 So welcome to the panel, hello everybody, hello, one of the cool things about this panel is that it's being live streamed on HowlRoundTV, so our conversation is going to be shown to playwrights and theater people and administrators and artistic directors all over the country. It's a really exciting time for playwright residencies in the wake of the book Outrage's Fortune, which a lot of people are familiar with, but the basic gist of it is that there was slippage between what playwrights wanted, what administrators could give them, and advice for us. So after that a lot of theaters started developing residency programs to try and bridge the gap between the writers who weren't part of the theater organization itself, theater machine, and the theater who wanted a better, a different and more productive relationship with writers. So I am delighted to have these folks on my panel there, represent three different residency programs, four different teams, theater and playwright teams, and what we're going to do is talk about how these things work basically. They're very different, they prioritize different things, they have different goals and different pictures of success and different reasons that they're happening in the first place. So I guess I'll just introduce folks down the line. We have Lisa Steinler and Peter Noctriep, they're here from ZSpace, the Mellon Residency Program, which is a national initiative, funded and documented and very comprehensive actually. We have Jeanette Harrison and Ann Brevner from Alter Theater in San Rafael. A more homegrown program, a lot of writers involved in the residency program, whereas the ZSpace program has a one writer at a time. We have Rob Melrose and Andrew Saito, also a Mellon Residency Theater team, but working very differently because these these residencies have been allowed to develop along the lines of the needs of the theater and the writer involved. And Jane Wenger and Kate Ryan, representing Playwrights Foundation. Playwrights Foundation is not a theater company per say, but they have been more and more instrumental in getting productions moving, co-producing, supporting writers, and they have a residency program as well. So we're going to hear about how all of these work. Why don't you start at one end or touch and describe your residency and the important things about it. Kate, do you want to start? Jane? Sure, I'll start. I'm standing in for Amy Mueller. I'm the past artistic director before Amy. And when I was the artistic director of Playwrights Foundation, we did not have a residency program. So I interviewed Amy and asked her a lot of questions. And I do know a little bit about it, but I'm not the I don't have the depth of information that Amy has. It is a core program of the Playwrights Foundation, RPI, the Resident Playwrights Initiative. It is in its, we say, I think it's 2008, it's six years. It began in 2008. It has currently 16 playwrights, and some of them are here, and maybe some of them are out here in the audience as well. It's specifically tailored for Bay Area rising playwrights, and they also have to identify as career playwrights too. We can talk more in depth as we get into Q&As and what we have in common. Playwrights Foundation is the only one of the groups that are up here today. It's not a producing organization, although we have done co-productions also with some of these folks that are up here. So the playwrights that are in the residency program have to have had two plays produced, but they have been produced anywhere in the country, but they do have to live, reside in the Greater Bay Area. Right now, the program and the playwrights are identified from Playwrights Foundation staff and the Artistic Director, but we feel that the pilot part, the pilot phase of the residency program is over now, so they're going to be moving into a new model of how they select their playwrights and looking more outside of the staff, looking more to other theaters. So I'm going to just actually say who those 16 playwrights are, because since we're all local folks here, some of them are going to know us, and then I want to be brief so that we can keep moving through. So the first class of Residence Playwrights was Brian Thornstinson, Garrett Grunfeld, Eugenie Chan, Julia Jarko, Peter Noctreeb, and Maricela Orto. The second class is Erin Breitman, Hanya Schaefer, Erin Loeb, Chris Chan. The third, Lauren Anderson, Kate E. Ryan, Andrew Saito, Etha Reddy. The fourth is Janako Baj and Jonathan Spector. So that's who they are. They are in a rotating, they come in on a rotating basis, and Kate can talk about this as well, so that there's an overlap, and the fellows and the cohorts can support each other. So one class doesn't end their in rotation. They have monthly meetings, and we can also address that. So that's the broad strokes of the program. They do get a sty pen. Well, my residence here came in a lot of balls, lots of caffeine and drinking. They robbed Melrose, and then, I guess, there's some playwright that we've bring to us with that. So, I mean, I'm very honored and privileged because my job description, like, we find our job description is to write plays. Also, we do some teaching and playwriting and cutting ball, and some translation of plays from Portuguese and now Spanish this year. And what else? What else would you say? I'm even into your brain, Rob. Well, in community building and also, you've been great at bringing other new playwrights to us, that's been a big thing. Cutting ball has, our mission is to develop experimental new plays and re-envisioned classics, and we've actually been centered, we've got the classical event, but we've also been centered on playwrights from the beginning, and especially on a residency. So when we started, Kevin Oakes was our resident playwright. We did two plays of his. We did Drowning Room, and Mr. Rujan was like the beach and the vomit talk of ghosts. And then, we also had four years with Eugenie Chan and did, and developed a number of plays with her from the very beginning, and I wanted to do three full productions of hers. And it's interesting that this is back in a time when we had no extra money. We of course paid playwrights for their show. I mean, the residency was kind of a promise to give the playwright a space and kind of work with them, and guarantee them a production, which as playwrights who write plays know, it's, being guaranteed a production is a big deal because a lot of playwrights have playwrights that have plays in their drawer that they'd love to have a full production, but just don't get that opportunity. So that's a big thing. And this is when we didn't have much money, and then the Mellon Foundation