 Where we can do the next thing. Right. Not expecting anybody to do it. All right. So the manifesto portion of the afternoon. So, all right. Welcome back. And we'll do that. We lose a few people. They're here. They're here. I think that's where it would be. The crowd looks different. So I had an idea for a performance piece, but I really, I worked on a play with Matt Gwellman. I'm very an yeti, you know. And I wanted to do a performance piece, where I just had a backpack filled with vegetables. And I was just going to slice them very quietly and terribly as you were reading your manifestos at the thought that I could throw vegetables at you at any time. And I suggested this cool idea. I'm worth a look at me like I was saying. So let's do it. Does that answer the bear bunch box? I know. I know. Exactly. You know, it's always a, it's tricky business to ask people to write manifestos because, you know, who really wants to deliver their manifesto. I mean, so these guys, you've done a great service to sort of take the risk of your vision of the future of the form in the field. And so I'm super appreciative. So what we're going to do is we'll just sort of read the kind of one after the other. I'm going to ask you a few questions. And then we'll open up questions. And then at 4.30, we will go into our breakout group so that you can all really talk about them. So whenever we don't feel like we accomplished the question and answer here, we have plenty of time. We have a whole hour before dinner to continue the discussion. So, okay. I don't really have a particular order, but I would like to start with Guillaume. I'm right next to you. And evidently, David, this is what I get for being the last one. That's right. Okay. Go ahead. Yeah. All right. In the little office of the future, we will have figured out the work balance between the time-consuming act of digesting plays and the equally time-consuming act of devising ways of communicating to audiences about plays. Perhaps we will realize that this is two different jobs. And if we want one person to do these two jobs, perhaps we will be able to do that. So I'm going to start with Guillaume. I'm going to start with Guillaume. I'm going to start with Guillaume. I'm going to start with Guillaume. I'm going to start with Guillaume. I'm going to start with Guillaume. I'm going to cover one person to do these two jobs. Perhaps we should clone her or download her understanding of a play into a nearby computer for implantation in the marketing team. Speaking of technology, the little office of the future will have, embrace the ways information technology can improve our work if Facebook and Spotify and YouTube can turn us on to new music. Why not new plays? In this future, we will have also figured out are which is generative artist talent scouts. That's a GATS. We will be charged with nurturing, challenging, and otherwise developing artists. Of course the best way to do this is to create performances which means we GATS have just morphed into producers. Future you are so tricky. When I think about this in the future, future Aaron realizes that producer isn't quite the right term. It's more like the moguls of the visual art world like Marion Goodman. Acknowledging that the financial model is fundamentally different, future Aaron is a producer slash mogul providing artistic challenges to a stable of artists. Future Aaron may or may not rock a scarf and a walking cane. President Aaron would like you to note that future Aaron is providing artistic challenges not quote opportunities. The word opportunities implies a graspy tiered system in which people are playing at bigger and bigger venues with Broadway as the goal. Of course Broadway doesn't exist in the future but you know what I mean. Future Aaron's relationship to artists is that of a true believer who encourages the artist to realize her greatest potential. Future Aaron is bold so it's like Morgan Freeman, a million-dollar baby. Only the artists I work with will not end up paralyzed or dead. At least not because of their achievements. Let's just focus on me as Morgan Freeman and ignore the part where this similarly falls apart under examination. President Aaron has just put it in public that he wants to be a guru. While this confirms the future scarf and cane he has mortified to have discovered this in public and will pivot away towards a new subject. Okay well this turns out to be less of a pivot and more of an awkward defense. What prevents future Aaron from being some skeezy skin crawl inducing foam mystic is of course scientific rigor and artistic discipline. Between now and my Morgan Freeman days I will have participated in a groundbreaking study of new play development techniques and this study will have laid the foundation for a style of work that supplements the intuition of dramaturgs and directors with detailed approaches for discovering the next draft that is hidden inside of every current draft. Morgan Freeman will have overcome that idea that every play is a precious individual snowflake. Instead he will employ parallels drawn to the sciences of Method Act and viewpoint psychotherapy and every other accepted system of artistic or personal exploration all systemic techniques that are seldom accused of obliterating snowflakes. Now that the future is swarming with gas quads producers armed with non mystical thinking the whole notion of differences between a development entity and a producing entity have been obliterated and no one sees any conflict between wanting to produce some plays one month and engaging in exploration and refinement of our discipline the next. The things we used to think of as theaters are bubbling cauldrons of creative exploration and a survey of contemporary dramatic structures is as welcome and output from a theater as a four-week run. And this finally means that we don't have to retreat to the halls of the Academy to experiment and to talk about our history and our future. This upends the notions upon which most academic training programs are faced making them moot. Our theaters will be where we learn where we play and where we learn to play because the place where we practice our art examine our art and take our art to the next level is the theater. And so to summarize Gats challenging artists Morgan Freeman, Guru's the good kind, cauldrons of creativity and never-ending learning rigor production reflection and evolution. For the studio theater and I hope I'm speaking loudly enough. Sorry office of the future. Well first of all sometimes it's my dining home table during the kids first nap just me and scripts and tea and whatever words and whatever worlds those playwrights want to take me through and sometimes it's a train seat where I'm reading sometimes it's a lobby in our building but the chairs are always comfy the light is always good there's snacks nearby because it is serious business so that's the first thing. But then sometimes this literary office is the conversation at the big table in the middle of the office where the folks who plan the season meet the mix of artistic and production types are rotating cast of development and marketing who are different ages and have different tastes but who get what the theater is great at and what it wishes it were great at and I'm afraid to argue about what that is and what it should be. So this table is a place of curiosity and respect of firm and passion of honest confusion of disagreement and advocacy and thinking aloud and a constant interrogation of our mission of our purpose of our magic conversations with our magic audiences and community alongside an investigation interrogation of our past successes and failures in our actual conversations with our actual community. And for me this literary office is located in a theater that's big enough to have ambition and small enough to know everyone's name. A theater that has a mission that's aspirational that's inspiring but isn't masochistic that knows what it doesn't do well as well as what it does do well. A theater that's ruthlessly honest about its shortcomings