 The cameras can come off the ground right now. Good boy. Good boy. This is it. Good girl. Good boy. Good boy. Good boy. Good boy. Good boy. Good boy. Good boy. Good boy. Good boy. Good boy. Good boy. I'm sorry. I assume this is over. Yes. Thank you. No. Okay We're just waiting for a few of our panelists to come in and we'll be starting shortly. It's really long to be here. I don't know. Is that wherever I want to go? Here now! Alright. Have a panel? I'm always... Come on. Thank you so much for being here. This has been a whirlwind of writing and learning about professional development. Crazy, exciting things happen and we are so excited that you are here with us. Since they have such an interesting and diverse and nice panel, I'm just going to have them introduce themselves and a little bit about their theater. Because I think people say what they really mean the best coming from themselves as opposed to me telling you how wonderful they are. You can get a sense of where their theater is as a playwright if it makes sense for you. So can you just go down the line? Okay. Start there. My name is David J. Lor. I'm the editor and artistic director of 2AMT, which is a website and community online that talks about different theater issues. It's something of a support group for writers. It's a marketing advice group. It's doing creative work. It's doing all kinds of things. I'm also in the artist and residence at River Run Theater in Madison, Indiana, which is right between Louis Vuitton and Snap. When I was younger, you said you were a man. You're really scary now. I'm Israel Horowitz and I founded the Gloucester Stage Company, Gloucester, Massachusetts, and was its artistic director for 28 years and three years ago. I retired, so to speak, and became the founding artistic director, which means I'm the old guy. I do play a line there every other year. I'm co-artistic director of the Horowitz-Paciodo Company, which is a theater company in Italy, based in Spoleto, Illinois. And I'm also artistic director of the New York Playwrights Lab, and that's a support group of fairly well-established playwrights in New York City. I think that's one of them. Sure. I'm Henry Conte. I'm the artistic producing director of the University of Miami-Strength Theater and chair of the theater department there. I'm Stephanie Norman. I am a co-founder with my co-art and crime, Susie Westfossil City Theater. We started the company 16 years ago. Susie's a wonderful, wonderful playwright and our literary director. And we hatched this idea to do new work. I was an actor. Susie's a playwright. A third compadre, Elena Wall, who was an actor and director and then subsequently Gail Garrison. And I've been with City Theater for 16 years. We've produced over 350 plays. I hope for those of you who haven't seen Summer Shorts, I hope you will join us this evening to see the festival. For all of you who are playwrights, I hope you brought us a short play or I'll stand along the doors and I'll catch you up. But we produced Summer Shorts and I'm very, very proud that we're launching the city rights program and really applaud Susie and Andy and Elizabeth for putting that together and we are delighted you're here. Hi, I'm Jeff Rebels. I'm the artistic director of Orlando Repertory Theater. Orlando Rep has been around since 2000, but really since 1926 we're just the seventh version of the same company. We are a professional theater for family and young audiences. So our green stage complex is completely for family audiences and we are in partnership with the University of Central Florida who has an MFA in theater for young audiences and those students are housed in our theater. I'm Ricky J. Martinez, I'm the director of the theater here in the four-vehicles landing floor and we have an intimate space of 100 seats and we pretty much balance the classics and the new works. I'm Deborah Sherman. I am the producing artist director and co-founder of the Comedian Theater. We are the professional theater residents at Nova Southeastern University in Rower which is the seventh largest private university in the United States. We have been around, like I said, for seven years and we have a playwright of residence in addition to developing new work that we do about every year and a half we do a world premiere of a new play over the last seven years. So we've got two plays that are currently in the works. One is finished and one is being finished and it's actually being taken to the actor studio in New York in October as part of the directors and playwrights initiative to do a workshop there before we do the world premiere of it in the following fall. So we're very, very committed to new work and to producing new work and to getting behind plays that have never been produced before in addition to doing musicals that involve dancing zombies and cannibalism and we just closed Richard Greenberg's Three Days of Brain so we very, very much what we do to keep it very diverse. I'm John Vanzelli. I'm a city theater artistic director. Before that, I was a founding member of the Naked Stage Company here in Miami as a small sort of edgy theater. Thank you, I'll be wearing this shirt. I appreciate it. I feel very friendly. Daniel has a connection to New York. That's one of the things that they produce. Well actually that is one of the things that they produce. That is their connection to it. What, if anyone has something to jump into if you really want to free throw a discussion is there anything that really like excites you about a play that makes what sort of brings something to your attention? How plays come to you? How do you choose your seasons, I suppose? Let's start with that broad question, which I realize how broad it is. I used to be a reader before I was a city theater producer in New York, Manny Asenberg, and we used to read a lot of plays and he would tear off the campaign to the