 The Wright brothers did it first and what he said was they knew why they were doing it because one of them wanted so badly, they wanted to feel like what it was like to fly. So every time they crashed and burned, it was just another step to figuring out why they wanted to do this. So that's kind of... And they knew that wasn't it but they kept going pretty good. They knew that wasn't it, they crashed but they knew... And I guess the way I translated that, in periods as a writer or teacher or director that I felt floundery and there have been a few, that I would think to come back to how I wanted my life to look but it didn't look like that. Like why I wanted it to look that way or feel that way on a daily basis. It would remind me then, okay, well then you could do this instead. You could try this instead. There's not just one avenue to do that. So I just wanted people to think about why we do it. And also can we get the circle so that everybody can be in it who wants to be? We've got a few people who are in a row too. Is that an empty seat next to you, Tonya? Pretty sure it is, yeah. So there's a chair over there if anybody needs... Erin, there's a chair by Tonya. I love going to Jerry, but I'm doing... Is that Jerry's? It was there when I got here. Okay. Why? Think about why. I want to say a little bit about why. And part of... I feel like I have been pushing toward my own why. And I want to allow for that not to necessarily be the why of the group, but I'm going to keep pushing that way until someone has a different why. The whole emphasis of this inquiry that is now housed in the American Voices New Play Institute that moves to... Emerson Center for Theater Commons later on this year and is really best seen and touched on how around right now. This is an effort to advance the infrastructure for new work and the people who make it. And it's very... That's a geeky thing to talk about. But if you hear me pushing toward what are we making? What can we make? How can we make it better? What can we bring into the future? It's because that's what I'm trying to do is to advance the infrastructure for the work and the people who are making it. And so I'm going to probably be more concrete and less poetic in what I'm after than some other people might be about this. But it's a geeky thing that I'm trying to do. So I copped with that. I've been pushing a little bit throughout the day to get people to think about the field, to think about it on an infrastructure level, to think about the future in terms that are maybe more concrete than this conversation. It's a comfortable being because it's so much a conversation about ideas, art. That's who we are in the theater anyway. Those are our roles. So I know I'm pushing against the comfort zone of people and I appreciate you're continuing to indulge me or push back out loud rather than just in corners. But I do think that over the course of the day a few things are emerging and I want to throw them out for this conversation because what I want to try to get to at the end of the day is something that we could write down as a general but helpful guide, a guide more than a recipe for what we might bring into the next generation to the new millennium century, whatever. And so one of the things that I heard this morning was that there is a tremendous amount of reading going on. And yesterday there was a big reaction to Julie's manifesto where she was saying, I would like a database that deals with the pile. I don't actually prioritize having my own pile. The plays need to be read. If we look at ourselves as a field, there's a tremendous amount of energy going into this reading. Is there something that could be done about that energy to make it more productive? And I want to talk about that. I'm also hearing that the sprawl, more after the conversation when we got the list from Aaron and that breakout group about all the different things and the way it's permeated other conversations, that the sprawl is in the way of what we just talked about at the end of thoughtful time, meaningful time for the dramaturg to be in relationship to the production. Let's just use Jerry's term for now, even though there are lots of other ways to be in relationship to process. Not always ending in production, but let's say that whatever the outcome is is what we're going to produce and that we should be focused. When we're moving into that, we should be focusing on that as a priority. That the connectivity stuff seems to be taking time. Seems to be a big chunk. Willie deals with it with John. Willie deals with it by making a separate department. That stuff is valuable, but it's done by somebody else. Is that something that we can talk about? Is that a recommendation? Is there a way to identify time, prioritize time, and those elements of our programming align them better than we seem to have them now? The third thing that... Wait, there were... Oh, then simply this. How do we get this authenticity between the mission and purpose of the... It seems to be a desire to have an authenticity between the mission, purpose, and processes of our organizations toward the art. And including everything from how we deal with submissions to how we deal with productions and development in the place. And that this is somehow part of the institutional narrative. It's part of the dramaturgical narrative of the organization. And that is in some ways resident to our responsibilities in the literary dramaturgy office. Does that make sense to people as a... Did I just make a sentence? Often I don't make a complete sentence. And I'm not embarrassed when people point it out. But did that... So that sense that authenticity is in some ways the response... Is appropriately a responsibility of the literary office to question and safeguard? Okay. So thoughts, reactions to all of it. Even the why, go ahead and challenge the why. Or don't. You don't have to. That's just about how we might actually... Is there a database that we can share? You'd have to get to the two and essential analysis of who we are in these jobs and why we chose them in the first place. And if you're not the top dog in an institution and you see problems around you find yourself unsatisfied behind your circumstances how can you summon the courage to push back? And how can you try to get a better definition of what the expectations are of you? Find out whether your goals and your aesthetics and your assumptions or vision for what the best way to manifest the mission of the theater whether that all aligns with what the artistic director is thinking. I think a lot of times we operate out of the sense of fear that if we do that too much we'll be obsolete or we'll be told our opinion doesn't matter or we'll be fired and their jobs are scarce. And in fact, if we are who we say we are at all the different presentations of that and we have a kaleidoscopic view of the institution and where it fits in the community we are the best people to push back against what we see as calcified or we see as unclear what we see as a failure to meet a mission whatever it might be and we've got to take the reins of that but we cannot wait for and how that looks at any given I think how that looks at any given institutional situation might be different but we've got to summon that. I'm struck when I early on but Mame Hunt was just coming into the magic as artistic director so this is some years ago in San Francisco and she came out of dramaturgy to be the artistic director and I asked her because I worked there as a director quite a bit I asked her what to find the dramaturge in her and she said I'm somebody who's always willing to lose my job for what's right and that she that somehow and I think she must have gotten that sense from you that there was nothing more important to fight for than the truth even if it cost her her job and how do we get the as a group of people and as delegates for another larger group of people how do we find this ground to stand on to say this is true even though we're risking so much of a collaboration is in part an artistic collaboration is in part reactive in terms of our professional identities within institutions they mustn't be they have to be assertive not necessarily aggressive but they have to be assertive you don't build a relationship just by being reactive one thing that I I'm not going to respond to every single thing I promise but one thing that you remind me is that what comes out of something like this if we make something come out of something like this the field does have the habit of following the leaders and if we can end a little bit with bright spots we can point to where things are actually working and call that out and also nobody wants to be behind the curve and if something comes of this that is a statement about the future and some of the people in some of the institutions decide yeah that's right that's what we're going to move toward our jobs get a lot easier in standing on that ground and pushing when there's already movement in that direction so some of what comes out of this if we can clarify it and move it forward it will help that I think that if we if we begin to equate professional accomplishment with working at the large institutional theaters then we doom ourselves to a kind of inefficacy or sort of walking right into the problem of being completely stripped of power because I think sometimes our frustrations with large institutions is that they are not nimble the way smaller ones are and so when we make those choices we make trade-offs and I think that those trade-offs are valuable but I think if we always equate the height of professional accomplishment with working at the big institution and that's not what suits you as a person then you're screwed and then we get that thing where we aren't courageous we don't have the willingness to say I can walk away from my job if it doesn't suit me like if I can't speak truth to power and feel like I'm doing something positive then what am I doing there I just feel like a lot of times we shoot ourselves in the foot by staying miserable and I think we owe ourselves to not stay miserable