 So this is our other platform's panel, and we segue pretty nicely into this with a lot of what we were talking about at the end of the last panel, which is how some of these artists have to sort of make a living in ways that don't completely drain your soul. So we're going to get into how all of these artists do that. So I'm going to turn it over to Beth Blickers, who is our wonderful moderator. And you're going to get started. Awesome, thank you Amy. I just want to take a second because I've had such a fun day and last night, and I have learned things and I have laughed really, really hard. And I have met really cool people, including somebody that we've known each other by email and phone for like 20 years. And we both live in New York and I had to come to Miami to meet her. So can we just take a second to say thank you to Susie, to Amy, to the volunteers, to everybody on this panel. It's remarkable, like the entire event, the care taking. I forgot my phone charger. Lauren saved me. I needed a Diet Coke. Amy saved me. So I'm just really grateful to everybody. And I'm grateful to all of you for being here. This is a very odd shape. I'm going to do that a lot. And I'm thankful to everybody on this panel both and then a lot of them shared work with me in advance of that. So I've been reading and listening to things. And so I'm going to give you, even though you've met about half of them at this point, I'm going to give you a little praises on each of them. And I didn't write it in the order in which they were sitting. So I'm going to have them just give you a little wave as I talk a bit about them. So we're going to start with Greg Edwards. He is a lyricist, a playwright. He wrote books and lyrics to two of the Take A Ten podcast, which we've heard a bit about today and one of which you're going to see tonight. He is also a computer game designer. He writes essays and humor pieces. And he has some Laugh Out Loud funny insights into working in India and going to Disney Paris. I encourage you to see those out online or to hit him up in person to tell you some stories. We also have Donna Hoke. Have I said that right? Yeah. Awesome. She is a playwright, a blogger, a regional rep for the Dramatis Guild, a moderator of the official playwrights of Facebook, a stage with helpful career-building insights, as well as special features of interviews with artistic directors and literary managers, and interviews with playwrights who do not live in New York. Andy Romandon. As we know, he is the force behind the Take A Ten podcast. You will also hear two of his pieces tonight. He is also a pianist, a music director, a composer and a lyricist. And I wrote this last night and then Georgia Stitz said something this morning that made me think maybe it wasn't as funny, but I'm going to say it anyway. She said composers should work in lots of different forms. He has worked in forms as varied as bluegrass, ska bands, church choirs, and rappers. I have a feeling I him a drink too. Here are some stories. Jennifer Jasper is a storyteller, a writer, performer, and director, and author of solo shows in a number of short plays, including one you will see tonight. She also grew up having some intense dinner time experiences that will make you laugh and cringe at the same time. Find her at the bar too. I was listening to them last night and I was like, oh my gosh, we had such quiet dinners in comparison to our family. And then Casey McClain, who joins me from New York, as we've heard, works at Samuel French and is the co-artistic director of their off-off Broadway short play festival. But she is also a lighting designer and is resident designer for Concrete Temple Theater with whom she's toured to Sri Lanka, Turkey, Italy, Bulgaria, and India, which means I want a panel of Casey and Greg talking about internationalism. But not today. Or at least not this afternoon. So what we're here to talk about, and I love that we have a bunch of young people sitting at the table, actually by show of hands, who's a writer? Who's a performer? Who's a director? Okay. Any choreographers? Alright. People who do a web series. Okay. Producers? Okay. Anybody left from the Kenny Finkel-related writers group that's doing the radio place? Yes? Yes? Okay. Excellent. Good. So, you know, I was going to sort of make a point of how much we have multi-hyphenants up here on the stage, but also to make the point that we have a lot of you in the audience as well. And that's kind of what we're here to talk about is to say, when you think playwright or you think musical theater writer, you think, you know, they write a script that in playing time is 90 minutes or greater and they attach it to an email and if it's a musical they attach some Dropbox files and they send it out into the world to get it produced. But in fact, there are many, many other things that you can do and the panelists may join me in saying you probably should do if you want to build a thriving career. They are all doing that and we are going to talk to them about that. I am not going to make each of you, because we only have an hour, answer every question. So if you have a dying need to answer something or say something, please