plays and granted a lot of these plays were plays that he was subsequently going to produce. He chose out in Verona as an adjunct to Yale and I just remember the one thing he said when you read a play it's your media visceral response. And that always stuck with me. Your media visceral response is, do you like the play? Yes, no, why or why not? And that has probably been the thing that stuck with me and I'm sure Susie can speak to that far more than I can reading 1200 plays a year for city theater. But in our case it's our media visceral response. Do you like the play? Yes, no, why or why not? And then from there you move on to a whole myriad of we all have our own parameters of what defines our season for us we're looking for the short play format and then from there you move with a stack of plays I like to say the plays pick the actors, the actors pick the plays and it's a little bit like a rubik's cube. We try to have a wealth of material and diversity and then we really look for our actors we look to find plays that we maybe have not gone to before different thematic or stylistic plays in terms of putting up our festival. But I think at the end of the day you want to fall in love you want to laugh, you want to cry and you want to have a visceral, God I love this piece. Something that's right Susie. Stephanie is something that has been said in my presence and when I was running Loser Stage Company all those years I think my primary response to the play was I wish if it was a play I read and thought oh I wish I wrote that. That's a way of saying I had this role response to it so it's very personal when an artistic director likes or doesn't like it. So you can look at their childhoods and figure out whether you're having fun. But there's also, she mentioned every theater has their, in every regional theater has their stars, their local stars Louisville Actors, they're in Louisville they're definitely in years like Susan Keynes in the whole stable of local actors or the New York based actors that somehow had a connection to that theater. So you say you get down to in Gloucester Stage we've not had broken who took over as artistic or even very definitely makes his final decisions in terms of the local stars for us. Some of whom were Boston based actors went to New York, made careers with themselves but like to come back to Massachusetts for a working holiday. So that if you have a short list even a long short list of say 15 plays from which you're going to pick five usually the final decision is how well can I cast this play. And the guy who's running Gloucester Stage now sort of always looks for a play for Lindsay Krause who is a summer house up there. That's kind of my inventory. So turning that into recommendation for emerging playwrights look at the plays that a particular theater has done in the last five years and the kinds of characters who people those plays and see if your play is a match. The theater obviously uses the same actors over and over again when you approach that theater say I've written a play and I think it's a good play or so and so and so who are popular actors in your company but definitely need a large foot in the door. I read them as an actor because that's where I started. I mean I'm still an actor in addition to being a producer so when I read a play one of the things that the first read is I read it very selfishly as an actor who I want to be in this play which means if I want to be in this play that means I can actually produce this play because I can find people that would also want to be in this play and we, for me, intend to find very character driven plays stories that are based on the people and what's happening at that exact moment before the lights go up but when I look at them I look at them and say do I want to be in this? Is this something that I can we don't have a whole lot of money but I can offer you a really beautiful parent and this amazing part that you may not get to do otherwise and here it is and that's how we've been so fortunate to have some of the amazing folks that we've had on our stage do the work that they've done because no it's not a lot of money but man they don't want to miss that role so then I go back and go yeah can we actually build this cabin is this something that we can financially afford so but when I do the first read and I know within the first 30 pages whether or not I'm going to finish reading it so if I can't get through the first 30 pages it goes to the sad, sad, very tall pile I like to add that another way for plays to be developed and produced is to develop and produce and commit to a young playwright as opposed to specific plays I've been developing and producing and directing plays for about 25 years and along the way I try to get to know as many emerging young writers who are not being produced I find it interesting that a lot of times in organizations grant grants to writers who in my opinion don't need it they're established already but we need to find the playwrights commit to them, the young playwrights commit to them and start producing their work along the lines of people like Adam Sinclair who now gets produced and published all the time and Lucy Gerber and people like that you start, you know, committing to a playwright a bunch of different playwrights so that it isn't about shopping or a particular brand of play which is one way to put it but there's also committing and fomenting the work of young or not for young playwrights but people who need to produce one of the things that we've done is we have a playwright in residence and we have produced he had no place produced before we produced his first play and then we produced one, two, three, four of his plays and through the production of his new work now that work is being produced at another theater because we have this relationship with this playwright exactly what you're