as Liz says, like where's your joy if you don't have joy in your work get out find something else to do and I think that thing about scarcity and the profession is really really rough right now with the economy who wants to walk out of a job especially if that's where you get benefits if you have childcare that you have to pay for like there's lots of reasons not to leave a job with benefits but on the other hand I think we have to be more conscious of those trade-offs as we make them I don't think we can sort of blame the field or blame the institution and for sure blame lies all over the place but I think it's up to us you got something concrete to do so what are the concrete things if I hear at the center a lot of stuff that we need time to build legitimate relationships that means from everything I've heard that we have to stop doing some stuff so what do we stop doing what do we do instead you know I'm you know I cannot go really hope Martha's watching right now hi Martha I cannot go to Martha and say I need to be happier right that's not good that's not good that's not going to get any traction but if I have some concrete proposals about how how my job duty should be different that maybe maybe I'll get some so what of those things in your list are you going to give up um well I think I'm going to stop reading plays I'm taking that because you want to talk back I'm serious you know like I think I'm going to you know and when you say that I want to protect you a little bit Aaron because it wasn't pleasant because there's no there's no reality to that statement nor is that what's in your heart but you what you're saying is the open submission the 10 page thing all the time that goes into all of that yeah well let me figure out something that you were going to try a sure yeah I've been talking about I couldn't get it together before I left but um like having um on the website a sign up that's completely open um and like one Friday a month I block out half hour anyone who can get to several and sign up and uh and you know come in and that's how I spend a the least one Friday a month or something instead of uh reading yeah I mean it's been talked about I don't know yeah it's some version of you know we did we tried to do a little thing like that so we have a thing that we're doing with the with how around we call it knowledge sharing sessions and the one that I tried which you know because the conversation that I've had 72,000 times or more is the playwright uh the conversation with the playwright about how to make it how to have a career you know that conversation and um and you know it's legitimate it's real and you know you have to have it all the time and but I thought God you know what if I did it one night and invited everyone in DC who just wanted to have that conversation and then we also live streamed it and we had a fair amount of participation and it was a way for me to actually meet all these DC playwrights I could never meet and all these people online and they were able to ask questions online we you know we live streamed it so just from our end concretely we would love to work with you to have some knowledge sharing sessions that might that could be a you that could be you know like so what you're saying we could do that we could support something like that or you know just throw it out there I listen it's only connected to the idea of sharing you know something that came out in another breakout session that yes whatever you're in was the idea of of examining the resources that we have in our institutions that we don't necessarily think of as available to playwrights you can come up with better whoever's in that group would do better with the examples we came up with but the idea of doing a field-wide assessment or inventory of kind of the the extra capacity we don't even think about we have and then sharing that Madeline can I ask you you had a really great way of talking about that this morning about staying in the reading process at Berkeley because you're not sure what else you have really to offer and so making the effort to continue reading but make it as authentic as possible is it is there are there other resources that you considered in that that you could offer and reject it is there anything to learn about your process of going through a thinking process and coming back to reading thinking about what it would look like if that went away and the thinking behind it was that we as a big regional institution have a reputation for not serving our local community so it was largely about local playwrights and we felt we didn't know how else we couldn't think of other alternatives so no I don't think anything came up that we rejected we just really honestly couldn't figure out what else to do and this is actually helpful like this idea of office hours I love and another idea that came up was starting a writer's group and would that be enough, would that feel like enough access and we just ended up feeling like anything that was specific to a day or a month or a selection process or something felt like it wasn't in the right spirit of what we wanted to be so it's something that I think we will continue to re-examine and think about because we do agree with the sentiment that it's not ideal and it's not it's fraught, the process is fraught with many things and yeah I was just wondering if there was value in there, yeah I was talking to Alana earlier actually about this a strange story of a baby that we surprisingly lived and Alana started this program, The Huntington Player and a fellow as well, she was at the Huntington and then there was complete artistic turnover in a one fell swoop when she left and Nicky left and the producing side of the organization stayed somewhat the same but there was, and then Lisa Timmel came on board who's the director of new work and there was real ambivalence about whether we were going to continue this writer's group they had a lot of success of producing these people but we were positive going in that we could ever get Peter to pull the trigger on one of them and what would be the point of it and I think now this year we produced two of them two local playwright world premieres by women of color and I think, I was thinking yesterday when Patch was talking about what that ultimately really gave us was a space where voice was all that mattered, the strength of the voice and these are plays that if we were just reading for producing we may not have pulled out of the stack but when we were reading just for voice we fell in love with and I think that was a in some ways a real gift we gave ourselves of having that space that we couldn't say immediately how it was ever going to tie to our producing but I think we're really glad to continue what's the sense of the room or people who are willing to jump in about it about some effort toward centralizing the knowledge around the plays that are in the pile, the database the whatever, yeah I think in that I've talked to some people about that that we first need to prove that there is a whole lot of overlap and if we're ever to consider that we're going to go and be so generous with our time as to work in this kind of collaborative way the first step would be for us to share what lists we have and prove that we do have an overlap and that we have a significant overlap and I wonder if there's also something of you know how many readers do we actually identify not only amongst these institutions and all the readers that they have for them but the readers beyond these institutions and out there and could we actually get a view of the field very practically of the number of playwrights that were existent in a selection process over 11, 12 and the number of readers that were involved in that process as well to even begin that journey of a centralizing. It's a great research project, we should look at that. Because if we can come up with those numbers how many plays were actually submitted total and how many readers were involved in that process that would be that's information we don't currently have so nobody here has a solid sense of what that would be. And I think there's an anonymity problem there as far as we don't necessarily I know that my artistic directors want to make sure that some sense our lists are private but I do think there are solutions as far as I think this is not this is not like the selected list this is not things we're watching this is just the general pool this is the first round in pool but there are ways that we can very quickly and easily allow for everyone to have some anonymity because it doesn't really matter which institution is getting what name and to build it online I've got the tools now and what we have to do. I mean I think a lot about that question of why why I do what I do and I think I'm really animated by the potential that I think theater has to transform community and that's how I judge my work I mean it's by the impact of the work in the world so I'm a little leery of the idea like when I have I take notes as I read plays and I do a little summation in my head I'm not going to write a beautiful publishable report on a play that is just going to go and like a fester in a database you know but I would be happy I do and would be happy to write a beautiful publishable recommendation of a play that I believe in well in my heart you know and it goes again to that question of who are the best people to like kind of articulate the spirit of a play and so I I don't know I would be a little leery about having a database of every every play that comes through and having a bunch of reports out there for people who don't necessarily connect to the play and attend to their mission but I would love to have a database out there of plays that get us fired up so the heartbreak yeah I'm thinking of the same thing a list of just favorites yeah that's one of the things that I've been kind of trying to work on as I try to figure out what I want to be when I grow up and one of the things is this idea of when Polly read those first things that you read was mine I've been really trying to figure out how we market