and expects its people to be the same because mission is really the thing that helps a literary office know what it is and what it isn't, what its job is and what its job shouldn't be and keeps us from wasting our time or the hopes of artists. The 21st century literary office is within the earshot or text shot of the artistic director. Everyone expects the literary office to be involved in articulating the theater's work and the importance and its importance to the theater, to its audiences, to the culture at large. But of course at times the literary office is a coffee shop or a bar after a reading where you're winding up or winding down with a writer or director or literary type. It's the lobby of the theater, your own or not your own, where you compare notes and dreams with a colleague where you trade pictures of your dogs or your latest vacation. It's the impromptu or long planned or finally we figured out this moment meandering conversation about some cool article on neuroscience or crowdsourcing or habit formation or maybe a play. It's the cross time time zone phone calls about the heartbreak plays you wish you were right for your theater, you hope we're right for theirs, we're hoping to hear about plays you and your theater might fall hard for. And sometimes it's in museums and sometimes it's reading stuff that's not about theater at all, sometimes it's traveling, it's in making a habit of crossing unfamiliar barriers of culture and aesthetics. So literary office believes in hard work and deep rest, believes in using all of your vacation time. It's an office lucky enough to rest on the shoulders and brains and creativity of more than one person so that we can attend to the theater's different needs so that we can cycle through different needs so that we can cycle through these different activities so that we can offer fresh eyes to our colleagues projects so that we can gather more gossip and share it. It's also part of a culture, a theater wide culture of pain sabbaticals. Because what I hunger for more than anything else is time to do is time beyond the to do list of my work time to be interesting enough time to think broadly enough to cultivate the kind of insight and innovation that only comes from reflection from work time away from the cycles of finding and producing and rehashing and interrogation. We think broadly, we think abstractly and then we dig into the specifics of scripts of productions of program notes of audience development engagement. We go afield, we come home. Because everywhere the dramaturgy happens is part of the literary office, right? Because above all, the literary office of the future reckons wisely with the power, the responsibility, and the deep joy of its work. Well, I mean, it also votes. It has fun. It participates in big sales and the life of its theater, its city. Otis Ramsey is away. I am the administrator for the future classics program at the classical theater problem. And just a quick contextual note, I went that office by myself. So you'll, you'll hear that in my manifesto. The future is a wish. What are your wildest dreams for the literary office of the future? One, in the literary office of the future, isolation and solitude are abolished. No one is alone. Two, in the literary office of the future, community and collaboration are emphasized. Three, the literary office of the future will be a joint venture that connects several institutions, either by regional artistic sensibilities in an effort to share resources and work and minimize duplication of efforts. Literary office will be a system. One way that this system might work is that literary managers from one region work together to review material that is submitted for consideration. At present, as we know, a single play may be submitted to multiple theaters, say 20 different institutions. In this case, 20 or so different literary associates are all reading and evaluating the same thing. In this type of network, perhaps there is a database that attracts the submission of works. And each play is evaluated by a minimum of two individuals instead of 20 who then report back to the whole group as a part of the evaluation process. In such a network, it is crucial that literary associates have an understanding of what types of work will satisfy other institutions. And script reviewers will recommend plays and playwrights to peer institutions. In this way also, the literary office becomes and exists within a larger community that serves both specific institutions as well as a larger field. Four, in the literary office of the future, gateways will be abolished. At present, scripts, artist ideas are met by a series of gateways, which they will either pass through or which or at which they are halting. When gateways in such obstacles are eliminated, the literary office will cease to be a destination. Rather, like being an artist, it will evolve into a way of being in the world, a vast network, a series of relationships. And in this way up, this is why I did not finish the thought. And I also sort of dreamed this. You know, I slept on it and then I woke up and just wrote. So that's what's happening as well. Number five, text is not privileged over production and spectacle and scripts are evaluated as much for the theatrical potential as for the literary merit. Six, the line between literary office and artistic associates will be abolished. In the future, the literary office will not just be a place for dramatodes and literary managers. And here I also insert war managers. There is a hierarchical crisis in designate directors and writers as artistic associates or such titles while simultaneously having the too many pages while having the dramaturge or literary manager, literary associates as a separate thing. And in the future, this goal is bridged as such directors and playwrights and others engage with the literary office in these conversations pertaining to lit issues and including season planning. Seven, in the literary office of the future, the focus will shift from new play development to playwrights development. Under such conditions, writers enter into relationships with institutions that are not based solely on one particular thing, but rather on an investment in the writer. Also, since the literary office is now a consortium of multiple institutions working together, their playwrights, playwright development would occur as collaborations and conversations between these various institutions. Then I move to the question, what shall we expect of the theater of the future? One, in the theater of the future, ambivalence will be abolished. August Twinberg, in his 1888 purpose to Miss Julie Rowe, if my tragedy depresses many people, it is their own fault. Substitute the word depresses for any number of words, including anger, excitement, surprises, and this will be the characteristic of all future theater. That is, it will do something to audiences, however rather than distribute responsibility for such feelings totally onto the audience member, the work itself will share an accountability. In this way, also, there is an acknowledged conversation exchange between work on stage and audiences. Two, comfort and safety will be abolished. Danger and discomfort will be the primary traits of the theater of the future. Director and playwright Robert, Robert O'Hara once described his theater as a place where everyone is welcome and no one is safe. Similarly, Irene Lewis, the former artistic director of Center Stage in Baltimore advocated that in the theater, the only comfort available should be provided by the seats. And so in terms of the work on stage, we should be challenging people's sense of comfort. And number three, in the theater of the future, love will make us deep an impression as hurt. So lately, I've been wondering if a person's hurt makes a deeper imprint than their love. Harm and abuse become phantoms ever present in shadows and land between, in lands between awake and sleep. A kiss is rarely as shocking as a slap. Maybe this is just the stuff that is wandering in my mind. Maybe