talking about that no one else is going to give him an opportunity he got an opportunity to put on play to put up a show to see how it worked and then to become exposed and through that he's got this project this workshop in New York coming up and then Ricky has also now a new theater has commissioned him and he's our playwright in residence it doesn't mean we own his life it means that obviously he's written plays for us but now Ricky's gone and commissioned him because of the progression of his work and the growth of his work and the fact that he has established himself over the years to see the development and growth that has happened through the process with us so now he gets to go to the next place and have another process and have another experience and have another, you know I mean, you can speak to the piece the piece is I think it allows a playwright to write with certain pieces for certain theaters with certain objectives visions every theater has its own kind of vision and that's writing maybe something a little bit different than what we can necessarily perform but it gives him an opportunity I think New Theater itself with my predecessor because I'm the second artistic director out of 26 years we used to commission far more needle-cruise and then the tropics as well several playwrights that are local now we're producing Mario's now we're producing Mario's play it's awesome now my sixth year of being artistic director I'm going back to trying to commission at least one local playwright a year this year we chose one I think next year we actually it's being to Susie Westfall to try to get that in the works because I think what I've noticed locally is that we really need and nationally actually because New Theater is part of the National New Play Network there's a consortium of about 28 to 30 theaters nationwide that champion that you were and what I've noticed is that every other theater giving me local playwrights from their town but I don't really have a lot of playwrights locally that I can hand over and get their name out I think it's very important myself being a playwright so I'm joining in with this force of trying to really house our local playwrights and get them heard and produce them to them Can we speak to audience? I'm sorry, but like the idea of also creating for a specific audience I know we also we have a theater theater audiences are just a director on this panel and so how do you develop a relationship between playwrights writing and also Ricky and Debra talking about our local playwrights the relationship the playwrights you work with have with your audiences Well, that's almost exactly what I was about to say is that when you commit to a specific playwright and you say we're going to develop this playwright and work with them whether you just do readings of their works and workshop some of their works and then produce others of their works it gets their name to the community and the community recognizes those names and they become familiar maybe not to the extent that the actors might be but that name becomes a draw too and then they build a little support in this area and other theaters can say oh, that theater trust and I'm going to take a chance on it and especially if they are a local playwright they get to know the community as well and they can write to whichever audience, whichever theater they're working with if they're working with many theaters in a certain area and it's fun to see when they trade back and forth I'm excited to see what Juan is going to do over at this theater that's going to be different and conceptual and its own separate thing because what they do is very different from what we do it's just as valid and just as important but it is going to be a play that's suited to Ricky's audience and to the work that they do in The Gables and the work that we do up and all the way over in Broward What is important for artistic directors as you touched on a little bit is to commit to that second production because I think that's what the all important mention so in theater theater audiences you know we're a smaller field within this field and so we keep in touch with each other all across the country pretty tightly and so we just guarantee that there will be a second production and sometimes the second production is in five cities at the same time because we are usually there's a large theater field audience, only one major one per city, if that and then smaller one so we aren't really proprietary or competitive so we actually co-commission together we group commission as well there's a show that I'm working on now that five of us are going together because it's a new economic time Young audiences is always changing it's I'm gonna say zero, baby and I'll explain that zero years until high school 12th grade so birth to high school Yes, absolutely and Linda is one of our artistic directors Seattle Children's Theater that is bringing baby theater to America Denmark and Sweden or of course thousands of years ahead of us and young audiences and developing plays for zero to four years old and then zero to two to four because in theater gang audiences we are servant to two mistresses, the public audience and the field trip audience and the same show has worked both so at the middle, at the high school level we start seeing less and less children coming in during the week and I'll still call them children coming in during the week and so lots of us are saying okay and then we see this new group these mommy and me classes that happen everywhere I mean I had a daddy and me yoga baby class thing so you go anywhere with your babies you know so theaters are starting to develop programming specifically for this group and they are the group that can come during the week as well so we're growing down instead of growing up or actually at the same time and so our season is very eclectic so we