 Hey everybody. Thanks for watching again. This is a really special day. I'm so thrilled to have with me the amazing Peter Hagan, who is the president of Dramatist Play Service, one of the biggest play publishers and licensors in the country, the world, you can tell me all that. Peter, I'm a great fan of his work because his work is supporting my work and the work of so many playwrights that you know and love. I will say by way, before introducing or letting Peter tell us about him, I will say that my cat always joins for a Zoom meeting. Sorry. My dog may interrupt as well at some point. He loves a Zoom meeting more than anything. It's just how the way the world works these days. The reason why this occurred to me to invite you on Peter is I get questions all the time from young writers asking about publishing. What part of the new play process does publishing enter into? How do you get a play published? You publish it first and then produce or produce. It's one of those things that I think we all end up knowing, but I don't know who told me how it actually works. We're going to jump the gun and actually tell people how publishing works. That's the whole point. There's a couple of questions I have from folks out there specifically for you. Why don't we just start? Peter, if you would just tell us a little bit about how you come to be you. Where do you come from? How do you come to be the president? I'm going to try to figure that out my whole life. How did you find theater? How did you find publishing? How did you find both? Yes. I'll tell us a little bit about Well, I'll work backwards a little bit. I have been at DPS as the president for going on seven years now. Before that, I was on the board of directors of DPS and I was one of the four agent members of the board of directors. I was a playwrights agent. I worked for basically my whole career representing playwrights, directors, some designers and worked with DPS during that whole time. It seemed like a perfect fit. It's funny when I finally moved over to the other side of the table working at DPS, buying from agents rather than trying to sell my clients work to DPS. Someone said to me, Peter, you found, you know, this is your perfect job. And it was actually sort of the culmination of my lifelong involvement in the theater and my work, which started out as many agents, many people who ended up in the business side of theater started out. I was an actor for a while. I came to New York to be an actor. I had visions, I don't know whether of stardom, but of working as an actor. And that changed. And I went to work at the William Morris Agency and a couple of other places as well along the way. And here I am. So, you know, the common thread here is that I am a passionate fan writers and what writers do. Lauren, I remember, I think the first play of yours, oddly enough, is the one that's probably the sort of, it's probably an outlier maybe a little bit in the kind of work that you've done. And I think that the first play, and I love the play, I love the play. I read to it at, I believe I read to at the beginning. The first one was Bauer. Oh, yeah. And then, and it was at the same time as Silent Sky. And I just thought, this is a terrific writer and we need to have, and I knew that you had already been published. I think you and I was published. Yeah. French, maybe. I knew was play scripts, and Emily was a Samuel French. So I, and I love both of those, those publishers as well. Yeah, we're, you know, we're a small, we're a small group of folks who all do the same thing. So we, you know, although we are competitors, in a sense, Samuel French, now Concord, play scripts, dramatic publishing, all of those. We worked together in particular. We have a somewhat unique relationship with Samuel French because when DPS was founded, which is back in 1936, we were originally founded by a group of agents who had gotten together with the dramatists Guild to form a company which was going to specifically deal with amateur rights with nonprofessional rights and publishing play scripts. Because at the time, believe it or not, there were probably in excess of 100 different licensing companies out there and playwrights were being exploited a lot. So the drama skilled came together and said, I will, you know, we need to find, you know, a way to deal with this situation and, you know, play service came out of that. At the beginning, we only handled nonprofessional rights. Samuel French handled the professional rights very often or sometimes it was the primary agent for the play. And that lasted that way until probably the mid 1980s. But as a result, sometimes we have for instance with the Tennessee Williams catalog. For the most part, we have the nonprofessional rights and French has the professional rights. We publish the acting edition. So anyway, we have good relationships with each other. As I say, we are competitive sometimes. But getting back to our relationship with you, Lauren, it started out with Bauer and Silent Sky. Silent Sky was the one that took off and every school group, it's a great play for schools. It deals with a somewhat historical scientific subject matter. Has a lot of women in it. Although then you wrote Book of Will, which is still doing very well. So it's always