plays to each other not to the public not to our subscriber bases but to each other and you know is there a way to do it better if I were to say to each of you tell me about one play that you love one heartbreak play one play you believe in art that would be a resource that would be of interest to other people Columbia has historically done that offered its members an opportunity to sort of like give us a here's a form fill it out for every play that you love and we'll put it on our website Jeanine and I have been in the process of talking about how to revive that on our current website so I mean that's something that we definitely want to do I think it's you know LMDA as an organization can't do the database we don't have the technical capacity we don't have the computer skills can't do that but as far as like hosting recommendations of plays that people love yes we can and want to and have done the actual index yep working on be it in development in a reading in a production and then I worry that nothing happens after that with them because we're not talking to each other in a and I don't know maybe we I know we do it casually all the time but does there need to be some sort of format for sharing that information there's one little scary I mean Eric and I were talking about this earlier there's just like one little scary thing to me about that even the even the aggregate of all the like of the hardware right and and that is does it magnify the shadow that large institutions already would be a question I have right so Frankie my friend Frankie who's an unknown playwright we did not go to the MFA program Frankie can't get into doesn't have a door to get into my institution right now and so but Frankie maybe has a chance at the storefront theater that is run by alum of his school but if that storefront theater run by the alum of Frank's school starts looking to our database of heartbreak lists does that actually make it harder you know what because the idea of well because what I mean what what are the mechanisms that flow back you know I mean because if it's if it's a database consisting of I really wish we could produce a Madeline and Tanya here wish we could produce like that just like as a potential echo chamber but what if we if we're soliciting from theaters of all sizes well then how do you search it how do you you know how I don't know this is the thing I was on line with somebody last week I I'm old I'm tired I'm just to the point where I want to stop talking about it and just try it so if you all get an email from me and you're into it I just because I have found myself where I found myself in my world I'm needing to launch and I just something I feel really passionate about something I've been working on for 25 years and I look back at what happened with Florida stage and those you know three to five to eight world premieres the five to eight readings all of those plays that we worked on over the years some of which were magnificent and never got to make another have another production or maybe had one other I want to find a way to share those the 50 plays that I'm jotting down for people I want you guys to know about it you can produce them or not doesn't matter I just want to make sure that the playwrights work is getting spread out there to people who might and I want to take it a little bit beyond just people on the circle because I think one of the things that we hear over and over again especially the smaller organizations that don't have literary offices they don't have access to that list of plays is a very there's a very small universe of the I used to have in the Z space days I used to have plays in progress that was like really the only thing I knew to go to and what was that a dozen publications a year maybe less and and those were the that was the universe of things I knew to pick from because it was well publicized that it was available and and then we started going to the local making relations with local writers but so I just wonder if is there a way that all of the energy of this room aggregates for the field rather than being done as you know at the O'Neill energy is an enormous amount of energy that's done for that one organization is there some benefit to that organization aggregating for the infrastructure Heather how do I get on that list it's like it's just changed the submission you're still I don't know what the other playwrights think it just to me it's like it's just shifting how yours then getting in because now you've got to get on that list and I don't know if it's going to be any different for Freikey but how you get on that list I think the world of communication is shifting how we you know I'm not saying that we need like a like button by each play but that's kind of how we think of things now is what's everyone talking about in our Facebook feeds and our whatever the hell is telling us everyone's talking about is more likely that I'll click on that New York Times article then another one so I wonder if there's some of that if it's not the idea doesn't appear to be another hole to throw things that we aren't going to play with right now in but if it's another source a way that if that plays on 50 people's heartbreak list somebody please produce that play please put it in a reading or something or at least get to know that writer or somebody commission that writer to write something specifically that that might be more likely to be produced so I would be super curious as to what those heartbreak lists are I'm going to go ahead and say let's two more comments and then move off the database but capture it as something to keep discussing that seems to have enough energy to kind of look at but again the why being time mainly aggregating all this energy so that everybody's not doing all of it yourselves yeah it also gives me a way to keep the work of artists at different levels you know so like one of the things that's been heartbreaking to me in my work I believe in producing organizations I believe that playwrights need money I believe that plays move in time and space and they are not on words on the page I believe in all of that and it's also heartbreaking that like if I read a script by a playwright with promise but that is not going to be ready I can tell it's not going to be ready for production you know with the time and space that we're able to give to it there's not at that phase in their career really what I have been able to do is write an encouraging rejection that are you know but if there is this resource where I can say this is what you need to say anything about this person's voice I'm really excited to see how it develops I would love that let me come same way from that so you talked about writing the letter we talked about the office of the future would have an authentic connection between the way in which plays were invited playwrights were invited and the way people communicated back an interest or lack thereof in the plays is that is that something we all can agree as something we want to institutionalize going forward that there's a relationship that is authentic and upheld between the mission and purpose of the organization and the relationship between the selection process and the the submission process the rejection letters that that goes all the way through that seem to be something people were nobody objected to that earlier so one of the things that came up in was with you guys that breakout session was the idea of like listing the things that are actually possible to happen at your institution on your submission policy yeah and because I know my doesn't I accept queries and you know I have this other relationship and I accept stuff from people we have artistic relationships with but it might be interesting to say and here are all the things that might happen and if I was really brave and very persuasive with my bosses I might say and here's the percentage of time that that is actually hmm I would just quickly say that New Jersey has a really great narrative on their submission page which talks about what they do and don't get from their submission and how they use their pile it was really when I was when I was at actress theater we were re-investigating how they were using doing our submission policy it's very it's narrative, it's chatty, it makes you like love them and you're to work with them but understand that they're a very busy passionate group of people and I interrupted I just wanted to build on what Erin talked about in our breakout session that it came out of after the circle table circle where people have been talking about giving writers access so we started talking about at the different theaters represented in the group what does that actually mean like what would a playwright actually get access to and the answers were so divergent from at the O'Neill there's some professional development and networking that they can get out of that experience as well as the experience to work towards a play and that when Erin was talking about office hours Joy was talking about she described it as giving a writer the imaginative space of the people who work at that theater and that was this extraordinary gift and I just thought it was really beautiful to have all of those different ways in which people can see of what they offer to playwrights articulated and that it's such a wide variety and to be really exciting to be that transparent about what it is you think you're offering the playwrights who do get access to your institution I think that would help playwrights seek the kinds of relationships they want about giving access and seeking relationships and getting through the gate but then it's like well then what's there for you when you get there and I think there's really wildly divergent perceptions of what it is we're trying to get through the door for and I think we all want different things and we're so rarely on either side of that asked to articulate what that is what it is that you actually can offer and what it is that we actually want and I've just found that really inspiring to hear these concrete examples that were so different and that helped