have to look for things for the very young and then at least something for the older and then the broad range is that first through sixth grade age and we group commissioning is the big thing in our field currently well then I have to dovetail off if we don't want to give a shameless plug for Jeff and his theater because we city theater are going to for the first time be bringing our show Camp Capilana up to Orlando Rep, yay to summer and so that's narrative generosity I'm finding the theater for young audiences is really wonderful this whole consortium of theaters that Jeff works with and so we're very proud to be joining up with Orlando Rep and answering Andy your question about how do you develop work for different audiences we've been producing summer short which I think in terms of our audience we tend to be sort of PG-13 in terms of the content some you know we've gone into under shorts but basically it was never really a family audience and I say that as you know the parent of three little kids who actually never seen what their mom does every day you can watch but you have to get out real quick in between shorts and so we in working with new work and writers came up with an idea last year it was our 15th anniversary of summer shorts and somewhat you know I felt as if I wanted to it would be nice to do something different that for 15 years actually what my kids could see and so went to a short play that we a short musical we had done with Lisa Loeb that was the best friend and from that I had the idea to create Camp Capri Juana now in terms of working with a writer we went to a writer who really doesn't write for young audiences for any of you who know Marco Ramirez or actually if you ever watched The Sons of Anarchy you would say wow you would never pay to write a play for young audiences and it was really really interesting the difference what you're saying about sort of cultivating your audience here we had this audience the summer shorts audience that was really you know frankly rather sophisticated if you look at the number of plays we do a year and we went to a writer and we said and we went to Lisa and said you know here's this body of work music that we think would make a nice art for a musical we had a writer who had never written a play for young audiences and there I think in terms of commissioning and really being quite specific about what the expectation would be we were really really very specific because in deference to you know what Jeff was saying we knew that this was a musical we wanted to do over the summer and we wanted to do this musical for kids that could actually get on a bus and go on a field trip so automatically that that winnows you down to kids that are about 7 to 12 years old 7 to 14 and those kids that you really you know kids are very broad term just like if you say adult theater that's a very broad term under shorts is very different from summer shorts is very and I think we all could speak to that and so we really had to be very specific a lot of the music that Lisa had written on her original Camp Lisa album was really for littles it was really skewed and that's what Jeff and I discovered one another was through our shared love of this body of music but a lot of the stuff was really you know peanut butter and jelly and stuff like that and so going back to developing your audience we had to be very very clear about what the expectation was with the playwright what the expectation was with the composer and lyricist and then also in terms of cultivating our audience we really in a wonderful way I'm very proud have developed a wonderful new audience of young people and we've been doing this for 15 years going into the schools and with our shorts for kids but all of a sudden when we took the extra step took a leap of faith of going to a full length we discovered this completely new audience and then we took the next leap of faith and we wanted, Camp Kappa wanted to get a second production and we decided that we were just the company to do the second production because it was a show that wasn't finished and I will tell you wearing the hat of a producer that's not an easy sell because pretty much everybody will tell you no don't bring it back again for a second year and we're told no by a lot of folks but we felt as if the play wasn't done and so you really have to in difference to what you want to be able to have a show and have a body of work that will hopefully go like wands to another theater and another theater and another theater and so if you believe in a work strongly enough you have to take the leap of faith and for those of you I hope if you haven't seen this current production of Camp Kappa I hope you will because this is the second production and it's a show that was at the Travis Center and at Orlando going to Orlando Rep going to the Broward Center but the kids we actually have added more performances to this show because we sold out our run with our Camp Matt Mays so as a playwright I hope that will inspire you to be really specific in terms of you see a void a niche that you can fill that and that you will believe in your work strongly enough to really push and make sure that your work is given the proper production let me say one thing quickly off of that I'm Marco who has written at least one other show for young audiences Mermaid's Pain in Burbank I'm glad you mentioned that because to us a playwright and this is our field has grown up a lot within 20 years we used to be what everyone calls Children's Theater and I know you all have in your mind what that is that's why we're not that anymore some people still are and that's why we give us all the background but we look for a playwright that's a playwright a playwright isn't for children or it's a playwright it's just that the scope of the problems are maybe different we wrote with the Norma Swings for young audiences