interesting how a play will come to you and how you start a relationship with a, I'm going to just turn this off there, with a particular right. Now to kind of dive deep into the question that I think a lot of people watching might be wondering is, so how does a play get published? Let's just talk about kind of the life of a new play and you start writing it. You start doing a reading of it workshops and then let's say we work up to, what's the kind of next step? I mean, I know from my own career, but perhaps we can have you kind of describe it from your end, especially, and you can always use your experience as an agent because there's always questions about agents too. So maybe. Right. Well, your career is actually an interesting one to bring up. Most of the time, a play will come to our attention, very honestly, because it's been produced in New York. And we cover, we used to cover everything that was opening and that was on, that was playing in New York to make sure and all the other licensing houses do that as well. And we would see if we thought that it fit our purposes, if it's a, you know, if it's a Broadway play like, you know, curious incident of the dog in the nighttime or, which I also actually saw for the first time in London. We also cover plays in London or, you know, Doll's House Park too, you know, plays that are on Broadway, obviously those are going to be appealing to us because everybody hears about those plays. There are also times when it's not because the play has been done in New York, I believe in the case of Bower in Silent Sky, when I read those plays neither had been produced in New York. Bower came to New York after, it was at 59 and 59, but I think it was after. Silent Sky has never been to New York. And Silent Sky was not in New York. So sometimes an agent will, a lot of times an agent will come to me and say, you've got to read this writer, we want this person in the DPS catalog and will you take a look at it? Depending on who the agent is, depending on how the play has come to me, usually, because we get so many submissions, virtually everybody who works at DPS is interested in the theater and everybody covers everything, even if you're working in finance or if you're working in licensing, if you're working in, you know, operations or royalties. These are people who are in love with the theater. They usually have a very good background in reading plays, seeing plays. They know what they're talking about. So I will have someone on staff read it. And if it's a good recommendation, it will come to me. Sometimes I'll read it first. I'm pretty good about not taking on anything that I haven't read. Sometimes I will do that rarely if it's something that we're going to be paying a lot of money for. But, you know, the play will come to us either because of its popularity in New York, London, sometimes Los Angeles, or an agent will bring it to us. And then the decision as far as we're concerned is whether or not we think that there is a market for the play, both in nonprofessional productions for nonprofessional productions and also for professional productions. Again, it's helpful if it has a New York production or has just been produced. And it's kind of rare that we'll take on anything that has never been produced, although we have done so. You know, particularly if it's a really unique voice and someone that we just think, hey, this is someone that we think will fit well in our catalog. I will say that DPS has long before I was there, has always had a reputation of finding the, you know, the writer that no one out in, you know, the rest of the world has really heard of. So, for instance, one of the writers that I always think of in this respect is Sam Shepard because when Sam Shepard was doing plays at Cafe Chino, you know, nobody in, you know, out in the world knew who he was, really. And at the time, there, the head of the play service was a man named Andy Leslie. And, you know, he would see everything and he would go out and he found, you know, he saw Sam Shepard need when this person is going to have a career. And so, you know, sometimes we'll take people on at the very beginning. So what about for those writers, especially early on in their careers, they don't have an agent yet, this may be their first production or one of my first conversations with publishers was my first commission for South Coast rep when I was just out of finishing grad school. And, you know, that was one of the first big productions and kind of what about at that point in the career, especially for those who maybe don't live in New York, I obviously don't. And that's part of the, a bit of the mystery about me. But I think there's a lot of folks out there who obviously don't. And this kind of goes to a question that one of our gentleman just sent, because he has had a lot of productions in Boston, he lives in Boston, but he kind of thought, well, maybe I shouldn't even bother because plays only get produced if they are in New York or LA or London or Chicago. So how about those like early career folks, is it one of those things kind of like an agent where you're like, just wait, your time will come or should they seek you out? What's the kind of hot for that point in your career? You know, it's the eternal question. And, you