leap in. But we're just going to kind of start by saying that if we all simultaneously agree that sitting in your writer's carrot writing is no longer sufficient to having a career, why do you think that is? We're talking to your microphone. We're live streaming. Nobody knows you're there. And Casey, as somebody with half of your hat on, is the person that artists are trying to access, what are some of the things they can do to find you to get to you? Where are you paying attention to things? Well, to the city. Absolutely. I love this festival. It's also hard to question too, because it's also like where do I look? Where do the artistic directors or the literary directors look and work in front? One of the things is like, come be our friend. Don't stalk us, but be our friend. Talk to us, tell us what you're doing. Become Facebook friends with us. Then we see your posts. I mean, those are like little, little things. There's also conferences. This is a great opportunity. And I know that there's a couple other different conferences that are leaking out of my head right now that literary directors, artistic directors are at. There's this mission, of course, that's always rolling around. But if you get to know us and we start to know who you are, we'll start to take note of your work and follow it. Great. Donna, since you interviewed 52 artistic directors and literary managers, was there a recurring theme to what made an artist pop for them? What made them pay attention to an artist? There wasn't. And what she's referring to is a blog series that I did called Real Inspiration for the Playwrights Project, which started out because people were complaining that submitting works cold was not ever going to get them anywhere. And I was convinced that there must be success stories to cold solutions. So I went in search of them, and that's why I did this series. And they do exist, but what it ended up kind of morphing into was a primer. Is that on? Like you can hear me anywhere. Was a primer on how to try and get your place produced. And there was a ton of advice that they gave, similar to what Casey's saying. And from my perspective, I think it all comes down to the same thing. You have to get your name recognized so that when that script crosses their desk earlier, I've heard that name, or I know that person from somewhere. And, you know, to go through everything that they talked about would be a lot. But it really isn't having much of what Casey said in terms of just getting to know. In terms of just getting to know the theaters that you want to work with, and getting to know the people, and maybe your work, and using the internet to build some name recognition for yourself. But I suggest you go read that. It's RIPP on my blog. And it's still archived, even though it's like two years old. Great. And Jennifer, you were nodding your head through a lot of that. So you're a Seattle based. I am. I'm Seattle based, and it's very hard for me to find a character. It's the last thing on my list. Usually you have to shove me in and shove the door because I'm doing too many other things. But I would say, you know, submission and, you know, get a website going. Get yourself present and go to functions like this and network. And submit, you know, who, why is it going to hurt, right? Why not try it, because amazing things can happen. I had a submission process that amazing things have happened, and now I'm here two years later. So, yeah, I think, and also, you know, don't be, don't be afraid to follow the road that your life is leading along. Like if somebody had ever told me I was going to be up here at the playwright, I would have left at you. Because I've been doing theater since my teens, and I'm now in my fifth decade, and I'm doing something I would never thought that I would do, but it's all at this point. So all the experiences and all the stuff I've done up until this point just got in my hair. So never say no. Great. And I love that you highlighted having a website, because this is a fight I have a lot with a lot of artists who say, you know, I haven't done enough, why am I doing a website that just looks, you know, ecomaniacal. So having been on a lot of your websites and having a somewhat reluctant tech guru on this panel as well. Let's talk about what makes a good website. What do you look for when you go to other websites and you're doing some homework? What came up as you were designing your websites? At what point in your career did you do them? I married a graphic designer. Always helpful. And so let's unpack that. So when did you first build a website? When you got married? Well, she was like, you know, you need to do more, you know, in marketing and everything else because you don't market yourself, which I'm horrible at self-marketing. I think a lot of artists are. I hate tuning my own horn. It's really difficult for me. And finding somebody, whether it be your spouse or your partner or a friend or somebody who really believes in who you are as an artist, and they push you, listen to them and let them help you. Let the people who want to help you help you, I guess. Because for me it's really hard, even though I'm a solo performer, it's