so that's what we are all looking for in this field today as a playwright I know as a playwright myself it's hard to when you write a piece it's hard to kind of say this is what the piece is it's really hard to get that objectivity of your own work and it'll work with this kind of market and in trying to find a theater that will match that work hand in hand with that with your vision that's really really actually probably the toughest job to actually get it in or to figure out I know there's this that actually helps you go through as a playwright and you can actually kind of they do that for you already and they put a lot of work into it and that helps as well identifying what theater matches your kind of work but it's really you as a playwright have got to do a lot of footwork and really find out what the theater is all about find out what the artistic director's vision is and try to see if you're the match that theater and I think it's also it's really up to your artistic directors to stop worrying so much about whether or not people are going to like it I think that there is so much pressure especially in non-profit theater it's non-profit there is no money you know it's called that at the beginning of the sentence so we know this so to be able to find someone who's willing to take the risk with you is the biggest I find stumbling block for any any play and any new play at all for me I find it inordinately frustrating when I hear established theaters and established companies who are doing okay no one's doing great don't get me wrong I know the nature and condition of things trust me but to say I don't think our audience will go for it how do you know unless you jump off the cliff and how do you know that isn't the next Israel Laurel is or isn't the next big coming down the pike a new voice that hasn't been heard yet and you know what your audience may hate it and that may be the best possible thing for your theater and for the development of that playwright's work the development of your company and the development of your audience but it scares the crap out of everyone so you have to be able to find and there are those of us out there who will do it because we feel that it is our responsibility this is a dying art form otherwise because we cannot depend on every single play to be a home run number one number two it's important for us to be able to find the voices that are not being heard and those voices have to be produced and those voices have to be shown to everyone and whether or not your audience all walks out and goes oh my god I can't believe I spent forty dollars well you know what great I'm glad that you hated it because at least I got a response from you and that's what theater is about so you have to be able to take the risk and make the beat to do the work and in that risk taking and that's the hardest thing in this whole bag because people are scared of closing shop they're scared of losing their shirts but that risk is also what makes this work and what we do so exciting and then you find out that the world premiere actually is not the hardest one to get it's the second one and the third and the fourth that's the hardest because you know you get bad reviews and they knock you down so how do you get a theater to believe in your work when you've already had bad reviews from the world premiere that you just had and it could be at the top theater it could be at the highest floor and you just get a reviewer that just didn't like it props on it and then how do you get to put it out there it's quite difficult and I think audiences are still like American audiences I think I have to say are still getting used to what to trust in new works of world premier they're not perfect things I'm sure Tennessee Williams was not perfect when he first came out obviously I know he wasn't because they got closed many times and then he reopens in several other places playwrights is a process it's about process it's not about product as part of that process we're talking a lot about relationship building those relationships I mean I know a lot of playwrights here are unproduced or haven't been produced in a long time don't really have a relationship I mean I know for example one works in your box office for me so I know how that relationship got developed well it was actually before that we went to school together sorry but that's a relationship that's there but let's say you know the playwrights out here don't have a relationship how do they start building those relationships I'd like to talk to something I think should be said to Florida Bay's playwrights I think it's in the workshop that I did today I talked to some of you about going back to the place you were born in idiosyncratic language from the place you grew up in as a really important resource that you have that may be language or even events from when you grew up is something that's really special for you well it turns out and I said this because I do feel that if language is accurate it brings a certain level of truth to a play no matter what it's about but for Florida Bay's playwrights if you write about Florida if you set your plays in Florida it's a really obvious way to attract Florida Bay's theaters and capturing the way that people live on your little thought on the planet Earth is incredibly important and it's something you know well I talked about for me support groups if you're based down here and create your own support group in writing your plays and people are writing Florida Bay's plays the playwright's lab even at level every year when the plays were written would do a reading series which was in the spring would do a reading series which was really about criticizing first drafts of the play but in the fall the following autumn would do a reading series after the plays were rewritten during the summer that was really a market and when this