know, when do I get an agent? Should I have an agent before I approach a publisher? To the first question, you should get an agent when you feel like this is what you want to do with your life. You've done your schoolwork, you've done, you know, you're even when you're in school, if you've got, if you're starting to get the response from others, and that's an important thing, response from, you know, your teachers, from directors, from audiences, all of that, then it's time to start thinking about how do I get an agent? And, you know, when I was an agent, when I was, particularly when I was starting out, and there's a key phrase to, you know, latch on to, if you're a young playwright, chances are you're going to have an easier time of finding an agent if you, you know, suss out who the starting out agents are, who are the, you know, who are eager to find, to get a client list. And they, and they're out there, you know, when I was at the Gersh agency, my assistant there was John Bezetti. People are always surprised about that. John Bezetti started his career working as an actor's agent assistant, and he came to me with, I will not go into how, you know, he became my assistant, but he did, and he was a fast learner, and he moved very quickly, and now John Bezetti is the head of the theater department at William Morris Endeavour. And, you know, even when he was working as my assistant, he was signing the guys from Avenue Q, he was signing Stephen Adley-Gergis, you know, he had an amazing client list before he was even barely an agent. So I recommend that you find out who those people are, their names come up, talk to your friends, talk to your teachers. Can I just send over the transom letters to the agents? Sure. And make yourself interesting to them, and say who you are and why you're interested in that particular agent. Can I get a publisher? Can I get my play published without an agent? Yes, it's happened. I've taken on plays with, you know, no one has an agent, you know, and it can work. But it's a dance, and there is no definitive answer to how to do it. I mean, the advice that I tend to give young writers or any writers that are interested in the question of agent publishing is certainly to focus on getting your play produced. Absolutely. Focus on getting in those new play festivals, being a finalist in an award, or, you know, a semi-finalist at the O'Neill, or kind of gathering that almost credentials to say, like, the O'Neill thinks I'm worthy of being on their list, and South Coast Rep, and, you know, this small theater in Chicago, storefront theater in Chicago, did a reading and did a production, and kind of gathering that and then using that as almost your introduction to agents. Absolutely. That's how I got one, was because of being in the Pacific Playwrights Festival at South Coast. And kind of instead of having that be the first thing on your mind of, how do I get an agent, and then how do I have a career, start the career. And my experience is the agents will kind of show up and be like, hey, your career looks like it's going great. Would you like an agent? Right. And that happens. And that is absolutely correct. And also, you don't have to be in New York. You don't have to be in LA. When I was a young agent, I was finding writers who were in Oregon, who were in Atlanta, all over the place. And the point that you make about, you know, being involved in places like the O'Neill and the various festivals is a very good one, because there are particular levels that you have to get through to get your play even done as a reading. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to have an agent to help you do that. The playwright, even after you have an agent, you have to be doing the work yourself. Exactly. Great point. Yes. You know, you have to be finding the opportunities and letting your agent know and say, hey, I hear about such and such, you know, a festival. Can we see if we can get the play done there? The other thing that I always say to young writers is, you can't write in a closet. You have, you know, find like-minded people in whatever part of the country that you are, you know, get your own play reading group or producing group together, you know, produce plays, go to see plays, read plays. Right now, you can't go to see plays, but you can read plays. You can stream some of them. Yeah, and stream. There are a lot of streaming things available. But keep yourself current with what's going on. And I think key too to that is knowing what theater does the work that you respond to. So am I a magic theater person? Am I a Berkeley rep person? Am I, you know, timeline or whatever? Like there's so many theaters across the country, but certainly in your community that you can say, who's doing that work by Steven Ellinger or Paul Vogel or something and going, oh, that's my, that's the work that excites me. I should pay attention to that theater and then maybe eventually reach out to that theater's literary manager and say, how do you find these plays? How do you find these plays? Who's publishing these plays? You know, you can use that to kind of find your people. Definitely, definitely. That is the way that that's, you know, it takes a while. And yes, there are people who are discovered overnight and