had this wonderful, as a result of Rage's Fortune, they wanted to fund a full type staff member who would be a resident playwright, and based on our relationship that we already had going with Andrew, and I think the fact that we had been doing this from the beginning it allowed us to create an even more robust version, and it's been exciting to have Andrew be a part of our day-to-day lives, and what's been awesome about it is having Andrew as a full-time staff member. He thinks about things from the playwright's perspective, and oftentimes he's planning things, and I realize I'm seeing everything from a director's perspective, and all of a sudden Andrew will chime in, and I'll realize, oh, it's another artistic voice, but he's actually coming from a completely different perspective, so I'll be brief. Actually, I guess I haven't been briefed, but forget it. But anyway, I will stop it with the promise that I will talk more if asked. I'm going to compare this residency with the playwright's foundation residency. It's longer for one thing, and there's just Andrew. They've got a cohort, several overlapping cohorts. What are some of the other nuts and bolts that you think differentiates this residency, what its requirements are of both sides, from other residencies? You want to, I asked either of us, or maybe you can't. I was asking wrong. I think being a full-time staff member, it just means that Andrew's part of the plan, of the theater, and part of the kind of skeering of the artistic vision, which is different from commissioning playwrights. I am a tremendous fan of the playwright's foundation. I love what they do. I think it's just different to be a producing organization, one, and two, to kind of say, hey, here's this one playwright who we're working with. And that comes a little bit from my personality. It's something I've all, I get, you know, I feel like it's exhausting to be on top of all the hot playwrights, and you know, constantly keeping up with, oh, this play is cool. And I just actually enjoy taking one playwright I believe in, and just kind of taking the ride with that person. Of course, we have our Risky's This Festival, where we bring in five new playwrights every year, and develop one of their shows. Those are almost like mini-resonancies. Right, and those have been great, and I've participated in them before. And Andrew could certainly speak to the playwright's foundation Resonancies as well, and the crossover between the two of them, because he's involved in both of them. So, if we get done early and things get boring, Andrew could really talk about the real nitty gritty of both of those Resonancies. I guess what it comes down to, neither Andrew nor I are specifically monogamous. Right. In our playwright director. We're monogamous. But it's interesting about the overlapping that we see here in the room in the Bay Area, and with the residency programs I think as well, and what the different purposes are of each one of them, and what each playwright, what the benefits are, and what they offer, and that's probably what you hear a lot to hear about today, is what do they offer to you if you're a playwright, or if you're another theater looking at starting a program. Well, let's ask, who's out here? Who out there are writers who are interested in learning more about Resonancies, curious about investigating specific Resonancies? Cool. Cool. How many are representatives of theaters, or thinking about starting a theater that you want to incorporate a residency into your work model? I want to talk to all of you. Well, beautiful. I'm glad we're all in the same room together. That will actually help us calibrate the stuff we're going to talk about, because what's important, as we'll find out, what's important about Resonancies is that both sides get something out of it that's concrete and valuable. And the Resonancies that accomplish this are keep working, and the Resonancies that don't accomplish this, we don't hear about them very much after their first season. So we're hearing actually really, really success stories here. These folks who have figured out how to make a lot of these things work, so. Would that continue to alter theater? Do you want me to start? Yes. Well, I'm just a prime work. She's the interesting part. I would say that Alter Theater began our residency program. Actually, all the programming that Alter Theater starts comes from a place of how can we better achieve our mission? Where are we failing? What can we do better? And when it came to our writers, we already had a commissioning program, which started in 2008. And again, this came out of Conversations for Mount Wages Fortune. Plus, Alter Theater, I felt, was failing its writers because our mission is about supporting the creative growth of theater artists and we weren't doing that for our playwright. It was like we were really investing in the product, in the commission, in the play itself. So we had that issue that we wanted to address. And then the other issue is that as a small theater company, at the time we were producing two plays a year, another key part of our mission is diversity, inclusion, and acceptance. And no matter who you're producing, if you're only producing two voices a year, I'm sorry you're not diverse. You're not inclusive. And so the issue that came out about Wages Fortune that we felt that we as an ensemble company were uniquely equipped to address was this feeling of disempowerment of playwrights, the fact that they were voicing a feeling like they had no place at our artistic decision making tables. As a bottom-up ensemble company where the artistic decisions are made by a literary committee composed of our associated artists, we felt like we were uniquely in a position to definitely empower some writers. So we created out of one-on-one conversations with a area of playwrights, Alter Lab, which supports three to five writers a year. And the playwrights are required to write a new play, to identify and take a creative risk, either with their work, with their process, whatever that means to them, and to support their fellow writers. Everything else is set each year by the writers themselves based on what they need to achieve their goals. The thing that worried me with the program was that maybe Alter Theatre would be supporting these amazing playwrights and none of them would be writing plays that would be appropriate for Alter Theatre to produce because we produce in weird venues, we don't have a proscenium stage, we barely have lights, but as it turns out, we produced three out of the four plays that were written in our first year and we've got plans where we're currently producing one of the plays from the