this is just the stuff that is wandering around my mind. Office of the future is no longer called a literary office. It's all blown up. What remains is a place without walls, where the barriers of ego, elitism and exclusion have been removed. Its function is that of a communal gathering space, perhaps resembling a coffee shop or the DC restaurant busboys and poets with couches, tables with internet ports, maybe a TV and magazines. There's color everywhere on the furniture and decor and the people that inhabit space. It is known as the heart of the company or organization, the critical muscle that pumps out ideas, insights, arguments, and questions repeatedly and rhythmically. The term dramaturgy becomes the new hashtag. It is not precious and is owned by everyone. Saying I practice dramaturgy no longer generates the response of drama what? Or the oh so familiar, oh, followed by silence or subsequent reaction, eliciting confusion, distaste or fear. When I first met David Dower at Busboys and Poets, by the way, he talked about dramaturgy as integral to every theater company's through line, such that every theater maker holds the mission and the vision of the art as their ultimate goal, even if we explore different tactics on how to achieve them. A marketing manager practices dramaturgy by communicating to an audience the mission and vision of the art through website blurbs, posters, brochures, a development associate practices dramaturgy when they approach a potential funder, caring and articulating the mission and the vision of the art and why it needs the funder's support to thrive. A casting director practices dramaturgy when casting a show by supporting the mission and vision of the playwright's intent and director's concept with every person they call in. And we can't leave out the budding theater makers who are making their way into the artistic homes. This philosophy and practice of dramaturgy should permeate to schools, universities, internships, apprenticeships, where the first word budding theater makers hear when they step into a theater, classroom or rehearsal hall is dramaturgy. I love Morgan Dinesse's belief that the origin and essence of dramaturgy is to provoke. We begin our provocation by releasing ourselves from the dead practices that surface as historical blueprints and develop impactful vital ways of doing things that make sense to us. Shake up the presumably unshakable. We find our inspirations to change not only from our experiences at the theater, but with our experiences and museum exhibits, open mic nights, amusement parks, libraries, art galleries, dance performances, baseball games and concerts. We are guided by our Buckminster Fuller's notion of synergy, where the combination of two or more ideas function together to produce an outcome not independently obtainable. Unique methods of interaction and conversation with audience become essential, viewed as the broad first rather than the saltine sprinkled on top. I look at the audience engagement at Steppenwolf Theatre Company with post-show conversations following every performance facilitated by staff, interns and volunteers, or the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company with playful interactive lobby displays that encourage a girl that religiously follows Indian Standard Time to arrive at the theater before showtime. This idea of engagement free and post-show celebrates the experience of the art and the dialogue generated from it rather than assuming that two or three hours in a dark house are enough. Long gone are the days when we took the intimacy of the work on stage so seriously and didn't care about the tone that was set from the moment the audience stepped in through the door. During the 2010 LMDA conference, keynote speaker Adam Lerner talked about how we spend so much time being excellent that we forget how to be awesome. The value of a fun, synergetic atmosphere and more face time becomes customary rather than anomaly. There's a strong adherence to one of the universal mantras that we learned when we were kids. Sharing is caring. If we come across a playwright or ensemble's exciting work and care about their voice, we share our excitement with our theater friends and lay fewer claims to our discoveries of the idea that I found this first. We ask ourselves what's best for the art rather than focusing on what makes us look best while working on the art. We gravitate towards radical accessibility of the art and we raise our hand when we need help, trusting that the symbiosis of the sharing process will always lead to the best possible outcome. The other day I received a letter from IndieGee Productions, an independent theater film company in California that I had some conversations with. The letter stated that they were looking for new full-length comedy or drama with leading roles for actresses aged range 40 to 55, while expressing that they would greatly appreciate any referrals for material we find worthwhile and exciting. What an interesting way to solicit help from the opinions you value and duly expressing honesty and specificity about your needs. That sharing process also includes highlighting the bright spots that we see in the field today. Constantly acknowledging the people and the places that keep the work alive and fight for its survival. As I reflect on this dream for the future and look around the room today, the dream appears less impossible. We already have put so much of this in motion. Hello, bright spots. During the next few days, as we wrestle with the ideas of renaming the literary office of gatekeepers and yes men, it is my hope that we view the future as close to block down the street rather than five miles away. And yet don't rest on our laurels that we will arrive at our destination without effort and dedication. Now, let's sit in our space without walls to meditate, applaud, reinvent, and above all else provoke. I'm sensing some themes. Themy and not simply repetitive. I'm Julie Felice-Gubiner and I work at the American Revolutions Project at the Oregon Chainsborough Festival. I used to say that as a dramaturg, I am the person who dares theaters, artists, and myself to dig deeper, to ask harder questions, to be more thoughtful. I have hurtled around the country. I was lucky to work at theaters others admire from afar. But most days I felt like a functionary system so broken as to be making a mockery of my daring and training and hard earned wisdom. I could feel the interestingness being sucked out of me and the work. I could feel a sense of despair creeping in and taking over my brain, heart, and mouth. I was assigned to playwrights and directors who didn't want to work with me or a dramaturg in general. And the pile that I was sorting and reading and was told was the most important part of my job and to which I had ceased to respond was meaningless and was making me a liar. So, things are different now. I am expanded and lighter and ready to dream again. So, Thomas Payne saw it as common sense. We have it in our power to begin the world over again. So, let us begin. A brash few of generalizations followed by specific suggestions. One, we all have the same pile of plays sitting on our shelves, in our email, on our devices, and on the floors of our offices, homes, and cars. Let us call for an end to the submissions as we know them now. Let us call for the creation of a national database for new plays. If we pull our resources, we can begin again. Imagine the glorious moment of seeing in a snapshot all of the plays that meet your criteria, your mission. Imagine the number of smaller theaters, development centers, early career dramaturgs, freelancers from all corners, and ourselves who can read and populate this database with four, then five, then more reports per play and get paid for it. Our shared experience, sharing our experience. And imagine clicking right there to download the script. Literary managers, agents, writers, all of us must let go of some control. Yes, playwrights might see a more honest report, response to their work in such