me think about oh I might want to pursue that opportunity and not that opportunity and that that would help I think also will down the size of the pile mentioned and I wonder too along the lines of transparency I wonder if it can be a part of the submission language about how it happens because I do think there's there isn't knowledge about how many different readers there might be what is that process because then it's also like oh okay do I want to go through that process because I do think that there's some misunderstanding about how that happens which is just part of that discussion so transparency as a value of the literary opposite to push that as far as we can in our own office this gets me to something else that I talk about all the time but to think more broadly about what resources you actually have to offer what are the assets that are of value to playwrights we are in the kind of crazy place of having a playwright house that we have for the residency program and there is from time to time room there and someone could we could actually make a grant not a reading process or a production or a workshop but of a retreat and what would that cost us you know it's there you could have a week in the house and you could come see the shows here and you could run around the institution but so to think more more broadly about what an asset actually is and get out of this it only is you and me rehearsing my play I think beyond just the play we're going to pick and I think Madeline is talking about a little bit with okay we are part of our community involvement is going to be to replay so that's something we can do so thinking bigger than play selection to production and you know the reason the reason I started HowlRound was because I was at an institution where I was saying no all the time and I found that so weird I had never done that because it was freaky and so the idea was really just so that I could say yes because I could just say yes to anybody who wanted to publish something and which is what you know has been happening and on that space and what it makes me it feels like there's so many ways now to engage people and to make them feel heard and part of a community that doesn't any longer just have to be I like your play so much and we're going to produce it you know there's a way and the conversations that I've had with artists writing that journal have been some of the most fulfilling that I've had in my career just the back and forth about the things that artists care about and want to write about so I feel like you know there's a lot of that kind of opportunity that and the obsession and the thing that we're kind of training people around it's like the room the production the production but it's really about what I feel like it's really about a life it's about making a life in this work you know and to make a life it's like a much bigger story and so I feel like I feel like because this group in particular what inspires me about this group is they're already tapped into that idea of the bigger story right there they are this kind of liaison between the audience sometimes and they're doing the talk back they're contextualizing and it's sort of what so many parts of the job do include and so I just feel like there's I'd love to think about you know three or four concrete things that would fit that like you know you just offered one up the player house but other ways we can create a community so that people feel like they're a part of something you know years ago in terms of because all devising artists I think need is a room to be together like that's that core thing that came out which many places have in abundance but this thing also of how many different platforms are there besides the slot and just continuing to expand that notion I mean right now where I feel like I work in environments I work in trying to set up environments where things can happen where creativity can happen where inspiration can happen where conversation can happen where exchange can happen and so how can we look at the spaces that we have that and look at what is the environment we want them to feel like inside once like you said Deborah look when you get in there then what like you got through the gate you're sitting like so what is it inside and that kind of exchange between when a playwright is inside of the institution we gain so much by having them in an artistic conversation talking to the marketing department bringing in other colleagues that we might not have known about like we're getting so much as much as hopefully a playwright is feeling like they're getting something from being there so looking at the exchange within the environment that we're creating that is both give and take that are beyond the usual array of services that we like to think that we give writers when I was at a car this is actually while this was there you know we talked a lot to writers that we were beginning to develop relationships with already have relationships with wanted relationships with to find out what their ideas were about what kinds of things would be useful to them and one of the things that we heard a lot was writers wanted to be able to talk shop with other writers outside of the pressures when they're actually in personal production at our theater or at other theaters when typically beyond meet and greet or overlap when two productions we're both they actually didn't even have time with other writers in this community we were trying to build anyway out of those conversations MacArthur decided to try a writer's retreat on the campus of the university at Princeton and this was actually after the session was over with so you know there happened to be a lovely sort of nine bedroom bed and breakfast on the campus that was available at a cut rate because it wasn't during the academic year and we were able after the first year I think to cultivate a local family foundation to take over the support of that initiative and they were thrilled to do it because it was a designated and necessary function to these kinds of goals they were very happy to be able to underwrite and as far as I know that annual retreat is still happening and it was just a great sort of confluence of those kinds of ideas and the fact that it had nine bedrooms meant just nine writers it was very manageable and it was also a way to extend relationships with writers that were not about necessarily writers who were commissioned or maybe were going to be produced at MacArthur but became part of the larger community of writers who you know MacArthur was in conversation so anyway that was a it was just an example of a need we tried to isolate from the resources to support that and it's had really terrific longevity I mean just hearing that Aaron hearing what you were saying in terms of the face to face knowing that this place will be called theater on the commons the center for theater commons center for theater commons I recognize I'm in an awkward position saying this as a devising artist but coming back to this thing of naming all the word literary and because it seems like yes it's language driven and we publish so I think we're a more text driven company the team is than most devising artists but just how much how the office can be shaped towards life and culture that then is centered around the actions that what these words will become and that that sort of face to face and whole conversation versus the pile which is which does feel like literature the center for a job is which it is already you know I'm not suggesting anything radical but the center for a job is building artistic relationships not only between the institution and artists but between artists as well I mean hearing your story about MacArthur I think wait a minute in my stack I have four Chicago writers who may or may not know each other who could really get something out of wait a minute I'm going to call them all we're going to have coffee together and then leave each other that's cool that's why not you know Amy Fried has also said several times and Amy I'm going to ask you to see if I get this right that Derek for you the idea we've been reading plays before the theater would be you would find that a way to relate to the theater I mean it's your resident here so it's I think I could speak for a number of other playwrights who've had the good fortune in their lives to have been produced in the American theater I consider it a privilege to be tapped to read you know one of my concerns has always been reading at theaters especially as you know people's budgets get cut and people's counts and students are reading things you know those of us who you know continue to read some of us that teach especially are kind of tuned in to that issue of writer's voice and maybe are disposed to see things through the warts and all that sometimes come with a new play I think it would be a very good resource what would you say what would you say what kind of parameters would be useful for you around that clearly we're not going to well as a playwright you're teaching you have productions that you're you know thanks flex given a season or a year but I mean certainly while I am partaking of a residency program like this I would consider it a kind of a welcome responsibility that we've scripted a month you know so it's not like it's the answer to the slush pile oh yeah but make the make the playwright read them all but a curated conversation between you and the work that we're interested in is also a way for you to relate to the theater it seems like a very logical thing to ask of any writer that's doing a long term residency and where their gift or language and for the language of a raw script you know could be well employed at least to speak of your name I wonder if that might be part of the liaison liaison name that could happen is to have somebody a younger writer an emerging writer part of this however you find the slush pile or writer's rooms or whatever might someone might coordinate coffee between say Amy and a writer whose work you read and you're like actually I would kind of like this conversation that seems to