boom, go right to the top. But not usually. A long, hard slog. I'm finding a lot of our viewers like me don't live in New York. And it seems in the last decades or so that the kind of wealth of theater and new plays is spreading. It used to just be kind of New York and Chicago. And it seems now there are so many hotspots for new work that starts somewhere regionally and jumps all over. It's true. Absolutely. You just friend. Did you say, what did you say? Well, I'm saying that there is a lot of folks who of course don't live in New York. And I'm seeing in the last couple of decades that that the hotspots for new work are kind of, they're spreading around the country. It's not just as focused on New York. Of course, New York being the epicenter of great work, of course, and always. But we have hotspots in Atlanta and I'm certainly the Bay Area is full of incredible voices and, you know, all up and down. Yeah. And I mean, I think of in particular of someone like AR Gurney. When Pete Gurney started his career, he was a professor at MIT. He was like I think a classics professor at MIT, which he always thought was hilarious to be a classics professor there. But he lived in Boston or Cambridge or wherever it was. He didn't really come to New York and establish himself in New York as a playwright working in New York until he was well into his 40s. You know, he raised a family of four kids. And then he became one of the, if not the most produced playwright in the country because of the, you know, the number of his plays and the appeal of his plays. So don't feel like, oh, God, I'm not in New York. I can't afford to move in New York or I hate New York or whatever. Don't think that that stops you being a playwright. Doesn't. It doesn't. I think that's so great to hear because that certainly was the voices in my head were telling me that when I was younger. And I was so grateful to be in New York when I was there. I was there for grad school, which maybe I'd love to hear your thoughts on grad school because I certainly have some and get what's another one of those questions I get all the time. Should I go to grad school? Which ones, blah, blah, blah. But I was grateful to be there. And I learned so much so quickly in New York. So it's one of those places that I think even if you don't live there or don't want to live there, having access to it is great. Go a few times a year, once a year, see the shows, keep in touch. So yeah, definitely. As far as grad school is concerned, you know, I can't really speak to the specific grad schools. I mean, we all know the ones that are, you know, the sort of Yale stars, there's Yale, there's New York, NYU, you know, Carnegie. Just they have the reputation. But what I think grad schools are good for as well, I mean, of course, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna get a graduate degree, you're gonna expand your knowledge of the theater, you're gonna expand your your technique as a writer, all of those things. But grad schools are great for connections. You know, you meet people, you have the opportunity to forge alliances, you know, to build that theater group, to do the things that can help you move forward as a writer and as a member of the theater community. Yeah, I would agree. I was grateful for my grad school. And it's a shame how much money it can cost. Some programs are far less than others. And some are even free or have have a lot of scholarships attached to them, which is great. But I think the time for yourself, for your work, for building a community, for connections, for understanding the theater world and business and soul of it is incredibly valuable. So I definitely encourage grad school, if that is accessible to people. And if it's not, then I want to figure out how to make it accessible to people. Because it is, it's kind of like you want your doctor to go to doctor school, you should want your playwright to go to playwright school. Right, right. I don't disagree with that. So can you talk a little bit about the kind of licensing and royalties part of what you do? So let's say the play is produced once a few times, that writer is lucky enough to be in your catalog. What is that side of it? Because that's pretty unique to theater publishing, right? Like how you deal with licensing and stuff. Right. So we are, we are licensors and acting edition publishers. There are what they call trade editions, which are published by the likes of, you know, TCG or, I don't know, Northwestern University Press, Oberon, a bunch of different publishers in the United States and in the UK. When we take a play on, we, the first thing we do is start to get the acting edition in shape. So the writer is working very closely with our editorial staff to make sure that what we publish is the version of the play that the writer wants performed. Right. Sometimes there will be other versions of the play out there, either published by trade publishers or sometimes they'll be in a, you know, in a magazine or whatever and people will say, oh, okay, well, we've got this play. We don't need it. Uh-uh. When you're, when you're going to actually produce the play and it's a play that we have the rights to, you need to do our version of the play because that's the version that we know that Lauren Gunderson