database, then they get an ameager rejection letter. But playwrights are not fragile creatures and should not be coddled or act in any way less brave than we need them to be. There's no good reason for us not to work together, and I dare us to work together. Our artistic directors don't read plays and our colleagues don't read plays. Let us call for more dramaturgs as artistic directors. I had enough of thoughts about that. Very serious. Let us stop writing rejection letters, especially those that say our artistic director has passed when we are the ones passing. Let us claim that responsibility, own it and accept it. These letters that lie have disempowered us and created a dishonest relationship between theaters, dramaturgs and playwrights. And I dare you to accept that other people know as much about plays as we do. Involve your colleagues in the reading. At OSF the season selection process involves as many as 60 people from all departments including the bartenders. Getting together several times to recommend and read and discuss plays. It's not that hard and the payoff is immeasurable. I dare us all to surround ourselves with colleagues willing to make that commitment with us and to share their wisdom with us. Regional theaters have become flexible as they are beholden to an increasingly irrelevant subscription model. Let us begin by calling upon every theater to hold at least one spot as a TVA spot. Budget it. Staff as you can. Get as much decided in advance as you need. Get your company and your audience excited to embrace the unknown. Get the work as late as possible. We must be able to program plays that are immediately relevant to create plays immediately that are relevant to support artists we love who have work that must be shared now. We are stuck in cycles of responding a year or two years late. We are putting our most important artistic relationships on hold for a year or two years. We are over developing work instead of daring to produce it while it is still fresh and passionate. Or may dare you to get rid of seasons altogether. Create an open calendar in which you have just as many rules and deadlines as your production staff actually needs. Create a repertoire. Create a timeline in which different models of playmaking can actually be played with and a show can run for ten minutes or five years. A double dog dare you. Four. No one knows what a dramaturge is. Let us call for the end of the job titles of dramaturge and literary manager. I am a dramaturge but that's not all I am and I bet it's not all of who you are either. We are artists and we support artists and we know how to make dreams come true. We should seize and demand the power to say yes. We have over specialized ourselves into obsolescence and we must reclaim our places complete and daring theater artists which is no longer what those titles imply. I hope those who find themselves out of the job as I find ways to reinvent and let go begin over again. I no longer wear the title of dramaturge solely. I am part of a team that gives artists the resources to have a life so they can make plays. I am part of a producing team that makes dreams come true. I no longer have a submissions pile and yet I have read more plays in the last year than the previous two years before. I have taken responsibility and picked up the phone, traveled and met people in real life and the virtual world. I don't sit around waiting for the mail and I am a better friend to playwrights and theater makers than ever before. We must read books and newspapers and travel and meet other theater makers and people who make something other than theater. We have amazing skills but we have become unable to fully utilize them or grow as artists and people in our own right. We must get out of our offices and bring ourselves back into the creative process. How dare we tell artists what to do or not to do if we are not willing to do it ourselves. We must be active and go out and find the plays, make the plays, dream them into being. We must remember the love of everything that brought us to dramaturgy to begin with. And although we understand structure, I dare us not to be bound by it. Pretty much we can go on the whole weekend now. I think we have enough ideas. A couple of things I want to talk about and then move out to the rest of the group. First of all this argument comes up all the time about play as a literary form or as a form that's a play and we've got this thing called the literary office. And a number of you said this in one form or other. Is the literary office the right name? And so question one isn't the right name and if not what are these spaces where people are doing what is currently happening in literary offices. So thoughts about that? We've already shared already. I'm making you guys talk to us a little bit more about it. Just a little bit more. When I was thinking about it when I came up with the idea of getting rid of the titles all together I don't know what the replacement title is. I mean we could call ourselves friends. I don't know. Bob. Joe. Aaron says Joe. Morgan Freeman says Joe. Morgan Freeman. And so I don't know the answer to that. I'm hoping just to ask it. I mean there's a lot of people talking about calling ourselves producers or creative producers or something. I think for me what's more interesting is that everyone around me I want to be a drama clerk with me whatever their title is as well. And so what my title is will hopefully become less important. I'm an associate director. I mean I don't know what that means. Go ahead. I was just going to tack on that a little bit. I think the hangup I have around the idea of Lidolf as in particular. I'm really interested in narrative written work and actually reading scriptures are really great way to get that information. So one I'm just recognizing that there are other types of theatrical performance that aren't transmitted via text as well. So you know if we're bringing our creative artists, generative artists into the theater and then also I feel like Lidolf implies that in the moment that Legos in production don't touch it anymore because it's left to the Lidland and it's now producing land. And so I don't want to be stopped at that. Believe it or not I have some thoughts about whether that will accuse supporting the ideas of the text or not. Oh yeah. I think that similarly I'm interested in a space where the literary office is not just a place for literary managers but I'm thinking about the way in which so in thinking about the naming I'm thinking about a place where there's a collaboration or conversation with other artists. And to this idea, this question of naming I go to Derrida and she talks about the law of genre writing. He says sort of embedded in the naming sort of as soon as a name or title presents itself is also revealed which is to say that the space where the name fails to live up to the particular naming sort of makes itself known in its presence so that this idea that names themselves don't necessarily always tell us everything that we need to know about a particular thing. So I'm also very much engaged in this conversation about sort of the name and the way in which this name doesn't necessarily seem to capture what takes place in this place that we're calling the literary office. Well I'm like and all the people that we are to the different people that we interact with that's like the kind of nice thing about drama and jerk is that then I can like if people have to ask then I can sort of tell them a part of my job that affects the person I'm talking to. Like you are a different thing to your seasons watching you know like folks and then you are your potential or just you know like it just depends on what I am and that's obviously that's true of artistic directors that's true of marketing directors and that's part of I think my that's part of where I'm like and yeah once I pick something I can really see why I have a terrible idea. It's definitely a term that I feel a lot of what everyone was saying really but about how you keep it active and with the