actually grow and connect and fuel the form and the art more than just connecting playwrights with playwrights yeah I think some of that I also think we've got to be careful to not be you know dragging a piece baloney in front of a starving person all about it a writer just wants to cut through pages in the contract to see where it says they're going to be on stage you know they want the production so I'm thinking you know you want to be careful that we would not replace that vital hunger you know which is to make the connection but I think that like for me at arena where you know the terms of my residency where I was given a production so that part of my the raging furnace within me was fed you know so I'm in a position to be generous and clear headed and looking for employment to keep me out of trouble while I'm here worrying yes it would have been a perfect thing will be a perfect thing if anybody wanted to put me to work that way as someone who's come to play writing late I guess barely late in life I just wanted to say that I'd like to enlarge the thinking about the term emerging artists because inside that phrase is emerging young artists and I just wanted to point out that not everybody has the luxury of writing when they're young some of us need to be journalists who actually need to make a living from a very young age so I just like you ought to consider that emerging artists and emerging young artists are not necessarily the same what's an interesting point because we've talked in many books about how do we get outside the the credentialing Frankie is the guy who doesn't have an MFA Frankie is also 55 I just decided there, done seeking any universality of systems maybe a slight red herring because the example of jazz seemed to me to be a good example of nimbleness of an institution that is a large institution and yet sought the input from the artists that wanted to work with already on what their needs were and then found a way to accommodate that it's been interesting to look even within my look at the Atlantic occasion we've had a situation where we've been trying to raise money for example from traditional foundation funding sources for art play development activities whatever those are and because we have stayed on some territory where we try to only pursue play development on a case by case basis and we don't actually have a system in place where we do X number of readings and we do X number of workshops and that's budgeted in our X number and because we don't do that we don't get the grants a lot of the time because we are actually unable to describe systems which is what often granting organizations want to give us a lot in order to shine their light on us is that a New York thing? I mean I'm talking about foundations that are not New York based so grants are terrible for nimbleness and for thinking short in advance like you can't write you can't have the TBA slot if you have to raise money for it two years in advance they ended up with a private foundation that supported that where we've had to seek other sources of income from slightly less traditional funding sources to support nimbleness and I'm not saying you get it all right all the time but I have found it pretty satisfying to be able to say to a player what do you want? what do you want us to do? do you want to get into room with actors for two days? do you want us to do a reading? and to be able to to do that you have to have money to be able to do that and you have to have me to complete the foot but there's a larger conversation about whether there's a whole conversation about whether systems are the answer we've thrown out some systems that I think in a way that has been beneficial to us but the flip side of that is having a conversation about this whole piece I'd love to get a list of funders that are not responsive to nimbleness just because I think that that set of funders is way behind the curve and it would be great to just sort of say that some of the leading funders you need to talk to your colleagues here because those are all going away and the leading funders have really made a point of it like they've been beating people up about those sort of template based programs are less and less vulnerable in the leading part of the world so it would be great to know who they need to talk to finding language to describe why nimbleness is a virtue for an institution is something that we can all do actually and how we need to be able to have conversations with the artists that we are working with or seek to work with and to be able to have a back and forth about what might be the best thing for the play that we're just supporting so that we can turn around and say that to somebody who might pay for it it's a concrete thing that I think we can work on within the context of our own missions What other things might comprise the literary office, the future that we haven't yet talked about we're not going to draw it today but at work playwrights and housing being a really useful one but I also want to mention that it's a wonderful success by also bringing scenic designers, sound designers, directors all the other artists in touch with the playwrights not around a specific play but just simply how are the scenic designers reading these scripts what are their lines and so there's great capacity for diversity and experience for playwrights that aren't necessarily getting worked on Thank you from Maryam and John's organization, Holy Mammoth I think there's a lot of power in conversation I totally believe in the power of a well-moderated conversation to affect the entire trajectory of a community institution that they start out like their processes with these plays I'm just going to repeat back what you told me yesterday but they have a small staff meeting where the playwright is there to talk about the play staff members who have read it and then the entire organization everybody's invited to talk about the play about the conversations within the play what's exciting about the play what makes the play feel alive what their audience members will talk about and take away anyway I can let you describe it and I actually think that's a way that I understand the idea of the connectivity work is a lot to take on but I actually think that having that conversation early enough that it influences the work that everybody else is doing is a way that you can live connectivity through just that one conversation early on a really great result of that I will say is the unity of sense of purpose so that each show can have I mean you have your mission as a theater all the mentoring points but their own little mission statements what are we all rallying around beyond just the play on the page what the artists have said about the play what they think the play is about what we as an institution are excited about we all just air it and that's really important and it's important for us that that happen as early as possible this is something that came up in one of the breakups that I was listening in on is the timeline or what's the time that you were talking about at the table there Jared what's the time when you have to come into the process in order to have done your homework and it gets really early it's a lot earlier than most of us think it is when I can't remember I'm going to lose the example right now but we had one where the season brochure had exactly the wrong information not just having the right information but exactly the wrong information which we never got that word until we sat down well later in the process after all the copy oh actually never mind but the process we tend to think of it some places think of it from first rehearsal some think of it from the beginning of design conversations but it really goes back even before season planning because season planning for a lot of us I would imagine by the time you get ready to announce the season plan there are already at least commissioned if not executed graphics that are associated with this season that are going out into the brochure that are then you're going to live with for 18 months and so that process of the group speaking about the art and being ready to talk with one voice starts from you know a year and a half before opening night and we aren't yet prioritizing that time for the artists or for our communities or our institutions as a field I don't think would you say that's true at the table earlier there's a question of whether or not art is really at the center of a lot of American theater institutions and so I connect that thought to what you're saying because the implication is well the marketing timeline is the marketing timeline so we have to start earlier and align ourselves with that like part of me wants to say well maybe for a job is to figure out how to make the marketing timeline different because the realest discoveries of the work don't happen until you really start working on it in the big regional videos not even marketing into the Tessitura timeline well that's it actually Tessitura is driving how our relationship to the art I just find that sort of fascinating Tessitura is a ticketing system and so whenever you create a season the box office needs so much time now so it's not well if the issue was not even so much marketing was driving it was marketing because marketing supervises the box office but it wasn't marketing in the way you're articulating it it was marketing in terms of the box office needed so much time to build out the Tessitura structure for the subscribers so that kept pushing back season planning, pushing back season planning so you know now it's so far out there you know so anyway but just interesting to notice alright well let's create a team of ex-programmers there is also the in addition to the Tessitura oh how we missed artsoft but just that there is also the newsletter issue there is also the magazine issue there is all of that too and the graphic designers and things that do take time and there isn't a space built in I understand why all of that has to happen to a certain extent as much as I wish I could shred with it down but there is not a second space for