reading series was 15 new plays and you invite a large group of artistic directors they really do show up especially you know if 5 say yes well the other 20 are afraid that those 5 will run the best place they're in there and it's a really really good trick for getting your work seen and it was really important for the playwright's lab so I simply said forming a reader if you're Florida Bay's and if you're based here anyway if you can form a support group and then showcase your work in a reading series the Florida theaters will come and pay attention to you it's a hell of a lot better than putting your script in the mail or the internet show up young playwrights with plays show up come see the playwright write the artistic director a note send them your play go see the new play at the new theater we're doing 3 new things at the Ren Theatre this coming season or they have some new aspect to them come see them they have 2 people who teach playwriting I read whatever people send me or at least I have somebody else read it 3 people read it and then the people tell me it's great out of you but you know show up show up don't be shy introduce yourself sometimes the director the producer are right there they're usually there in Florida I showed up here to see Sparrow was introduced to a playwright 2 days later I had to do a script from him and I'll let them move in conversation show up on that note if we have time for 5 minutes with the questions from the audience 2 a week break and do Lisa Cron I'm getting a look from the studio I just wanted to say that 4 of you mentioned Juan's name but for those not from the area please say his full name Juan C. Sanchez back there thank you all we appreciate it quick question up north we had the Florida stage closing opening girls play house is still in shambles the Guestman senator is still kind of up and down right now there's 9 of you up here 5 years from now how do you predict the the environment for this type of events and will there be 12 of you or 5 of you I believe there will be like 20 of us and then we'll all have huge spaces and we'll all have money and you gotta predict good stuff you can predict bad stuff you gotta keep moving forward and do what you can to survive alright we're gonna go back and then to Rachel and then you have to do a quick say thank you to our summer shorts playwrights but just to let you know I know you're in Lisa Cron but I'm blanking on your name I'm sorry do you think the chances are greater with a smaller cast or a larger cast or does cast size really not matter I will tell you that I've gotten some really amazing plays with 14 people in them that I will never produce because on the other hand there's August Osage County right and that's large regional theater and also university institutions that can support and forward those larger plays but at theater that interests you and see what they do if I could say just for what we do at city theater we may be unique in this I know that the trend is 2 characters 3 characters but for us we found it almost impossible to find large cast plays 4 5 characters I don't mean 15 I mean 5 and I think in the short play world no one does one short play in a night usually nights of short plays so I think in the short play world I don't think you're running into the same problem of how are you going to get 4 actors that day or 5 actors that day those programs all have 4 or 5 6 actors doing the program that you can put in a piece I would love anybody got any 5 character plays lay down on my table because we've found none that's a great calling card especially as a young writer do you want to get yourself out there that's a good question I'm tendering because if you are writing a play with multiple characters perhaps where you mean that play to go might be into a university setting or a school setting you've got kids that are obligated to put shows up which doesn't mean that you don't have a limited budget as well oh yes you do have a budget I've seen that in more places listed so many times and it's often productions that are happening at universities around the country I mean how wonderful is that it's a great teaching play too alright and then Rachel what would you recommend for people who are planning, or for young playwrights I'm assuming some people in the so grown group also want to move out of Florida what do you recommend you were mentioning support groups what do you recommend joining an existing one looking for an existing one or starting your own existing one well a support group for playwrights you find them everywhere pick up a leaf there's a support group but just where do you want to go just about every city in this country we'll have a writer support group just where do you want to go what interests you going to New York easy easy easy New Dramatist is the most wonderful that should be a goal for all of you if you're going to New York is to be part of New Dramatist and you can google it and find out it's a very old word it's a real support group or the LARC probably not as good as New Dramatist it's different from New Dramatist but there are tons of support groups in New York and it's really easy to start and that's one way to find the internet and social media work because through 2AMT you can find groups in cities all around the country and around the world we have groups in Queensland, Australia and your Queensland and Toronto and all over Canada so the resources are there and you can just say hi to Fargo North Dakota where's the Fargo playwrights and someone will pop up and say hi alright thank you all thank this panel alright hold your seats we're going to do a quick honouring of our summer shorts playwright you can all go to the bathroom and come back for at least a couple of moments I'm starting starting just stand here please can we do a quick thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you