second year, Bago by Demo Everheem, which Jane was the dramaturge on. And our commission by Larissa Fasthorse is also on the docket for production in 2014-2015. So all of my fears about the program have not come true and oh my gosh, it's been so much more successful than I ever dreamed. And one of the plays that, well the very first play to be produced out of the Alter Lab residency was Anne's play. I feel like a dog, like I talk to. Well they all said. Yeah. Thanks. Well we'll do it together. We'll do it together. This is how our day goes. I'll say that I guess, I mean my relationship with Z-Space started nine or ten years ago when I was invited, I got a different, a Tornisol Emerging Playwrights residency, which doesn't exist anymore, but it was, there was four of us and we were given an invitation to work at Z-Space, work on a play, and I just remember David Dower at the time was like, you are welcome to come here anytime you want. This is before Z-Space had actually like a space, had space, but it was office space, and that was it, and a couple of rehearsal studios. And the invitation was just to come in and write at any time you wanted. And there was always either a weird like backseat of a band, you can sit on and write. And if the rehearsal rooms weren't being rented, you could go sit in there. There was a conference room. And I kind of, it was right at the end of my grad school at SF State, and I kind of never left, and sort of kept going there to work. At the same time, there was also like eight theater companies sharing office space, so it was this chance to meet a lot of people. And I think it was through that, this one I first met Lisa, I think I, then I started sending you stuff. Yeah, Lisa was an artistic director of Angkor Theater, which you still sort of are, right? Yeah. I'd go take him myself. Yeah, so then Lisa came, and then we, through Angkor, we worked together, and Lisa commissioned a play of mine with a Gruboni grant, and then Lisa took over Z-Space, and then Z-Space got a space space. And I remember, I liked that the Arena Theater all of a sudden, not all of a sudden, but they decided to do these playwright residencies there, and then through the Mellon Foundation that are, these are initial first models of the one that we eventually got. And I remember pitching to you, can we get one of those? And we actually, we wrote a reaction letter and didn't get it. And then when they had this pilot program, which we're a little apart of, which there's 14 theaters across the country that have these Mellon Foundation-funded resident playwrights, we were invited to submit an application, and now I hang out there a lot. So it's a three-year residency, they're all salaried. I go there, I have a desk, and I write there. I'm working on a couple different projects. I go to staff meetings once a week, and contribute not, well, weird things. I do more of a job or something, and I go on to the budget. And I've been sort of sometimes watching shows, taking notes sometimes, I've been reading scripts, and they're going to produce my play in November called The Totalitarians, and then we're working on a play that's going to be specific, commissioned for a z-space that we're kind of harnessing the actual potential of this giant former can factory, and how I can use that knowing where I'm going to write the play for, how I can use that to develop the play. And then sort of, I don't know, it's evolving. I feel like we're sort of amorphous and loose and discovering ways that we're helping each other. It's similar to cutting while it's a very organic relationship. And like Peter said, that he's been involved with z-space for the past ten years. And it really, there's no, really, anything we do at z-space, there's no real cookie cutter, I would say, and same with the residency. But I think we have to have, when we brought Peter in, and we were talking about the residency, making sure that our goals aligned and the desires aligned and that it was something that was going to help him as well as z-space. And for me personally and for our organization, putting an artist really in the center of the organization and having him be there on a daily basis has shifted the organization as it should be shifted, I think, when you put an artist's center to it. Because that is who we are ultimately serving. And on numerous occasions I've gone to Peter and asked him as a playwright for, to help me with certain situations that I didn't understand how to maybe approach as an administrator or producer. I think of myself as an artist as a producer as well. But from his perspective as a playwright, I had certain situations and said, you know, bounce things off of him. And he gave me, you know, he helped me with those ideas and suggestions. He wrote our fundraising letter this past fall car campaign. Again, coming from an artist or a playwright's point of view, how our constituency can help and give a back to our organization and the impact that we have on our community. In preparation for this panel, we got to have a conference call that we were circling around with some ideas that we thought folks might want to hear about and that were central to the residency experience. And one of them just being residencies as the perception of residencies as a closed club. Like, if you don't know who to ask, you can't get one, or the path to residency being through relationship. And you guys described your relationship really well. It's a time-lapse thing. Well, yeah, I would say that residency is such a, I'm more of a, it's not a concrete term at all. It's actually just a work of a relationship between a playwright and a theater and not going to be defined in so many different ways. And I think for us it was we were looking together for ways to advance that forward. And when this opportunity came to apply for this grant, we would apply for it together. So that's sort of, even that way, that's how we just find it. You could find a theater before you find the money or there are a lot of different ways to get where you, to get that relationship going. And I think that that method of applying for a community isn't keeping with their philosophy of putting people together as teams. You can't just be a theater and apply for funding and then go look for a playwright. You have to come together as a team before it even starts and then propose your ideas together. What about ultra theater? How the playwrights in your current ultra lab what is the relationship path that led into this? And can people apply? There's not another application, but the way that it happens really is again through relationships. One of the ways in which we empower our playwrights is that after