really hard for me to push myself with that. So, great. Was there a thought process behind what you curated to put on your website? And I'll admit that that's a somewhat leading question. You have some photos on your website that I have to say it takes about 1.4 seconds to get an impression of who you are. It's fast. Yeah. And that's like people who came to see shows and took photos of me and also the graphic designer element. But I did it specifically to get my solo workout. So that's when I really started pushing the website to win at least developing my solo shows. Great. Does anybody want to talk about what they kind of curated what they put of themselves online? Sure. I should practice this by saying I do have a website, but unfortunately my graphic design skills are on par with my fashion. So it's about like one step above inserting your eyes into a shredder. However, the audience doesn't probably go into this. When designing the website, I wanted to make sure that information about the various shows and essays and whatnot I worked on were all available. So I break it down into sections kind of like each of the different platforms that I work in, namely theater, essays, games. I think that's it. And then for within each platform having to break down the various projects that exist, just things like someone who's trying to learn about me or someone who wants to do the work would be interested in. For instance, what are some highlights from the work? What are for the plays? What are their character counts? If these have been reviewed, what are the most flattering critical quotes taken out of context? And then also just I'm also, I mentioned like most writers, really bad at self-marketing. I hate talking about myself. He said, well, talking about himself. And so for me, most of it is just being like, okay, I will put my website in my email signature and call it a day. So I called it a day roughly six years ago and just hopefully like what people need to find me online if they've ever emailed me before, they know my web address, if they Google me. I am not the black median, but two or three spots down, that's me. I'm not the farmer's insurance agent from Phoenix or the soccer player from California. They're a dollar shit bank after her. Casey, I want to add though, if you don't have a website, and I'm going to talk about mine, but if you don't, the very least you should have is an NVX presence, which is, you know, if you have a profile on NVX, that should be one of the first things that pops up when your name is searched, and you can put your bio on there and your plays and, you know, the production histories of the plays. So it's kind of a compromise if you can't afford a website or you just don't feel like you have enough to go online, at least there's somewhere people can find you and your contact information in your place. And do people, does everyone know what NVX is? Is it helpful to unpack that at all? So there's an organization called the National New Play Exchange. It's run by this amazing force of nature named Nan Barnett. And they have member theaters and core members and associate members, and they put plays into their own pipeline where if multiple theaters choose to produce the same play and everybody does their own standalone production, their own actors, their own directors, they each get a little bit of funding to be a part of what they call the rolling world premiere. They can have kind of, you know, group confabs to talk about marketing challenges or casting challenges. And one of the things that NNPN did to further disrupt the system was that they decided the sort of agent submission to theater process was not the most effective process on the planet. Debate amongst yourselves outside this panel. And so they created what's called the New Play Exchange, or NPX, and you can very, very simply upload a snippet of a play. You can upload the full script of something. You can have your contact info. Georgia said earlier this morning, you know, one of the things she had to do was just make sure she was findable. And that's huge. I used the New Play Exchange to find people. And I'm an agent. You would think I would know how to find people, but I will go out and say, you know, are they represented? Where are they represented? What's their email address? So it's definitely a super handy way if you're a writer to get material out there. Yeah, and I was just going to say, my partner, he's an e-commerce, and because e-commerce works for major fashion brands, but I actually take his head all the time because he's one of those guys who, I don't want to know it down, but he makes you Google-able. So he knows all the tricks and tips and spins. And e-commerce isn't just for Nike or, you know, Gap. It's for us too. It's for theater. I know Facebook is one of the quickest ways that I learn about events. And I know it can seem daunting and annoying to keep inviting people to Facebook events or things like that, social media. But it's actually really important. I know a lot about people in this room just because I watch them on Facebook. You know, I'm always watching you guys. But it's important for us too. So my theater