terminology of literary office because there's something about that while I do of course understand literary is its art form that doesn't fully expand to the art that's being done and whether there is even a set structure term for it or if there is something about every person, artist, company that actually creates what it means for them and then of course in the really idealistic world like can we actually break down the barriers and suddenly we're just all theater makers and we really need to stick to the notion of titles and structures and offices and departments in the way that we do now. Yeah it's interesting, I mean the literary office I just see it looks like a library in your head right, you imagine a kind of library, it doesn't feel like buff coins and poets for example as you kind of articulate it so it's just an interesting is that the language and I think one of the things that a number of you brought up is this question of the kind of role of whether it's the literary office or imagine the dramaturge in this sort of creative process and I had two very formative experiences in my career as dramaturge one was very early on I had a conversation I was running the playwright center I had a conversation with a local dramaturge who had been around for a very long time and had been really disformative in the kind of new play scene in Minneapolis and the playwright center had an award for theater artist and the most for people who were not playwrights so lighting designers and directors and I went to this dramaturge I said yeah you should really apply for that and the dramaturge said you know I'm not an artist and I would fit ultimately applied and got it so that was great, somebody thought differently about whether that person fit in it but the other formative experience was I was working on a play that I'd been working on as a dramaturge for kind of a year and a half or something and you know I've certainly worked longer but if we were in the middle of production you know I'd been in the room I hadn't been home in weeks and months and days and I was talking to the artistic director who proceeded on that day to say to me that dramaturges don't have as much skin in the game as everyone else and it was a bad day and we had kind of a shouting you know kind of a big shouting match and but my you know so my question is like what is the skin in the game in terms of the creative process for you know who function in this world of with all these different hats because I think you're referring to that in the emails so I just wonder you know what's the skin in the game and what is the creative contribution and how does that get recognized within the terminology you know in that rule of like nobody even knows what a dramaturge is have you seen that theme going around with what's a dramaturge the dramaturge was a question mark I think that loved it early like I feel like that's one of the things especially like when I see productions of plays that I have loved and that I've ultimately worked on for whatever reason I own an institution I've been produced in another institution and I don't it's like a part I don't know how to talk about it, it's not cheesy like it's like I loved what it was like that like there is an intellectual and artistic skill to seeing someone else's really smart choices many people's really smart choices and sometimes you see your own if I worked on it then part of what I'm seeing is like how like I inevitably on first preview when the audience tells me what the health play is I always think about the first draft that I read and there's something there's something about knowing that and I don't it doesn't sound maybe it doesn't sound vital I suppose there are other things that I could say but the truest thing is like I loved it for a long time and then I got to see it in front of an audience and whether it's its first audience or not whether it's a new player or not a new player like I I love it for all of its glory and compromise I know it won't enough to love it for real and that feels like that of course I was like how can that person say you don't care of course you can but I think the term skin in the game though is a little bit different than that I mean I certainly I go in and there's a Jewish Yiddish term Kavelin Kavel over these plays the ones that I found in the pie or the writer that I've known since they were in college or whatever those things are but skin in the game for me is that I'm actually willing to play ball and I don't think drama tricks have that all the time I don't think that they need to either I don't think that that's a huge drama in and of itself but to me it's been harder as I've worked at larger institutions to feel myself that I have skin in the game so if somebody can say that to me and I would probably get this outrage now as I would at 19 you should have seen me at 19 the level of outrage I muster but but nothing compared to now but but to me now those projects are fewer and further between because my responsibilities to the institution keep me from actually playing the game and so I'm and this is less true now at OSF than it has been in my previous positions because now I actually am and on the bottom four of finding writers for us to commission getting them a check making sure that they have whatever resources they need we also provide research money and travel money and so we are a full service operation for the creation of whatever the artists want to make for us and so my investment in it is automatically different than it was when I was just sitting with a pile maybe finding a play maybe convincing my artistic director to do it maybe actually getting to drama tricks and other things and writing newsletter articles and putting together a season brochure and helping someone write a grant and managing interns and trying to be a mother you know so it's different and that's not a bad thing which should be said it sounds like you have time but you can't hear your back oh I said time was the project that's all yeah time to play the game I'm having that I can share publicly because I'm having internal voices are just fighting right now it's crazy but I'm thinking in terms of investment which doesn't necessarily get at this idea of skin in the game and this is where I think also we start to slip between literary management and drama trilogy but sort of on the drama trilogy and sort of investing in sort of that audience drama trilogy and preparing the audience for the experience with the hopes that you can give them enough information whatever it is so that when they come to this experience they understand it so that we can sort of be more validated when we get back to that place of I loved it first right because it was actually the first thing that occurred to me as well in terms of you know as I've moved on from several institutions one of the things that I've kept you know the first page of the scripts where you know I found this thing and I wrote a note to the artistic director and said here this play and you know I've left and then the play got produced and I'm holding on to that front page and say look I picked that up and I rescued it from the power which I know doesn't exactly get at it but there's there's something to be said about about that about recognizing that potential early on for me I think it's the like yeah I don't think that it even comes to like and therefore it's mine as much as like like I see this on its terms and that is such like that and yeah I don't think so this other question I mean it's interesting I'm gonna say something I don't know maybe intentionally provocative or groaning or something but so this question of submissions and to that question of picking things up off the pile and being the finder of the gem off the pile because that's I mean I from my experience that's the thing that dramaturgs take the most credit when they do get any credit it's in the finding right it doesn't go to the playbill very often but it's in credit so we've been having in the sort of world of I don't know whoever's been