wants to have performed. Um, we get that in, in, in shape. Recently, in the last few years, we have stopped, um, we, we publish at the very beginning a relatively short run of the plays because, and Lauren will probably recognize this, recognize this, um, writers sometimes say, you know what, I never really liked that second scene and I'm going to do a little work on it. So can we do a revised edition? So we, we make sure that we only have a short run. So because that's very smart. Very often that, that's what happens. So then we get the play together. Um, so the publication process takes, we try to say that it takes three to four months. It can take a little bit longer. The things that hold up publication are writers not getting their galleys back to us, their corrections. No, but I'm not making any, casting any as persons here at all. Do you think I owe you one, Margot? You may, you may. Um, and, uh, secondly, if there is underlying material, third party material, a song. Sure. No, I always wanted to have, you know, this character sing over the rainbow. I would urge all aspiring writers do as much as you can to make sure that your play is original to you because if it's not original to you in places, if there are songs, if there's a poem, if there's other persons, that work has to be, we have to acquire the rights to that work. And I just did that with natural shocks because the original version had the Judy Garland song and I, I thought, Oh God, I can't do this play without that. The, um, it's, um, forget your troubles. Come on, get happy. That's right. I, I, funny, I said over the rainbow, I don't think I was even thinking of natural shocks. Well, that's what made me think about it. And I, and I was like, Oh, I just can't do this play without that song. I wrote it there and I was kind of dumbed to write it so intimately with that song and it's so hard to get the rights. It's going to take forever. And then I just kind of challenged myself to go like, you know what, let's just see what happens if you take it out. And I did. And that's the, the version that y'all have. And I think it's gorgeous. It works so well. And I didn't, I came to not miss it. So it's a great thing to remember. I think that's a bit of practical advice for writers is to be wary of like using a Madonna song or like a Prince tune. You're like, no, that you're never going to get the rights to that. We can do things like say, you know, the character sings a song, you know, a peppy 1930s dance tune or, or something, you know, or, you know, they sing a hip hop song that, you know, or they, they do a hip hop number, you know, and then we put a little asterisk and say whatever you do, you have to get the rights yourself. But so long as you don't specify what that particular hip hop song or 1930s dance number or whatever, then you're free to quote the lyrics or quote lyrics. Absolutely. That's no lyrics in the book. So those are, now sometimes we do, you know, Robert Schenken wrote all the way his LBJ play in Great Society. And, you know, the Democratic Party theme song was Happy Days Are Here Again, took us two years to get the rights. Really? We made the agent do it. But two years to get the rights because music publishers, they don't care, you know, they don't realize what the kind of pressure that we're under. So a little bitter. Right. So anyway, then the play is published. And sometimes, and we're in the meantime, we're getting requests for productions. Very often those requests will come in before the play is actually, you know, in the book. And so we will send manuscript copies so that, you know, people can consider it or use it for rehearsals. And if the play is cleared, meaning no third party materials, we got contracts signed, all of that, then we start to license the play. And we license professional productions and nonprofessional productions. So the professional productions, we have our licensing department. They negotiate the contracts. They get an advance. They negotiate a royalty. Those royalties come to us. We pay them off to the writer. Nonprofessional is a bit more cut and dry because there are so many licenses. There are automatic licenses that come in. And we charge generally in the neighborhood of $100 to $120 of performance for the nonpro productions. Um, and if it's a popular play that is in the early stages of its life, we make sure for our writers that the plays are that we don't step on each other's toes so that if there's an opportunity for a big professional production of the play in a particular regional theater, we make sure that we exploit those rights before we're going to send it off, you know, and let high schools do it or colleges do it or community theaters do it. So that's basically the way the licensing process works. We commission it the same way which is the standard in the industry. For a professional production, it's 10%. And nonprofessional, it's 20% of the royalties. But that's at any place you go. That's what you're going to find is the standard. That's pretty standard. And then in terms of, so perhaps we could talk a tiny bit, sounds a little weird to talk about your website, but it seems it's really easy to to navigate and find. And so for those folks who are thinking about, oh, I'd like to put on a reading