you've been a resident writer you are then able to recommend writers for the future groups and the resident writers have a big site and who gets to come in next. Partly because they've been through it already. So they have a good sense of who their peers are and who it might work well for and who... Please don't go there. Not every residency is right for every writer. You really have to find the right match. And do you want to talk a little bit about how you came to it? You certainly had a... My memory is that and this may contradict me if this is not what you think. There was a play reading committee who read and read and read and read and met together an hour and again and read one or two plays that we were considering. And that was a very cumbersome to me process. And Jeanette held this idea of starting the residency program. I was lucky enough to be one of the first people in it. My experience before that as a playwright had been when I was six years old and I would write one every Sunday and my best friend and I would perform it for our parents on Sunday night. I have no idea what this place was about but it was a perfect feeling to think something and see it there and see it there. What I love about the program that is involved is we meet three times a year for two silent days and during that time we can virtually do what we want but in addition to that we have actors. If we want to hear something we tell Jeanette I want to hear that one act two. Now I've got a terrible lot of that for three and I want to listen to it. We have actors available and some of those actors stay with us right through the process we're eating it again and again and again and thus... when was mine done last year? No, yes, last March. Jimmy Dean had read every single reading all the way and knew what he wanted that was and I don't like it. That time spent around the dining room table writing for 25 minutes or having somebody say I'm stuck and here is where I'm stuck in the play that I had done. There were two dreams in it for two different people. One dream was there and fine. I could not find the other dream and Maricela picked up a book on my bookcase and said look at the pictures and like six pages in there was the dream or the scene and that has been truly interchanged between those of us in the lab. At the end of the first year we did a wrap up and I said to Jeanette, can I come back? I don't think you'd have thought about that. We agreed that Ann is grandfathered and she can do the playwright residency program as many times as she likes. I want to say just that this is not self-aggrandizement. It's thanks for the program. The play I wrote has been read in New York in a public reading and I'm now rewriting part of it as a result of that and it has been considered a production in New York. I would never have got there without this program and now I finally love our second show and it's coming together but I wasn't trying to rewrite the other one. Well the permanent residency is a great idea. It's nice to write another residency right here. But I like what Ann is saying about the support of the cohort team and how that camaraderie and mutual support had worked for you and at the Playwrights Foundation they have a monthly meeting and they offer a lot of similar types of things and I would like to ask Kate about how that support comes and how the monthly meetings are. I don't think that you bring in actors unless on rare occasions. Is that right? That's right. I think if you really feel strongly that you want actors to read when it's your turn to present something you could but there's something really nice about having it just be writers and sometimes I think if you're presenting in a way that no one's ever read before it can be nice sometimes when people aren't making huge acting choices that it's literally just being read the words first and so it functions well that way and the Playwrights Foundation residency is hugely about just playwrights supporting each other and Andrew is in the residency right now with me the Playwrights Foundation really provides opportunities for us and it's also open to us kind of figuring out what we need as a community for example we've been meeting sometimes out of the residency on like Friday mornings just to get together and write at a coffee shop really simple things like that that we know will help us and going to see shows together and just sharing opportunities, grants so the community aspect I think is really wonderful and that's something that I've been a part of in other times in my life that haven't necessarily been through residency that I feel like Playwrights usually get a lot out of just getting together that peer support and also with the monthly meeting does that self motivate I mean does that give you an opportunity to have a deadline or is it not deadline oriented? It is deadline oriented which I think is also very helpful and we're expecting to write a holding play each year that we're in the residency which people are generally doing anyway but it's great if you're looking for some kind of structure within that to know that you have certain deadlines and that people are going to be there and expect you to bring something substantially because they're taking their time to be there and listen and provide feedback So to be clear about the Playwrights Foundation brings in four new Playwrights every two years so certainly if you're a Bay Area they also have an emerging you can be considered for residency if you're an emerging Playwright so you'd want to talk to the staff at Playwrights Foundation more about that but if you're interested and particularly now as I mentioned before you're looking at feeling that it's been very successful and they are moving past this pilot phase and they are developing a little bit of a different structure I would just stay in touch with them if you're interested but one of the nice things about it is there is a certain amount of breadth in how many I love the one on one and I think it's an incredible opportunity that's great and then I love this peer support and the just more Playwrights being able to have opportunities so another thing that the Playwrights Foundation offers in its program is help with marketing if you're interested in marketing and looking at that they will help you review your grant applications and the staff or Amy will work with you on grant applications and just help you get that right because obviously that's what Amy does most of the time is write grants and write grants and I'm sure Lisa and Jeanette know all about that it also the program also offers dramaturgical support should you want it I think that I know Ultra Theatre does that