following the ongoing discussion in the last few months of just submission policies and started off with because a reader doesn't accept unsolicited plays and you know David's gotten a big kerfuffle which we won't put it on the spot for now but and then and then you know I when I went to Steppenwolf there was enormous pride at Steppenwolf that they were reading 800 unsolicited 10 page samples and I was like okay and how many of those have ever been produced it was zero as you would expect it to be and I thought you know what are we doing what does that mean I mean what is that and so and I had one person in the literary office doing work and her job was by joy her job was to like manage those 810 page samples that we were absolutely never going to do anything with and so I just sort of said that's silly let's get rid of that and it's the lie that you talk about we're just lying we're not really taking these seriously we're setting law to some people agree we're having a conversation it's totally internal so I think there's something for the dramaturg literary manager in the control of being the gatekeeper like there's some pride in I look at the pile you know so that's my provocative comment like that we kind of like get logged down by it but we kind of like so what about this submission thing I mean what about 1200 scripts or 800 scripts or and and what and about the lie that you're talking about Julie so I just wondered if you could poke at that a little bit more I feel like it has so much to do with what your theater wants to be also like and being honest about that like I think it comes from your mission and your mission is fine plays that have from writers who've never been seen before then then maybe that you know what I mean like about if it's Shakespeare solely then like you already have your submission pile yeah I don't think big submission piles are actually useful for most theaters like I think that's true I mean I think what was always really difficult for me about an open submission is that so much of what we do in theaters based on our relationships and based on the way in which we connect with people I mean it's a live active thing and so this open submission policy to me kind of felt like a mail order ride system where it's like you see a picture and you're supposed to get married as opposed to actually courting and dating and getting to know people and whether you know not only are you a right fit for them but are they a right fit for you and how does that relationship actually work and so I think what's at least what I take more pride in very selfishly is when I actually get to meet kind of artists and sit down and have coffee and talk about the work and have those discoveries and even if it's not something that I know within you know my personal institution I can you know produce at least being able to share that knowledge is really that's what's exciting that's what's exciting is the face-to-face communication of that I think that I think the notion of that whether engaging me is at the fault place like it's a place that we've been back into as a field so we want some credit for the work that we do and since that's a really concrete place to hang onto it I feel like that's what it's generated from is actually the fault position to retrieve rather than something active and if I think about what I mean when I think about the place that I feel like I had early exposure to when I champion if I try to get at the root of it right now I'm thinking that that the thing I take pride in is the appetite for risk like so it's less about finding it first but it's more about the notion that I or my institution or group of people I was working with were bold enough to take a gamble and risk and it paid off and so like I feel like when you talk about skin in the game that's part of what it is is the idea of being to be recognized for risk and record I think that piled too for me I think to a certain extent in my previous positions was my only access to the world and so it wasn't so much that I delighted in the power oh the power it was more at least people would talk to me so I would get the email or the agent and they would ask me the first institutional position I had I had a lot of fun in something that is now truly horrifying to think of of like playing games with the agent so that he could figure out how to talk to my artistic director to tell my artistic director what to say and then he'd call me back and I would translate what my artistic director had just said and it became and we got the play done so it was awesome but it was also thinking back on it now it was really reindeer games that actually was I'll get drunk and tell you all about that but I think for for me now one of the things that I'm so happy not to have a pilot for is that it's just me reading and so to be perfectly honest with the artist that I want to work with and that I want to find that I don't know yet and want to work with I can't handle a submission pilot and I can't handle ten page samples I don't see the use in them I never have and to actually find better ways to find people without having someone sit around for six months or a year to get a rejection if that makes sense and maybe that's me giving up my power but it's also a different situation now than any other place I work well let's open it up now I'm jumping over it goes to your suggestion that we're all sharing the same pilot and we have to dispense with the notion that our discoveries are that unique in an objective sense our discoveries are personal but other people have art most of the time the place would be deemed meritorious other people have actually already sent that person along somehow somebody has promoted that person or another theater person somewhere along the way their playwriting teacher whoever it was has gotten them to the place where their full script is in front of them so I think we have to be not conservative on that that we actually have to acknowledge that and actually hang on to sort of in line with what Jerry was saying earlier too about the humanity the process talked about the place of love in that with that in mind so one's reaction to the quality of someone's writing is as much about your personal relationship to the material the story the form whatever it is as it is the structural integrity and some linguistic you know sophistication or something and therefore any job turns you that you might perform relative to that play is a is a synthesis of those two things it's never not going to be that and it's a DLC product we'll have to kind of own that as gatekeepers also because I think we're only taking a lot of us only taking pleasure in being gatekeepers up to the point where we have to say no to the people that we like where we don't own that we over happy to say no to all the people we don't know we're not happy to say no to the people that we want to pass the buck or we've got to do that I want to speak a little bit more to this notion of pleasure sort of clarifying my position on taking pleasure in choosing a play and trying to usher it to an artistic record and eventually finding it done after I've done that institution for me it comes into place because I have such an appetite for adventurous work and dangerous work and work that's not necessarily being done it's celebrating the fact that that play eventually got produced and not the fact that I discovered it it's like yeah now we're doing something dangerous and sexy and exciting and that you know who knows what the audience is going to think of it and I think that for me it's more that than the fact that oh I discovered this play okay now the theater is doing something dangerous and sexy so I just want to clarify that it's a complicated place to try to get joy in the fact that I discovered it I didn't discover anything it's Christopher Columbus right it's oh this land I found no people already lived here so I just wanted to know that yeah go ahead I just want to talk about this something I think about a lot and I can clearly hear what everybody's saying