a lot of us to then continue the conversation I mean you guys at Steppenwolf do a great blog but I know a lot of your audience follows but of what actually is changing or to actually shift anything once it has actually happened I mean I think even for OSF I love the way we do season planning because everybody from the organization involved it's magic but it also means that I have known what the 2013 season is for the last three months and that's really weird to me that I have nothing to do until then but it's also out there already how much needs to get decided in advance in addition to marketing it's production staffing it's the contracts that designers need to have in place there's a lot that I wish we could we keep talking about doing things earlier and I want to find better ways to do things later but is it actually a question of doing them at the right so you would like to be able to be more nimble in your responses to opportunity programming in a way to be able to be on something to do it quickly but also once that decision is made even if it's a year and a half in advance it seems like that's the point where these conversations are already being like each homework has to have been done by then yeah I mean you've got this very second commission project a draft comes in there's got to be some kind of response to the draft even if it's just the dramaturg and the playwright exchanging views and maybe some notes out of that I mean ideally the process would take at least most of a year particularly for an organization like OSF where you'd be encouraged to write for a large cast the productions are bound to be more complicated given the historical aspect given the resources of the theater you know the more planning you have I think the better it is because those things are big somebody used the battleship model here it's like this thing that how hard it is to turn around and it really is if you look like at the national theater in England and how far out their programming it's two to three years and yet they still have the capacity to your point Julie to do something in three or four months it's just going to be in the paint shop where it's going to replace a show in the Olivier or something like that but there's a plan B that goes along with it I think part of also what I'm suggesting is that no matter how well you plan those conversations we all discover new things that happen once the first rehearsal starts and followed it so what we're missing and what we try to do I think partially through audience connectivity but what we're missing is a good mechanism to communicate the new things that we discover to potential audiences we just logged into the marketing the magazine we made three months ago we don't have a really good way to communicate what's going down now you know you can do reads in those plays you can do other things at the globe when I was there we did a Howard quarter play and the marketing department came up with this graphic with a saguro cactus in it because they thought they grew in New Mexico well they don't they thought it's ready to go out and it's like hold it you know we're going to be a laughing stock with these kind of things so that should have been surveyed much earlier than it was particularly by the writer you know had the writer been a part of that marketing session and that would have never happened so I mean your point is absolutely right you're going to discover more things in rehearsal the more interviews you do the more workshops you do the more time you spend with the play ahead of time the fewer things are going to surprise you once you get to them and those discoveries don't have to be part of the overall gigantic marketing picture they can be enhancements along the way I'm sure we all do that with our first book about the shows that are going on and the dramaturgy that happens in the rehearsal room and the little videos that our marketing department puts out about I just think big picture is one thing these little pieces that we learn along the way that's great, that's spice I'm going to start doing this where I raise your hand, wave at me and I'll write your names down and go in order I saw Madeleine earlier it's kind of rolled like that Madeleine then to Liz and then to Ilana and then I'll look up again, go ahead Erin that we actually stole from Louis at OSF I write a letter to every person that holds a ticket and it goes out to every person that holds a ticket subscribers, single ticket people about the show and I write it after first preview so it sort of sucks that people in previews don't get to read it but I have to see the show with an audience to actually know what the show is so I write a letter just about whatever is on my mind about what I think people would be interested in knowing either something that happened in rehearsal or something that contextualizes the show in a way that we didn't get to do with the program in normal before we started rehearsal and we didn't know and I call the minor notes to the direction so that's something that we found to be really helpful I'm off the topic so I'm going to wait again Ilana I just want to say that I think I've heard peers of mine sort of express nervousness about inviting playwrights into talk with marketing as if somehow I've heard playwrights say well I'm not the marketer why is it on my shoulders but I think that there's a sweet spot that we can hit Chris Diaz speaks really passionately about this as a playwright who talks about use me let me share my knowledge with you as early as humanly possible and let me tell you how available I can be so that you can work with me to figure out not just the marketing stuff but if he can be there how to use him in the community how to go beyond the walls of the theater how to be part of conversations with the community and potential audiences and to me I think that's really phenomenal and I don't want to say that Chris Diaz's instincts are every playwright's instincts but I think also sometimes we get afraid maybe of asking too much of the playwrights and I think that maybe there's a way to find that sweet spot where we can ask for things while saying of course if you don't want to do this or can't do it, no problem but would you like to be involved in this part of our work? Karen, can you talk a little bit about the theater 101 around book club play and how much we pulled you in on that and how that felt? That's part of what I meant when we were talking in the little circle is pulling us in to talk to marketing and talk to different people because we know, these are our children we know these plays well and we can talk with an authority to know why we wrote these plays and when we were doing the book club play one of the big reasons why I wrote this play was because I was interested in the community that's built that people are not connected that people go to book clubs in order to just connect with other people and talk about things and so something we talked about with Art Dev was how do we get people in the audience connected even before they get into the play so one of the things was people writing their favorite books and so already people started talking to name tag and the other thing was that I thought we should we had a theater 101 was an idea of if they've never been part of a book club how does it feel to be part of a book club and so we sat down and talked about how to conduct a book club and we picked two books that my book club had read and one was high brow and one was low brow that were not inside the play so it was an outside experience and we made these 50 people in the community read Lolita and Hunger Games which one was high brow I would let you stay there but the passion that aroused and we weren't even talking about the theater we just talked about the books that informed and contextualized the performance in so many different ways I thought it was a really successful and exciting way to use what I knew about why book clubs were interesting it wasn't a drag it was extra work but it was so fulfilling and exciting and I remember this little lady came by she was like oh tonight wasn't about I felt like I was part of a family and I haven't felt that in a long time and that's why I do theater because I want to feel part of a family and I was like that is the best for you we are on the connectivity so let me ask you a question I'm about to switch topics you want to come in so here we are is this appropriately part of the literary office at this point it's grown up that way we've got an institution that's moved it into its own department it's as you say the shavings it's attached itself to the work of the literary office it's so much of your life and is it part of the literary life of the organization part of the literary offices or is that a place that we can say move that somewhere else marketing connectivity development and we'll focus on the production process that it's actually distraction what's the sense of this we're talking about the displays I hope show discussions what's the range of stuff that you're there's a range of things absolutely it's definitely lobby displays, post-show discussions other types of engagement or enrichment events per show for a music band that's coming up one of the big ideas that Molly has for it is making sure that we engage the local marching bands community for it and so much about the show is the power of marching bands and arts education at the end we have a different marching band every night to perform 76 trombones that we totally stole from Trinity Rep so thank you Trinity Rep out there and so that's part of the coordination that we're now doing for that program notes theater 101 that Karen talked about that's work through literary office subtext which is our kind of dramaturgical guide that Janine and David actually started that we essentially have a group of writers write different articles about the history, the themes, the content the behind the scenes for each show and then post that on the web and it's usually up for about two years after the show has been produced so that other you know theaters, students audience