too if you want it so they have a studio which Kate had said that you can use and they use it for the monthly meetings and then they use it to get together but I like that you're saying now you're going outside of that and meeting together and it has that flexibility where and Amy has said to us if there's a professional develop an opportunity you're interested in I can help you do that so there's a lot of flexibility who is there and what each of us needs so what before this point the relationship has been more informal of just being around the rights foundation and then letting in the residency but is there someone now that people can contact yes they can contact Marissa the two big Niles that's three names Marissa C-A-T-U-V-I-G Niles N-I-L-E-S and she's the R-P-I coordinator and I'm so glad I had that answer so from the writers a lot of a lot of the planning of residency is about an artistic home like the sense of an artistic home and that is clear has shaken up very differently among the residencies like it seems like the residencies that have more playwrights aren't necessarily in the artistic staff meaning like having that sort of season planning level of responsibility but they have this kind of support it can go on a spectrum on a spectrum or maybe they are but like what from the writers does the artistic home that this residency provides feel like well I mean it feels like a real home to me and it's fun to think about it's fun to be a playwright and not have your only duty be to write the play and that you can lend a sort of perspective or thought or insight to a whole realm of different things as a playwright it's not your primary mission or reason for living on the planet and I like that because I can't write all the time and I like to think of funny drink names sometimes or they're not all that trivial there's other responsibilities to write it's fun to have a sort of changing a global sense of what does it mean to be a writer or a playwright and what does that bring to a whole other a host of other possible responsibilities or things that happen at a particular company what's your favorite thing that you get to do write I think the drink names have been really fun yes gin friendships for his friendship that was really easy but I'll keep working on them I think sometimes the casual conversations that always happen especially in an open seating area like sea space sort of cross pollination is really nice and hearing different insights different parts of the organization is really great what about you Ann ask me the question is the artistic home that the residency provides what components about it are the most meaningful for you to be considered worthy of being in that place and focusing on just the new wing of it I have a profession of being a director for a very long time and what helps you in many technical ways about how things will work it doesn't give me that feeling of I'm creating the whole thing myself and I do a lot of what is called lucid dreaming and I've draft chunks of stuff that I've written and got about a bit straight to the computer and to be able to show that intimate stuff to other people and have them comment and help for the wing sometimes critical but in a way that is very supportive it's enabled me to go comfortably to where my greatest source is I mean I'm the first player wrote for for them I had this dream of the title and the girl and the first line and I knew everything about her and I got that out of the way and went to the computer and did that so I had something to say who are you where did you come from what do you think instead of a blank page and you also serve on the literary committee and you get to choose the season for the next year and identify writers and all sorts of other stuff too the literary committee at altered theater is comprised of 7 to 11 associate artists each year and we have two writers from our residency program who serve on that and is one of them and at altered theater we don't have an artistic director we're a bottom up ensemble company it's the literary committee that makes the decisions on which writers get chosen for the residency and which projects get green light for production and development and Anne is a huge voice in that what about you, Andrew what about the residency what parts of that artistic home have ended up being meaningful well first thing that comes to mind is the amazing gold rimmed chair from the royalist production of Susan Lawrence Park's play The Dead of the West and everyone complains about it as long as you get rid of it for years but it's my favorite chair at the moment is it a literal chair? absolutely I can't imagine it really looks like a throne it was the chair between the pair of Hatch of Seven I remember that I remember seeing that chair I really thought since years ago I had never thought about it but I can't imagine a more fitting artistic home than Cuddy Ball because Cuddy Ball has been described by some people as very strange and those same words have used to describe me yes, thank you so, just a couple things on that so my very first production outside of grad school was Christi Curtis and the Scarlet Larkage Rock produced and directed last year and it's a play that when I wrote it and every time I look at it for several years I thought who's ever going to do this no one's ever going to do it and then he made it happen beautifully and so I think I can't tell you how many times I'm able to write naturals and to write differently and to write more conventional right and oh, this is underproducible oh, this doesn't make any sense and then I hear the opposite from Rob and my newest play which I'm still very much working on we had meetings over earlier drafts he told me to make it more like Christi Curtis and make it more like Christi Curtis had this old woman who would have animals like gorillas and giraffes come out of her ear so make it more like a play that only Andrews does so I really appreciate it and also I feel like Rob was making a huge commitment and Paola Rolla making a huge including the board making a huge commitment to my growth as a writer my body of work and the evolution of that in a way that I don't think is possible oh, you get a commission from South Coast or you get a commission from this or that theater and while those are necessary things the relationship is totally different I'd also say that it's also a very satisfying work just to come because I've learned so much in this first year of the residency about theater and how theater can be you know, I'm one of my big theatrical influences perhaps the biggest one is the Peruvian theater life of Nia Chani and I've seen many of their shows and some works