of this or a production of that, they just you can start the whole process on your website like absolutely most publishers have that you just kind of start there and then you can figure out all the steps as you go. Yeah, I mean, it's fairly simple. You apply right on the website. If there are no issues with the play, if it's not restricted in a particular territory or things like that, usually you can just you do an automatic license, you pay your fee or whatever it is that that particular play costs and you go from there. Sometimes there will be a situation where a first class producer, a commercial producer has rights to a certain play. And so those will be flagged and then you'll end up dealing with somebody on our staff who will say, sorry, can't license that play in Chicago because it's going to be, you know, it's going to have a commercial production or something. And then this seems we're all in the weird Wild West of streaming and Zoom readings and how has, how have you in DPS kind of handled that? I mean, from my perspective, it seems like y'all have pivoted very quickly and been very responsive to people, which I'm very grateful for. I know a lot of us are very thankful for that. What's your kind of take on it? I know it changes every day these days. Well, it is it's interesting. It is indeed changing every day. We first started even before we closed the office before the stay at home orders started. We realized we were going to have to be dealing with this because we were getting the requests. But the main thing that people need to realize at this point anyway, is that almost 100% of what's in our catalog, we don't have those rights. We don't have the streaming rights. We only have live performance rights. So every time we get a request for streaming or capture or anything like that, we have to go to the playwright usually through her agent and get permission for this. Sometimes it's easy and they say, sure, do it. Sometimes it's complicated mainly because there are instances where the electronic rights to the to the piece to the play are held by a movie company. So we have to get the permission of the movie producer to do that or the television producer. But generally, the way we have been handling it is that at least at this point, we are charging for the for this is for non pro productions. We are making basically the equivalent of one performance fee equivalent to one day of streaming allowed. Pro is as all pro productions are negotiated depending on the situation. And now we're starting to get requests. This is just recently for theaters that want to produce a play say they have the rights to do the play a play a professional producer usually in say January of 21. And they say, but we're not sure whether our audiences, which are generally older, are going to be comfortable actually coming into a theater. Can we also have the streaming right? So we've been dealing with those situations. Yeah, that seems to be every conversation that I'm having is is there a way to capture it for those of you out there means record it in some way. I mean, how are y'all doing? How's DPS doing in all of this new world? It's you know, it's as you no doubt seen in all of the articles and that and, you know, things that you read about what's going on. The problem that many many places like booksellers, for instance, of which we are also a bookseller, that part of is fine. You know, we're doing well, we're probably doing a little better that we had been doing with with selling our books, because people want to read the place that they can't go to see our business though, by and large, depends on large groups of people gathering together to see other large groups of people performing for them. And right now that has stopped at all levels of the industry. And so we have had, you know, we've had a lot of cancellations in which people want their money back. So it is tough. We're doing fine. I mean, we're still around. As far as I'm aware, all of the licensing houses are still around. I mean, we have over 4,000 titles in our catalog. We've been in existence for 84 years. Amazing. And so we are working very hard to make sure that that all continues. And right now, it seems as if we are. But it's a lot of, you know, I mean, yesterday I saw that Cameron McIntosh said, look, it's going to be a couple of years before musicals get going again in a commercial way, like not till next year. And, you know, so those are, those are, there are tough things that are going on in the theater industry. I don't think Broadway is going to open up for at least until the fall. And that's a big deal. And when it does open up, it's going to be at like half speed. So it's a, it's a rough situation that we're in right now. We are, you know, we're trying to adapt. We're in terms of like saying, okay, well, what new, what's new that we can do. And so we have our DPS on air and we have our writers as you just did reading from their work. And that's proved very popular with people. We have our, a new initiative, which we call technical difficulties place for on online theater. Oh, that's cool. And specifically for, you haven't written one yet, have you? I haven't, no. Oh, that's really cool. I love this idea. You need to do it. You need to do it. I thought we