about the sort of utility of some of these policies I guess the thing that always catches me is like what is the institution's responsibility to be in a sort of social service way you know like that's what it like that's where I get caught on it more than because I can you know I I feel like as a form sending 10 pages every time I look at them and think about it I don't understand how I discover anything from it and I know that we were you know we virtually never do the plays although maybe we discovered a writer who we then will act you know that maybe we continue to rework who we have produced enough so on the level of actually producing work in the theater I do find a few top I guess the only place that I I don't quite know how to replace it with is that sense of like you know particularly with the big you know big civic institutions that feel like they have some kind of responsibility to the community even beyond the artistic community because most a lot of those things are like you know grandpa retired and then wrote a play and sends it I mean you know and so I just don't know what do we have that responsibility am I just you know and or how do I get over my guilt like what is our responsibility I always think what if we just put on the website you can send these we've never produced one you know what I mean people still send like be interested we just told the truth then about it because what I'm always surprised is the number of people think that is the truth that we really take that there's real hope you know that we're like we're giving out that kind of false hope but anyway that's just another that yeah go ahead I think there's a point to be drawn between the different styles of institutions as well I think that there's literary offices that are operating as part of a producing house that have so many more demands on them other than going through the new play pile and there's also institutions that are doing exclusively the submission pile and I do take great pride in the fact that you know I'm not fit for human interaction at this point because I spent less couple months just ruined by myself as Otis said but I think in that pride there's also has to be acknowledged that it is a fallible system that there's great work that gets turned away and also the fact that some of the what I want to find fixes for are the form interactions that have to happen between playwright and literary office but the problem I run up against is that each moment I take devoting more time to that interaction is less time reading scripts and there's a real imbalance there that takes away from the human but also gives me opportunity to read I should probably tell you that my male scripts are going to be late next week and also I was going to send you an email but as long as we're here they also think to me like the idea of actually having some sort of a database or whatever database or whatever whatever something like that might look like and there's a lot of ideas floating around and something like that what you guys do with the anoneal and what a lot of other places do that actually it is part of your mission to have open submissions and to read large volumes of plays and to get through them in strange and ways that I don't totally understand when participating in it's not captured what it is now in the Google Doc system but capturing that so that we always used to have a joke when I was still in Louisville I would call Martin and ask him for his heartbreak list and so I could sort of then populate my list and that we all do that but wouldn't it be interesting if there was a way to capture that in another way it's not going to stop me from calling Martin or Tanya or any of us amongst each other I mean I'm picking up the phone it's Karen calls or Lauren calls or maybe I don't know my phone doesn't work in OSF so if I'm not calling you back and I haven't gotten fixed because it's kind of delightful but that now I'm outed but I feel like there are ways that we can sort of maximize what we do without losing social interaction and actually buying ourselves more time back for social interaction I don't know that that's possible in a place like the O'Neill because your mission is a very specific certain thing unless you wanted to change it you're not going to get less than 5 million plays a year or how many plays you guys process but there are ways to sort of open that conversation and make sure that we do have more opportunities to talk to each other and to artists directly by buying ourselves time I think that's where we can also do better as far as I think those institutions and word bridge and the rest here of how in some sense we can take off some burden from the producing houses by having gone through that work and I think that this database is an interesting way of doing that but even in current systems and I know that we're exploring those ideas of how can we bring the work out a little bit more but then we also have the issue of responding offices responding to as I often have to do reports on work as opposed to the work themselves responding to what some other person said about the work as opposed to the work themselves then becomes a real issue for me when we do essentials out of this I want to say that it's interesting listening to the conversation and how many times the words like pride and ownership for pride to come up and how few times I've heard like pleasure or joy and I know I'm just people are just sitting this one joy note for a long time but I kind of feel like we're not talking about that like I don't take pride in a big pile actually and I don't take joy in a big pile so my pile is bigger than your pile or size matters in those ways it doesn't if it's not fun to go through that pile what's the pride in the pile so when I'm not in the institution now so I'm kind of looking back at it because I didn't want to keep saying no to writers and I didn't want to go down that road anymore so I just wonder when I sometimes hear people complaining about the piles then it's like so where's the joy in the job what do you, when you imagine a day what do we want it to look like inside of Larry Alps I'm not in them anymore what does a day inside look like and lead with that wish and what's the, like when you wake up what do you want to do and I just hope that we can maybe talk about what brings us joy in the job because I don't hear that anymore it's a great question exactly the question I was hoping to end the panel to ask that question it's on the list of things and I think you know you kind of point it to a little bit just that question of living like one lives at the same time that one goes through the pile and so and I just wonder if you guys might just really quickly just like in a moment I'm going to take a couple more questions but in a moment just say what was your best moment when you were like I'm so glad that I do this like what was the, you know what were you doing that you were like this job rocks man you know like what was that moment when you were you located one or two with you one just for now that interested I'm a few to out loud or in our head so could you pick one to say out loud that's what I was hoping for yeah I was cracking open a play with my good friend and I played right handed and it was a good day and that's probably there are a lot like that that's your question you know that's the joy of having a conversation and watching watching that new idea happen and the play go forth I've actually been really lucky to have a lot of them because now I'm sort of like roll-a-dexing through my head and I think just because Karen is here I mean one of my it's more than a moment and it was at the O'Neill actually I was coming off of a really really horrible experience of working with people that I was being forced to work with who didn't want to work with me and I couldn't figure out how to work with them and I was feeling incredibly awful about what I had chosen to do with my life and what am I doing and then I got assigned actually just completely randomly to Karen's play at