company, Concrete Temple Theater, our website is built actually very specifically for tourings. We like to build visual shows that we design and do in New York. We do and run them in New York for short snippets just so that we can get it up on its feet. But our actual passion in life is traveling. So we built shows to travel to Sri Lanka and India and stuff like that. So our whole website is designed so that you can see our tour packages and that kind of stuff. And as if we needed further confirmation as to technology facilitating communication, I just got texted a picture of myself on this panel. So thank you for just doing that. So as you make choices of how much of yourself or your work to put online as you decide, oh, you know, somebody in the audience posted 15 minutes of my solo show. Is 15 minutes too much? Do I want the whole thing up there? You know, clearly making the choice to put podcasts out in the world. How do you decide how much? Is there too much? I'm very specific. And I don't allow anyone to film me in my work. And usually I have people that they are going around and, you know, my wife is one. She sees you in the camera and she'll be like, no. So I do have video, but it's all passworded for when I apply for grants and stuff. I only want them to see it. However, I do do a storytelling program down in Portland. I'm invited down there every once in a while. They're PDX and they do, and I sign a release. And my stuff is podcast with them and out. And there's a few on my website from that. And so those I'm very specific, I sign a release and I say yes because they're a great source to get my material out to different areas that I wouldn't normally be. So I think it's, you know, your responsibility to make sure that people aren't filming you. And I was part of a show that we conceded and performed back in the early 90s and not around five years ago I found it and like somebody had filmed the show and had put it out on the web, you know. And it was like, oh my gosh, our script is out there that anyone could have taken it. I don't think anyone has, even though it was brilliant. Has anyone gotten a call about work because of putting themselves out there, either specifically a theater writer or through cancel play or work? George just did, wants to leave it. You're a part of this conversation no matter where you sit. Awesome, she's definitely gotten inquiries through her website because of videos that are on YouTube. I know that people have gotten things through NPX. I have heard success stories about that and I wanted to speak to you. You could put up the sampler a whole play, as the project manager for NPX has said that like 90% of theaters want the whole play up there. And also there's an opportunities module whereby a theater will put out a call for plays through NPX. You will not get notification that if your whole play is not up there. So that's just something to think about and know. But to answer that question directly, I can't say that I've gotten an absolute direct hit, but since I increased my web presence and had a website, I've definitely gotten more work and more productions. I think I became a better playwright. I think that people just started to recognize the name. So I can't really point quantitatively to what made that happen, but I think it's just kind of a momentum building. And for me, my experience has been primarily getting cross-platform work in that because of my travel blog to NBI I ended up getting my first awkward way show which was commissioned by a travel agency that wanted a show about travel. And apparently they wanted people to like travel, so I don't think they'd run my blog that closely. It's actually a funny blog. You have to hunt it out. And also for, I had also do travel writing. I'd written as part of a travel blog about my experience at Euro Disney. And a friend saw it and submitted it to a contact he had at Los Angeles Review Books and then it ended up getting published there. I'm being reframed as a culture essay. So like, I'm not a culture. So I guess my experience is like, when I work cross-platform, it's not for the conscious purpose of I'm going to try to get a job in the least direct way possible. But rather just, especially with theater, especially with musical theater, you're so beholden to the schedules of others that when a particular project is on temporary hiatus, the choices are, okay, I can sit there and do nothing, or I can work in another medium that interests me. And I have found that to be, like, unexpectedly useful in terms of getting work in the mediums that I do work in. Great. Anyone else with a burning story to tell? So the big topic that I feel like I constantly have in my life is, you know, sort of drain and work-life balance. And as I've been sitting at this conference the last few days, I've been planning a conference that happens in two weeks in Portland because I, for a few more weeks, was the president of literary managers in drumticks with the Americas, so I literally just answered a text about seeing a walkthrough of the banquet space the morning we arrive. And I will admit that there are times that I am just tired. I'm almost too tired to ask the next