had talked to you about that, but thing, I don't know. You know, I got to tell you, I said to my son the other day, I'm like, is today Tuesday? What is today? We all have that. So we'll get it into the collection. Written for Zoom or Instagram live or some digital version of it. Or it can be done, you know, also live, both, you know, either way. So, but it was interested in is how those can kind of talk to each other. Definitely. We're going to publish them when we have enough together. We're going to publish them in a book together. So, you know, we're moving in that direction. So it will be interesting to see how this develops. And it is changing every day. Well, I'm grateful for that. I mean, I feel like those are the folks that I'm really that put a smile on my face and hope in my heart for this field are the folks that seem to be going, Okay, let's not stop and give up and wait for things to go back exactly as they were. Let's pivot. Let's iterate. Let's innovate. Let's, I don't know. Let's try it. It may be a terrible mistake, but we can. It's the theater. Like cut, start a new play. Yeah, I mean, I read an article that one of our writers actually sent to me and a bunch of other people a few weeks ago. And this person, you may have seen this article in which the person said, I think we need to just stop. This isn't doing it on. And I was like, no, you know what? We have to keep going. People need to, you know, we need to survive. Playwrights need to survive. And we can't just stop. We have to find new ways of doing what we've always done. And if you don't respond to a play on Zoom, if you don't respond to some things, then don't watch it. It's fine. It's not for you. That's okay. But there's a lot of us who are, I'm so grateful for the stuff I get to see. And I'm really kind of excited. I've seen some really innovative uses of, you know, what we do have still, which is stories, story makers and audiences. We have that. We haven't lost that. We have lost our stages and our theaters, but we haven't lost the stories and the way in which we experienced them. And I also think that it's very, one thing that the Zoom things have done, both the big splashy events, like, you know, when Disney did all, had all the, they did all the Disney songs and even the small ones. I think about last week, and I don't know, Lauren, if you saw this or not, on the DPS On Air, Donald Margulies had an actor who was in his production of the model apartment, read a monologue. And it was in honor of Mark Bloom, who died of the virus. And he had been in that production. It was so moving. It was among the most moving things I've seen in a, you know, in a theatrical context period, not just on Zoom, but like period. The actor was wonderful. And I'm embarrassed. I can't remember her name. But it was terrific. And in the same way that seeing all those stars, seeing Beyonce on that Disney thing, which my son maybe watch, which I loved. It was great. It was great. It was great. You know, so, and because we know these people and their theater. And it's about authenticity. I mean, all great theater is about authentically being hilarious, authentically finding yourself weeping, saying a true thing out loud, finding yourself enraged at something. And that can still exist in these forms. That again, it's not, I try to reiterate when I talk about this with colleagues that I think if we say it's the same thing, we're wrong. But if it doesn't have to be the same thing, it can be a new kind of thing. Streamed versions and digital stuff. Absolutely. So yeah, I find that there are, there are several times during the, what was it the one of the billion, you know, digital things that have happened and there were some Broadway actors and they were singing together and it was just like weeping. It was just so meaningful. I don't know. It just, when it's real, it's real. When it's good, it's good. It kind of doesn't. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I'm grateful that y'all are part of that cohort of people being creative in this time. Before we kind of wrap up the hour, I wonder if I could kind of ask two things. One, if you could tell us some of your absolute favorite theater moments, things that you've seen that you still remember or like the monologue that you just, that you just told us about, stuff that just really reminds you why you love this, why you go, why you care, why you go again and again. And then maybe we can end with that age old question about any advice you might have or practical tips for young playwrights out there. So maybe we'll start with what you love. Well, what do I love? I love, in the theater, I love what takes my breath away, which surprises me and as I'm thinking, because I, this was not a, I didn't know that this question was coming, but I actually, I can think of things from oddly, from when I first started going to the theater. So I was in college, I came to, to New York, we, you know, we would do the New York trips, you know, I went to the University of Virginia and we would all come up and go to the theater. I remember the opening moment of Mike Nichols' production of David Rabe's Place Streamers, which, you know, you go into the theater, the lights go down and then boom, the lights came up and you were like in this