members from anywhere can access those gosh there's probably so much more like those are the kind of the the hot ones there but it's that range that range of things I think that stuff is the work of the literary office but it's definitely the dramaturgical work of the theater so I mean I guess it depends on how many people you have in your literary office ah I mean it depends on how many people you have in your literary office and in a big organization in a theater club it's all done by the education office we have a guy who's a major figure in education that stayed in New York David Shukov he runs discussions he does all the promotion of that he writes the letter that you write Madeline and it's approved by Lin Meadow and Maddie Greenfield but I mean so there are different ways to skin that cat depending on the size of your organization and the more people you have to address it the better you'll probably do it or you ought to but the people who are doing it should have the kaleidoscopic view of the production and the institution and its identity that often is located in the artistic stuff I think and going back to the early start if you do a reading get the marketing director in there get the education director in there get everybody in to see it and now they're invested it's part of theirs too just for that reason alone but then they also bring an informed perspective to their jobs so when we started in subtext because I was in the rehearsal room I was in those conversations with the playwright you know I had those conversations to know what it is that they wanted people to know and what it is that they were hoping people which completely forms the outreach that then happens it informs what content goes on the website or in the program now or forms the discussion that I have with the audience so maybe it doesn't whether it lives completely in the literary drama trilogy office I don't know I mean the idea that you haven't drawn from boundaries like that's fascinating but there should at least someone who has that bridge between the actual being in with the art and the institution should at least have a voice in that conversation maybe they don't do everything but I believe that there should at least be a voice I think we've talked a lot in the last couple days about the idea of getting plays or playwrights to the artistic director or being at the gate or keeping artistic directors from playwrights or what's that pathway but I'd also like to talk about what is the relationship and what is the conversation we are having with our artistic directors we haven't really talked about that very much and I think that's a whole other side of the coin and I think about some of the most exciting season programming I see are because there's some really engaged curious artistic directors who are having conversations with their artistic staff saying what kind of conversations do we have in our community, who are the writers to have that conversation, what kind of event can we create to have that conversation an event I don't mean just party, I mean what does that play look like, what does that piece look like, what does that project and so how often are we getting those quality times with the artistic directors to say what's on your mind, what are you curious about, what are you passionate about what should we be looking for thinking about mixed blood theater has created a fourth space in their theater out of a rehearsal room because there's so many ideas that Kurt was curious about and wanted to play with, three theaters weren't enough so a rehearsal room has become a black box and that is coming from I think conversations with staff to kind of unpack those interests and those passions and then program out of that and so I'm just wondering about the health and functionality of the conversations that we are not having with the artistic directors in the first place Tony This is what happened I won't be responding to what Liz was saying although it's a different conversation I was just giving back to this notion of where the idea of all of these activities, these external connectivity activities take place and I was just going to say one of the things that I appreciate that the Goodman is I'm part of the artistic staff so when we meet as a staff literary but then it's also like casting and education and community engagement and the producer so it's the whole staff and we we do some of those kinds of things and then education but the thing I like about education being some of them, yes there's a lot of knowledge that the artistic department me is the if I'm a dramaturg or my associate dramaturg or the casting director has knowledge about some of the things about the play that I might not have knowledge about but the thing I like about our education department is they often look at it from a social justice angle, from an angle that doesn't have necessarily to do with how the play evolved or its literary genesis but it has to do with what are issues in the community that this could speak to what are issues that this could speak to that are coming out of public school what's the conversation going on in our community that this could speak to that I don't think I am an expert in the sense that I live in the world and I'm a person and I live in that town that's not what I'm spending all of my time and I think that's actually really valuable I think that there's definitely events that my sensibility and our sensibility can help curate and create but there's also other voices that are not my mindset that I think are really valuable to that connectivity element that I think are good to welcome into that those tasks can I sorry I agree we worked a lot with the education department here in that kind of relationship and conversation I think is absolutely vital I think a lot of my point as far as making sure someone is in that bridge the outreach or connectivity or whatever that type of information is doesn't become that poster that had nothing to do with the show that I live with but you're just confusing your audience more because now they have all of this information but then they go to the show and they're like how does that connect because I'm not really sure so that there is a way of so you are actually working in a way that's enriching the audience this experience with the show instead of just giving information so that you have information available yeah I think I think players make meaning in different ways and I think that the story that we're telling to people about the play and the way that preparing them to experience it what they feel when they're there and afterwards should be organic and deeply enmeshed with the way that the play itself makes meaning you know and I don't know where that means that it lives you know I think that that but I you know I think there are a lot of people who have different skills to bring but but I think that sense that deep kind of already sense that we were talking about earlier about attention to the player's vision for the play the way that the play makes meaning the way that it unfolds all of that is important to locate in a story that we tell about the play out in the world I don't want to we're going to be out of time in a moment I would like to get there and I have a paper for anybody who doesn't have their own I'd like people to write down three values that you think are increasing to the literary office that the three values that are being located three values to maintain and save our young people as we go forward and one thing to examine their change say the second last part one thing to examine to change of current practice right now anybody take her you can do it as well three values that are intrinsic to the health to maintain safe card going forward and one thing in current practice that you would think I would like to have examined to change or to just leave behind all together and actually while you're at it then one thing if you have anything actually as many things a little list for yourself if you don't have to review a lot of things you'd like to go back in whether they were just ideas that occurred to you or ideas that were discussed in your book what if anything you come out of this thinking why don't you want to go and try some a couple more minutes we're going to go to the interactive and for yourself things that you want to go home to try she cheated she copied my exam I want to write that too people are really writing something that yeah that's occurred to you that you want to make an experiment no no I'm not going to hand them in I was going to ask somebody who's done yet is brave enough to start could you just read out the three things that our values take forward somebody curiosity, relationships, and a sense of humor curiosity, relationships, and a sense of humor who else I have I mean this is what I maintained what we have playwright relations our mission driven submission process and the sharing of work because the conversation meaning making and contextualization of the work and the form through the work reading and thinking deeply about the work advocating for it within and without the organization and passion for the written word and its potential to change asking playwrights about how the submission and production processes actually work playwright involvement as early in the process as possible from the moment the play is chosen and a commitment to access that we not be a closed shop transparency and I mean that through an every direction assuming the role of stewardship of the organization integrity of the mission and personal risk the courage to be contrary hmm coming fierce commitment to mission, vision, and values of work and willingness to fight for that flexibility and nimbleness to keep pace or slightly ahead of changing forms the constantly evolving spirit of community and the sorry the processes needed to realize the above and fostering community of artists, staffers, and audience and I've had a conversation I think you said that because I think the same thing I wrote love of theater as a form commitment to advocating for playwrights and building a connection