to study with them more than them but Rob, if you didn't know me I wanted to work with me he and Suzanne Pehl and I did her fundraise to bring Trace Raleigh one of my former teachers to work with the cast and Kristen Critters so that's sort of my background but Rob has a deep he's deeply knowledgeable about European theater really Poland above all but also Russia and Germany who love us and so I feel like I'm getting an amazing theater education I want to talk a little bit about strangers because you would ask the question how do writers come to us and they usually come to us through our Friske's festival and our mission is to produce experimental plays and in some ways that puts me in an interesting position because there are a lot I love I love Gibson and I love Chekhov I think they're wonderful writers and I love a lot of the playwrights who decide to follow in their footsteps but a question I get to ask is what about the people who are following in Beckett's footsteps what about the people who are following in Inesco's footsteps or Stine's or one of the people who are doing something completely different and so I get to ask the question how can I support those playwrights and I've been a part of the literary committees and I've worked for a lot of playwright festivals I greatly admire like the Playwrights Foundation and like the Playwright Center in Minneapolis but what I noticed what happens is that there'd be these weird plays, these strange plays like Andrew talked about and there'd be two or three people on the committee who would just love these plays and the rest would be like I don't know and those plays often would never make it to the final round and now Amy Neeler and I have a great relationship she like sends those plays to me there were a couple people who loved this play and you should look at it but it didn't go all the way so we're actually on the lookout for these plays that other theaters might not produce and at risk of this we give five plays a week-long workshop and that winds up being kind of a starting point for playwrights in Cannonball and out of that to grow full production like crispy putters and out of that to grow up residency and certainly Christine Ammons, Trojan Barth has had a life all over in a world and went to A.R.T. and beyond so Kate you're an artistic home my favorite thing I don't want to say just the time that has carved out for us to be in that space together because being a playwright is often very solitary things especially if you're just writing something you're not in production and just everybody kind of getting there from the East Bay from where you live getting into that space together on Sunday nights or whenever we're meeting and knowing that we're going to spend three hours talking about work is pretty special that doesn't happen that often and people are pretty serious about it and dedicated to that conversation so that's the most meaningful Could you share with us how you got involved in the program with what the relationship was Sure It's funny when Robert is talking about strange plays because my plays are often falling to that category and I lived in New York City for almost 15 years and I was at a working playwright in the kind of downtown experimental world there and I submitted to the Bay Area playwrights festival a crazy play that I wrote and it didn't get in there nine years ago but John Inspector wrote me an email and said I really like your play just so you know that he was on the committee and so we just kind of knew each other, you know, were at that point and then I moved here three years ago and my good friend of mine who's a good friend of him said you know, you've got to shake head for coffee you've got to touch with me and get coffee and just kind of met each other in person and then from there that year, 2011 and then he invited me to submit an application for the residency which I did and that's how I got involved so it was another kind of long winding way to get there so being a playwright and I remember that play very well and I loved it so being a part of the festival then led you to being a part of the residency but there's also rejection involved in the story yeah it's not, it's very rarely I think just an easy, meet each other done, you know, there's a lot that goes into these relationships and yeah, rejection is part of that sometimes but it has happy ending yeah, very happy ending it's in a happy middle oh absolutely I think, you know, if you can keep going and keep doing this I think usually you do come to a place where things make sense after a while well we've got 20 minutes left, I would love to hear what folks, what you guys are thinking what questions you have for our amazing panelists you're our amazing panelists thank you folks very much my name is Anna, I'm a local playwright and I'm really interested in your thoughts about how things can create relationships with literary managers, groups, and directors because as you were pointing out, we playwrights work in silence on our own in solitude, boy do we ever you know, it's a lot of work to burn one of these folk in place and, you know, the traditional point of contact of course is a submission process right? horrible for you guys, horrible for us don't do it, don't bother me I'm serious, absolutely I have got, for years, I have stacked rejection letters but it's not a very positive process for either end so, alternate ways that we playwrights can get to know people on the producing end I've got one idea in which I talk to artistic directors and say hey, what do you really wish someone were going to play about what do you want on your stage give me two months, I'll give you two scenes of an outline, we'll do a stage reading that's one way do you have any other ideas? I can't tell you how much it is about relationships and it's also, I think it's really important for the playwrights to know who they're pitching to and what kind of work that organization does I probably take at least two meetings a week with playwrights and artists from all over the place probably that's really important to me to get to know them, to get to know their work and vice versa it's really important that the playwright really gets to know the organization's work for you to come see the work that's happening in my space, to understand who the staff is, to know who Peter is to look at the history of the kind of work that I do and if you figure it out, it's not we don't kind of have a certain aesthetic don't waste your time, really just don't waste your time with it or you find out there's something that really fits with cutting balls aesthetic in their mission submissions don't even bother with it as far as