scene. It just, there was no moment. It was like, oh, wow, I'm like in it now. I specifically remember that opening. I remember the production of Balm and Gilead, the John Malkovich production of Balm and Gilead, which was at what, at the Manetta Lane Theater, all of the Steppenwolf Company, who we'd never seen before, who just all these people, Laurie Metcalf and, you know, John Malkovich and all of these great Steppenwolf actors, who are all young men, and it was just, it was breathtaking seeing these 18 people up on stage. I was going to see the, it was a revival of Sweet Charity. I'm a big musical fan, but I went to see the revival of Sweet Charity that Debbie Allen did, and the big spender number came on and it, I realized great musical theater like that, and also non-musical theater. It sort of made me sweat. I realized that my hands got all wet and I was like getting a little, I was perspiring on my own. So those are the kinds of things. I like it when it takes your breath away. You know, I go to the theater a lot, obviously. I have been going to the theater. And I mean, you know, the night that they closed down Broadway, I was supposed to see the production, the new production of Company with Patty Lepound and Katrina Lank, and I had seen it in London. I saw it in London too. It was so great. Which was so fantastic and I couldn't wait to see it with an American cast because it's an American play. Yeah. And much as I loved it in London, and I want things that are going to, you know, what I was going to say is that I go to the theater so much and I see a lot of bad stuff too. You know, let's face it, there's bad. We all do. We all do. We all see bad theater. But when it startles you, I mean, after I hesitate to say, I mean, years I've been going to the theater, but it can still take my breath away. And that's what I like. And it's all over the place. You know, it can be your two-character play of people just in a room talking. It can be something totally spectacular and theatrical and, you know, and that as well. So I like that. That's great. Any advice you would give to young writers out there, kind of those who maybe are earlier on in their career. And I loved what you said earlier about when you start thinking about agent and publishing is when you decide this is my work. This is what I'm going to do. There's no question. I'm a playwright. I don't know. It could be advice about anything related to that. But I think that, you know, as far as writers are concerned, you know, in terms of the piece of advice is to don't stop. I know that you obviously are writing all the time. You know, even I often, I think of Tennessee Williams, who was sort of when I was in high school, it was discovering Tennessee Williams that that was what made me realize this is the world for me. This is what I want to do. How does this man do that? You know, I can sit there and watch the movies made of his plays and or be fortunately being in a theater which is doing one of his plays and be startled and moved and transported every time. But Tennessee Williams, even in the latter part of his life, which was a sad part of his life, he got up every morning and he wrote and he wrote every day of his life. I don't have, I'm in awe of writers who can do that. I couldn't do that. But I think the writers who are worth their salt do. And so that's my big piece of advice to people who are to or want to get into that field and actually succeed at it is don't stop. And the other part of it I already mentioned, which is don't ignore what's going on in the rest of in the theater. You need to, you don't, don't pigeonhole yourself and say, oh, I can't be bothered with, you know, English plays. I hate them. Go see the English plays. You know, go see musicals, even if you don't really, you know, there's something to be learned from everything that's up there. That's so true. That's great. Thank you. What a joy this was to finally meet you. And share your wisdom and your thoughts and your advice and your hope for the future. It was such a pleasure. I think that's what we all have to have is some hope for the future for for the theater. And I, you know, people are not stopping. And so thank you. I really appreciate you asking me to do this. Of course. Thank you. Thank everybody at DPS. And just for the folks out there who want to see those DPS live readings, it's on the on Instagram on drama is play service Instagram that you can see those and there's a bunch of them up there now and they're all really, really special. And I was quite moved. DPS on air. And another little plug for DPS is that we're going to be having in two weeks right now. We're doing a join the DPS book club. Oh, yeah, Gavin. Great books four times a year. That's happening right now. And then in a couple of weeks, we're having a book sale, which will be announced. I'm giving you a little hint just so keep your eye on the on the website. drama is calm and buy some books, buy some books, support some writers. And that sounds great. All right, thanks, everybody. If you have any other questions in the comments, I'll go through and and answer what I can and point you to some resources. And please send to me if there's something for me, Lauren, please send them to me as well. If you want. I will.