the O'Neill and we just had a delightful time together even though it was a difficult process and it was a really fun time of a lot of people that we that I knew were there working in the design department and Karen had already become friends with Deb Lauper who has now also become a good friend of mine and we just had it was the best part of theater making that made us all want to do this after college in a certain way of actually just hanging out with the three dorky girls with all the cool boys over at the farmhouse and it was kind of magical and yeah, I think we did some great work on Karen's play and I thought Karen got something out of it artistically but it was also just that time to sit around and just be together which leads me to what was the really beautiful moment was when Karen decided to share with me I think it might have been the very first draft of what became Legacy of Life and that moment of knowing that not only have we become friends but that she and I had this also artistic thing synergy thing going on that she would trust me with something that was just so barely finished just opened my heart again and made me ready to go back to it because I'm noticing that it's as with the two it's a personal interaction it's an interchange in Baltimore and we invited down a writer Steven Cole to do his readings of play the 13th hallucinations of Julio Rivera and Steven had sort of gotten to a point where he thought maybe he needs to walk away from theater because he needs to actually live and he can't necessarily live as a writer right now and so the phone call and the invitation came at just the right time we rehearsed the play and had lovely conversations like for hours after the theater had closed we sat outside artist housing and just kept talking you know and then he went back and again he sent me the next draft of a new play that he was working on but it was such an affirmation because you know here's a guy who's at the verge of saying maybe I don't want to be a theater artist anymore and you know we just sort of connected and talked and he wrote another play after that you know one that just really stands out for me was when I was working on a musical review here at arena stage it was kind of the dramaturge slash line producer or whatever those titles mean and so much of it was the musical review about Duke Ellington all of these songs together that were about his life and the director had this really wonderful concept of kind of tracing the history of Duke Ellington through the review and it was probably the first time in which I I feel that as an organization we all really looked at that commission and vision and said let's step out of our boundaries and really take in the community and really take in what this kind of experience is as a whole as opposed to just kind of what's isolated in the theater space itself and just really blow that up and so I remember one of the first things that we started with was we held two open call master classes at Duke Ellington University and Howard University to find young dancers and found two local dancers that actually live right next door from the apartments here and then also did these really great kind of walking tours together with the cast to go to Duke Ellington's home and archive visits where we piece through all of these kind of original texts of his and just all of that all of that really interesting and engaged comprehensive work was done on such a high level by all of these people together that it just it really resonated every time that you were part of that experience in watching that show you just felt kind of this uplifting moment of here we are all together just really appreciating the art in this sense and all the community so yesterday we had a great season planning conversation and there were like nine of us and I got called on the carpet without really understanding what our second stage was we talked about it and it was fun and funny and it was just like people we all do different things of what we carved out an hour and a half so it was a really easy day to like talk about think matter of practical and not and then this morning actually Clarence you like a player who's like don't tell anyone I sent you my first draft it's like a commission for another theater like whenever it's not about where we're going to do it it's that like we really like like these are real relationships and by that take that you have a question back there something that I wanted to share that I feel like it's really reflected in a lot of what people are saying I think a lot about the book The Gift by Lewis Hyde and because this is the future and I have immediate access to all the things that I think about in my hand I'm just sharing this one quote as we're thinking about joy and we're thinking about that question of discovery or ownership you know Lewis Hyde says circulation of gifts nourishes those parts of our spirit that are not entirely personal personal parts that derive from nature, the group, the race of the gods furthermore, although those wider spirits are a part of us, they are not ours they are endowments bestowed upon us our participation in them brings with it an obligation to preserve their vitality only when the increase of gifts moves with the gift may the accumulated wealth of our spirit continue to grow among us so that each of us may enter and be revived by a vitality beyond his or her solitary powers and I feel like what I'm hearing is those moments when you recognize or in touch with that movement of the spirit of a community inside of a work or a voice and you can help share that voice and bring it forward so that it can be received by more people and then shared again from there and I feel like I don't feel super in touch with that sense of ownership of a play that I've discovered because it wasn't mine, but I am proud to have been part of being the fiber that helps connect it and share it and give it forward so what we're going to do is if you need 5 minutes you'll have we're going to shift locations or now we're going to break up a school group and you have the first group that you're in on the back of your name today and then J.D. if you want to say anything people are going to hold up on folders remember the breakout group cam folks are please hold up your sign for breakout 1 and just go to the person that's holding up the letter that is your breakout number can I just do one quick second I didn't do this at the beginning I probably should have just so that people understand the format so these are ideas that get thrown out that are meant to spark the conversation and the breakouts and then what happens tomorrow is that we'll work in a series of small tables where there will be a listening circle and the circle at the center that is speaking about a particular topic and then those will continue to breakout so these breakouts are your opportunity it sounds like we're talking at you we're actually trying just to get to this part of it where everybody talks about what's going on we're going to capture all of that in the both in Janice's report but also through the breakouts with the little cameras those are about making sure that we have your actual quotes less about them being streamed these parts aren't streamed but they'll fold into the next conversation the next conversation and the next conversation so what's going to happen now is what we hope will happen now is that you guys will take this part and continue the prompts that you'll take this conversation the next step and then we'll come back tomorrow with a series of the prompts that take place around this table and move out into the breakouts session so if you're wondering where do I get to talk these are these moments all these prompts get thrown out and then off into the breakout where we go so thank you for all your attention thus far now it's time for you to are we leaving this room some of you are leaving this room yes most of you are leaving this room so hold up your signs around there if anyone doesn't have an assignment please let me know