I'm concerned I don't have a literary manager a lot of the plays that come to me are for people I know or Peter tells me about or Rob tells me about or Andrew or Kate or Jane or Jeanette I count on my peer group to send them a lot come through agents as well who know the type of work that I'm looking for so I really, again from me submissions don't even work and it's a waste of your time and your money I would absolutely emphasize I completely agree with that the other thing that I would say is that if you was a playwright, haven't been to see a play at my theater, please don't submit because you don't know what we're doing it's that simple we perform in non-traditional spaces our work is very stripped down and if you don't know us why should I spend the time to get to know you however if you come to see the show there's probably about a 70% chance that I will personally be there so feel free to come talk to me or I will be there there will always be a member of our literary committee at one of our shows so come get to know us because I can't emphasize enough how much I want to love your voice and I also want to get to know you as a person because our company is really committed to supporting your creative growth and I have to both believe in you as a human being and in you as an artist but I think it's a really good point about knowing where like Rob was talking about the type of work that he does or with Jeannette you wouldn't want to submit a play to Alter Theater unless if you didn't want it done in rocking chairs then you really shouldn't do it but the first play that I went to at Alter Theater was done in a room called the rocking chair store and all of the audience sat around and rocked if that's going to drive you crazy then you shouldn't do it I thought it was great and it was very interesting and exciting so in her way that's sort of an experimental theater too or altered or alternative but I love the idea that submissions can be not a great use of your time and that because these theaters and producers and artistic directors that are sitting here are really asking you to come and come and participate and be in their spaces the other thing for me at these spaces that I rarely will take a play that has come that has handed to me we're sitting down and say here's a play I rarely do that because for me it's much more about commissioning and developing and then producing and I don't always produce a commission or the development sometimes it's different so again that's understanding who you're pitching to and what kind of work that you think that they're going to want to hear well I said you would probably be more likely to catch a hit show or if you hear a show that's being talked about as a way of discovering you are commissioning the first stuff that I did in the Bay Area was self-produced self-produced solo performance I got involved in a theater company with friends I went to college with sketch a comedy group and wrote stuff with them form of them that all of it to them producing one of my earlier full-length plays that was a hit show and that's all is some very self-motivated self-produced origin pushing me out into the world a lot watching more successively than sending scripts to people so sometimes it gets getting up on its feet is a really effective way for people to find out I think that's in my experience too that being self-motivated to work with just before thinking about oh I want this big theater to do my play but we're trying to just work with other artists that you really like that you match with sensibility-wise that whose work excites you and kind of starting with that in my experience is often what leads you to kind of expanding those relationships to being more about productions and more about those bigger career things but for me I just work with a lot of the same people in New York for years and years and we had a playwrights called 13P that became known and kind of as a group we all sort of met people but it all started with a bunch of unknown writers who just liked each other and like thinking out something we wrestled with is this idea of submissions and a lot of people aren't doing submissions and that makes a lot of sense we decided to continue to take submissions and it definitely helps to have been to our theater and know the kind of work that we do we've actually started having a fee and there are two reasons for that one is we're paying our literary committee for their time and we also want you to think before you click send we don't want it to be too easy because a lot of people don't we even read our mission and just send their very conventional realistic play which might be wonderful but it's just not an art and so it doesn't make sense for us to read it we could very easily go to those submissions but I keep holding on to it because we've actually we've done a number of plays that were playwrights first professional productions and I'm very proud of that what I like doing I think it's great to give a young playwright a production and see them go and do more stuff all over the country and also we have a lot of people who submit to us and actually might have been working with us are people that have been coming to the theater who know our work and know what we're going to do well and so it's a good match because they know us but you know there are a number of people who we've just found blind just they submitted and it was a great play but I do agree that so you can submit to us but I think the other thing is I'm here a director who's not an artistic director he's a project and see if that director will do a reading in her room with some actors and just let you hear it out loud and that could be the beginning of a relationship then at least you're not that's much more satisfying than sending it just getting a bunch of people together and hearing it out loud I always think it's great and it's good for you but it's also good for getting a number of someone in that group will probably wind up believing in the play and start talking about it so that's another thing to think about we've got ten minutes left I just want to add so I turned your question unless it was a commission I wouldn't I would for myself never write a play that I thought an artistic director would love because I feel that a good artistic director will love a really bold original voice so I would say write when you're dying to write and it's kind of repeating now what people said but write when you're dying to write and then find the group partners that want to it may take a while I think it was seven years from my first draft of this in the production also in terms of local resources I spent a lot of my twenties