing with sprawl by creating another department? We are and in creating that other department Miriam and I you know in early four and a half two years ago now had conversations about having to give up some things that I feel like we were both a little territorial about that we thought that oh that clearly falls under the responsibilities of the dramaturgy and or literary manager mostly dramaturgy I would say in retrospect now but in doing that I feel like we have freed ourselves a little bit and given we've been able to go deeper in terms of what both of our responsibilities are within the artistic department in terms of season planning and rehearsal room responsibilities and all that kind of stuff but it will say that yeah we have purposely at woolly I think of not drawing lines in the sand and saying this is your job this is my job and go I mean it's more about the blurriness is okay and that we've all had to come to terms I think with that and we've all had various levels of comfortability with that as well okay let's go to the first break out you guys you have on your card the what group you're in so the questions on the table about whether or not the function of the literary office is sprawling and if it is that something that needs to be addressed the nature of the pile and submissions in particular love to hear from the playwrights about your relationship to that pile and that process and the sense of the balance of time and pulling into it a little bit what we talked about yesterday about the origins and the role of the literary office where are we