between the art and the community conversation curiosity, centrality to an alignment of process and play development that is committed and personalized who else yeah leading the conversation over a long-term period with playwrights at many different stages in their careers being an advocate for playwrights and plays throughout the life of a production including earliest marketing and design meetings helping artistic directors to make the best possible helping artistic directors to maintain a sense of intellectual and mission integrity, dramaturgy of the organization in season planning we have the University of Evansville has been listening a weekend and three values from there maintaining a stake in the mission connecting and remaining nimble and then Austin Brands Grove has also been listening a weekend and collaboration, devotion to honesty, discovery of new artists and new art and engagement okay there's one more from here this is from Tony Adams who says openness and generosity transparency, curiosity less polite to dishonesty who else does it identify slash seek out work that is necessary keep an eye on the component parts of the institution to help articulate shared goals which is what stewardship means and no one creative abrasion is better than consensus maintaining strengthening developing the cultural relationship between artistic director and literary office FaceTime with playwrights and those interpersonal relationships and then collaboration slash sharing of work expertise otherwise you're fine to owning some expertise I wrote dynamic and long term over time conversations with artists about ideas goals, practices flexibility in that development and production to be adaptable to the various projects you want to move forward and time to reflect and dream and valuing that time Heather, you ready? No I mean I don't have a literary office I mean my first thing was do we have to have a season or project oriented and projects forward in a variety of ways given what the project and the creator or creators need want and deserve and then for maybe the nation or story department that encompasses not only the literary text part of story but all the myriad ways in which you guys are moving story through an institution that's then thus expressed in the world That's another time I had hope the actual intelligence and openness Great I had commitment to maintaining the artistic health of a project or a company relationships and collaboration as the starting point or the page one of any artistic endeavor and synergy Anyone else want to throw one out before we move on? Yeah Okay so everybody who hasn't shared yet on the count of three I want you to say them out loud One, two, three I just wanted to add most of mine have been said many times one that I would add is I sort of think of myself as the person in the building who challenges we don't do that or we can't do that mentality that tends to accrue within an institution Is that part of the authenticity John? Yes So you're challenging based on what we say we do that or it is what we do you think we don't do it It's not contrarianist to be contrary it's actually within the mission Yes I think that's where we a lot of times we get our reputations but it's actually there's something we're standing on when we do that Anybody else want to share before the group shout? Can I throw one out from on loan? This is Mark Maxwell who says making playwrights feel unalone keeping a literary eye on production and giving an audience something to return to Good What happened to the thing about what you're guarding against? Okay well I'm going to do that next I want to get the values in the air So go ahead put your values in the air all together 1, 2, 3, go Say it Go ahead baby The rest of the light is bad furniture Your increased transparency is better? No I want I want to create more transparency Ah I see okay so change the lack of transparency How about the silent acceptance of soul suckery The silent acceptance of soul suckery slavery of the slush pile I would just say I want to be to allow the individual skills the people that I hire to dictate their contribution to the forward movement of the organization more than the role of the title so there's to be beautiful so that when you have somebody new it will change the paradigm Who has another one? All plays can be read rather than experienced and to stop prilaging language of words over always over other theatrical languages Words over at the framing Do what you can to counter a culture of narcissism and risk avoidance that starts with strollers that look like armored tanks plate dates and bike helmets Just getting rid of unexamined activity So examine everything all the activity or just get rid of it if you have Do you mean? The acceptance that what my literary priorities of my literary office have to be the same as the priorities of a different literary office So getting rid of the notion of sameness there Lauren To challenge the notion of speaking of training for these positions in an academic context and that once you have a position the training stops I think that institutions still have a responsibility to train their employees after they get the job Who else? Yes, Heather That it's a rule any theater has to do with play a year by a living right Do you want to challenge that assumption? I thought to change it that it has to be that way Okay, to change it to that Yes That all play development won't look the same for play and playwright to give the playwrights agency to ask for certain kinds of development Okay To think more broadly about the resources that we have on offer and particularly about that specializing development processes for play thinking about connecting playwrights and designers in the life of a play to think about the life of a play as being you know, moving their time and space and sound and image Heather, Jane I want to change my response time Anyone else, alright So I'm going to do 1, 2, 3 and we're going to say my line 1, 2, 3 Say it How do I want to do it? I'm going to be giddy in 2 more minutes I'm going to have him get this thing and then we're going to dinner I'm going to call on people bright spots in the area in this area right now in this area of the literary office the stuff we've been talking about today let's just name some of the the bright spots people, institutions, programs whatever jumps to mind about we should shout out these people in this context, who's got a shout out we already had MacArthur's retreat There are more opportunities for playwrights than at any time in the history of this country Yes, abundance, shout out I walked into a writer's group with an amazing tradition from Pircarlo to Lenti that the award for the year starts out with a salon where we get to playwrights and two experts and we just get all of these ideas on the table about the intellectual activity and imaginative excitement and I love that as a bright spot another really quick bright spot is I think that the world premiere is losing it's hegemony sorry, I couldn't think of the last time which would be way it's power, yes I like getting Laura talking about earlier about the committee center commissioning her with a small amount of money to give a big idea before committing to anything else I think it's a great time and to pay for that And as delegates who's not in the room who could have been in the room as someone to be shouted out to Kennedy Center is an appropriate example I think SCR's ability to commission a lot of playwrights at all different cases of their careers With Kansas City Rep we're going through a massive process of trying to educate their development department and marketing department about device theater and that process has begun super early actually before they've even committed to the commission about how to think about this work and how to talk about it with their audiences Anybody who's producing new career playwrights that aren't new and shiny Yeah, that's the arena residency program I love the idea not just from the National New Play Network of the 25 theaters doing sort of collaborative literary management Also Boston, the small theater alliance of Boston does this for the fringe scene and I think it's going very well Conditioning and fostering a plethora of Latino voices both in their season and in the new season Sean and Deborah at Intersection for the arts who for years have been creating an environment where the people walking up and down the street in front of their theater there's also the people who are filling their seats and they think about hybrid performance and different modes of theatricality who are fiends and they're brilliant I think people outside of the NNPN network they're still doing really premieres The Foundry Theater for taking really exciting artistic risks and finding fantastic out-of-the-box ways in which to engage their communities with the art The number of good playwrights and good works or they're preventing all of us center stage for giving Warbridge a home this year Southern Rep Theater and New Theater in Miami for persevering despite the loss of their homes this year Coming to the end no more bright spots? I like Aaron's idea of office hours I'm stealing it Aaron Carter's office hours I have people bright spots I have Ritha Arons who's here for certainly bright spots A bright spot is being paid to write for the residents I mean, that is in life changing Our play readers are good Also those folks who are daring to commission really really big plays are asking for that still to kind of battle what the recession has done to some of our aesthetic And that would say Denver Center and Ashland and ACT who have been collaborating with Hedgebrook to help fund our festival for women playwrights There's an engine online that says the O'Neill's engagement of designers and directors with playwrights and the literary department is a bright spot Thank you all for all of your energy in the last couple of days We're going to go ahead dinner now and then we'll be back for this to hear the work of a place that got stuck at the gate our heartbreak list for Alright, thanks a lot guys