taking playwriting classes at playwrights foundation we got La Cruz Tavio Solis Julie Jensen I can't remember who else I definitely got on Amy Mueller's radio but also I got to know other local writers and I got to know these very well established writers who have national reputations and I applied for the journal fellowship at the Flair Center in Minneapolis when I was in grad school so on the selection committee was we got La Cruz and we hung out also after you know, like after hours after class and also playground if you're not involved that's also a very very accessible opportunity to have your works that's a great idea too I think obviously the playwrights foundation takes submissions to the festival and I'm sure they would take a submission for the residencies and the resident playwrights of these four classes have often taught these classes too that Andrew's referring to so that offers another opportunity to have some income and in the playwrights foundation does offer, I mentioned the stipend it's not big but it is $500 and we're also funded by the Kenneth Reynon Foundation in part and also Clyshackers so I do want to mention that we do have some funding from them let's get another question yes so it seems like right now there's a fair amount of attention from funders for these residency programs do you anticipate that will go away or if it you know, will this belling program, the pilot program renew and if it does will you keep the residency programs or do you think there's other ways to support them our residency program isn't going away but it's not really funded by anybody right now we did apply for an NEA grant for it we have applied for grants from other funders here locally what I would like to be able to do with it, if it were funded is to increase the stipend that we're paying to our playwrights, we pay our commission playwright $5,000 but our resident playwrights it just depends on funding, the first year it was funded by theater bay areas cash program and I think we paid everybody a stipend of what was it $375 essentially we wanted to set it up so that playwrights didn't lose any money so and I actually had a playwright fight with me saying that's too much money, I've never been paid for a residency I'm like, I'm asking you for a year of work $375 is not too much money but it paid for their transportation back and forth we paid for a lot of company all that sort of stuff the second year we paid everybody $500 we asked for enough funding to pay everybody $2,500 for the next season but we'll find out about that I think that the benefits of the residency program are so profound for our theater company that it would make me cry if it had to go away the infrastructure that the company needs to truly support the resident writers is something that's not funded and eventually we will burn out if we can't fund it properly but right now it's so rewarding that we definitely have plans to keep it going for the foreseeable future my hopes to keep it going and expand it actually is the hope I'd like to keep Peter on staff for the next 10 years that is my hope because I want to keep him in the Bay Area I don't want to lose him to New York or LA and I invested in him and I want to continue that relationship and again in expanding I would love to see us have 2-3 playwrights at any given time in residency on that same note this is Beth here there are other playwrights in this room I just finished working with Kate Ryan on this last 100 days so it's that last night but we do, I open our doors are open to the public and to the playwrights as the artists I want them to be revolving doors we do a lot of around the table readings in house readings we open it up to the community so there's really other opportunities besides this more formal residency that we're talking about to have your work heard and to participate within the organization so I would look at those opportunities and our doors are open yeah and your doors are open I mean you really put your money there I have done as a director or a dramaturg done so many informal readings at Seaspace but it's really a home for not just bay area playwrights but bay area theater makers definitely the doors closed wouldn't you bring a buzzer I would also just say that it is I don't know if it is a fad or not but with funders it seems that residencies are very popular right now as far as foundations looking to support them not just Nellan but the national replay network has a very robust residency program with their 26 member theaters all over the country I feel like every hit a point where everyone was realizing that the current system of doing things was not working very well for at least for playwrights so I feel like there's a lot of people talking about it thinking about different ways to do it and not just playwrights but specifically you know there used to be resident companies of actors all over the place too and then they went away and I feel like everyone's missing that I think a lot of this is in response to that great book I'll read this for you and I think that kind of let everybody know how little actors are being paid I think someone needs to write a book called the actor salad and then we can get the foundations because it took that book to make foundations realize that I mean it's a to people in the outside world it's a shock how little artists are paid and I think that put everybody's focus on playwrights but I think all our artists need to be paid more and I think people are starting to get the message and realize how little actors, directors, playwrights designers are all paid and so I hope that this is the next trend with foundations to really try to get actors, I mean all theater artists making a living wage Jeanette at Altra Theater has also really made every effort to pay everyone all the time sort of across the board even if it's commensurate salary so I have to say that they say we pay everybody equally unwell for their work so with that we're going to wrap up it is 4.30 we give a round of applause to our audience the streaming will be available on HowlRound I'll put something up on the theater area website so we can go find it and yes I'm happy to get this word thank you very much for coming to us thank you I don't know what that means anymore. I don't know what that means anymore. I don't know what that means anymore. I don't know what that means anymore. I don't know what that means anymore. I don't know what that means anymore. I don't know what that means anymore. I don't know what that means anymore. I don't know what that means anymore. I don't know what that means anymore. I don't know what that means anymore. I don't know what that means anymore.