question. You know, how do you carve out time to be people? I'm also an aunt, which is the one thing I will actually carve time out for. Are there things you will carve out time for? Do you think you're good at it? If so, give me tips. If you're bad at it, just make me feel better by saying that. I'm a terrible mother. I suspect that's not true. What do you have to make time for? Like, your children probably have to eat once in a while. They probably have to eat every time. I think, for me, because I have a lot of hats and a lot of different jobs, and I love everything that I do. But I also have a border colleague. I don't have any children here, but I have a border colleague that I love to walk. So I definitely carve out time for that. And my partner is here at the conference with me. But it's important to actually, you know, one of the good things about theater is you know there's a season and you know the months that you're busy. So if I just, you know, go, okay, January's going to be hell because we're busy at T-Mail French and I've got this show and this show and this show, but February, that's looking a little better. So as long as I can plan my year in advance or at least six months in advance, and I make sure that I'm free here and if somebody's like, hey, I've got this project and if it doesn't pay a lot of money, then honestly, no. If it pays a lot of money, then I'll say yes. This kind of, you mentioned it earlier with your tech job. I do point and sale restaurant systems. I install point and sale systems for restaurants. So I have a little bit of a tech geek as well for Italian restaurants. It's even super clear. And I get really passionate about it. But I did that for like 12 years. I traveled a lot and really kind of disconnected from my theater and worked and worked and worked and got myself out of debt. And that was my priority to give myself to a point where I could, you know, at an older age then be able to take more creative time and I budgeted it down within, like, I am very, very tightly budgeted. But I've gotten to the point, and this kind of refers to the panel previously that's taken me, I'm in my 50s, and I now finally at the point where I'm 50-50. I'm 50% worked for money and 50% worked for money. And creative. And I'm hoping to keep making that that percentage of me time be more creative and more flexibility. But even now, even carving out two and a half days it's still very hard to find enough time for all the different hats in those two and a half days. So Joey's a struggle, but... I want to say, I mean, I'm in a point where most of my pain work is still not theater-related and, you know, I want to get to the point where it's the other way around. I had a teacher in high school who taught finance and one of the things he taught us then was, you know, when you're doing your monthly budget and you're trying to save money, you invest, always pay yourself first. And then whatever money is left for the rest of your stuff. So I kind of take that mentality with this. So the first thing I do every morning is make my submissions. Because even if you're not writing, you still have work that you need to be working out there. So that's the first thing I do. The first hour of the day. What new submissions are there? What do I need to get out? So that even if I'm not finding the time to write, I'm still doing the marketing, which will keep the momentum going until you can carve out that writing time. So that pay yourself first mentality works really great with that. I'm working out, too. I'm working, I'll skip it in time. But yeah, that I would definitely recommend. Always be marketing even if you're not creating. Great. So we have a bunch of students here who are in the pathway of life of deciding where they're going to school, maybe if they're going to school, where they're going to live. We've got Florida-based artists. We've got panelists from a variety, who live in a variety of places. So clearly you do not have to live in New York in order to be an artist. The panel answers this. But can we unpack a little bit about where you live, having impact on career, choices people have made with that regard, choices they may be regret, choices they are thrilled about, knowing that you're possibly influencing future generations of decision makers and artists? I'll recommend the series that I wrote called Tony Playwrights Living Outside New York, where interview 10 really successful playwrights who don't live in New York City, and they all talked about what their journey was in their city. And I also recap them in a piece for Hal Brown, but one of the big things that came out of it is that it does matter what city you choose to live in. That's not New York City. Buffalo, for example, is horrible, and I live there. It's a great theater town, but it's not a good place for a playwright. You need to have a city that's... I mean, if you're talking about writers, it's a great place if you want to go back and build your resume, but for a playwright it's not so much. But a theater that has connections to the new play sector, that has an NPN board theater, that has an MFA in playwriting, that has something that is making people look at that city. That has a regional theater. Any one of those things is an arm into the new play sector. So you don't want to be like Buffalo, or you're like a bridge, an island with no bridges outward. So I think that's really important. I moved from Albuquerque. That's where I got my degree, and I moved with an improv company that we were five years in Albuquerque. And in the late 80s, because there was nothing happening in Albuquerque, there was a little something happening now in Albuquerque. There's much more theater now than there was back in the late 80s. And we decided to move to Seattle, which was just starting to really get its theater lights underneath it, and the small theater community booming. And it's now really vibrant, and it's an amazing place for new plays. A new playwright, so. And if you're in the tech industry that want to work for Amazon, it's awesome. But it's a really great city work, and I'm finding it's a really young theater's town. There are people who are just digging their feet in and doing new work constantly. There's lots of theater opportunities for people. And for playwrights. It's a great place for a new playwright to get their work produced and workshopped. So, I mean, even though, and it's taken me how many years living in Seattle to finally get working in New York. So it's kind of mine. Yeah, and I'll just say, as my company is in New York, we certainly like to get out of New York. New York is a very jaded theater town. And, you know, as much fun as it is to have all your friends there with the audiences. They're very like, you know, you know, they're all, they go on for days, and then we go to somewhere else. We'll go domestically too. We did Colorado Shakespeare, or Colorado French last February. And you just go into these places that don't have lots and lots of art. And you're just like, amazing. I saw theater, and there was a live cellist on stage, and there was puppetry, and just things that they don't see. New York is just convenient for us because we all live there. But you can live anywhere as long as you're passionate about knowing what you want. And also, you're going to school. You're probably going to change your mind in three years, because Lord knows I was an actor and then a director, and now a lighting center. Will I be in five years? I don't know. I don't know. I'm looking forward to seeing. Yeah. So, Andy, one of your kind of other platform capacities is that you serve as pianist and a music director to other composers and musical theater writers. And I imagine there are days where that's amazing and you watch somebody fix a problem and it shows you how to fix a problem in one of your own shows. And I imagine there are days when you think, you're an idiot. Why am I supporting you? Why am I not working on my own work? Is that true? Or everyone's a genius. I work mostly musical theater and regional theaters and the kind of work that's already been established in the classes. Okay, so it's past a certain litmus test. I'm not working very often with new composers on new works. I've done readings here and there, but when I'm a music director, I'm just there to present what they've given me. And exploring somebody else's score with that level of depth, is there a journey for yourself as a composer doing that? Only that. I mean, yeah, well, part of why I started the podcast was just being frustrated with seeing a lot of bad stuff get readings and producing productions and workshops and just being like, I know I can do this. I just don't have a venue. But also, the better part is sometimes you don't see stuff that really inspires you. I can't think of anything up top in my head besides like, what's that story in Chicago or something where I know it sounds kind of down and obvious to kind of bring up those. But getting to play what's that story for six weeks, and that's a weekend every night, discovering something in that score that was new every single night and new and amazing and perfect and brilliant. Or Chicago or little night music or whatever it is and kind of learning from the classics and the greats that way is really informed kind of what I do as well. That's great. I have a totally tangential non-fellow question. So I can sort of imagine like this morning as watching Georgia do her conversation and I thought, I'm not a writer, like I could picture writing a play or a book of a musical like a character talks and a character talks and in theory I could picture writing lyrics like there's a moon, it is June there, I just wrote a lyric. But the notion of like sitting down composing something absolutely blows my mind. So like, I couldn't ever write any of the essays that I'm reading in my office this week but I could picture writing an essay and putting it online. But when you sit down to say, I'm going to create a podcast of short musicals, I would imagine there's 8,000 steps to making that happen. All right. You want to walk us through some of them? We're talking about the music writing part or the podcast. Well, you know I'm obsessed with how you write them and that may be another panel unto itself. But sure, like are you in the same room with your collaborators? Are you scaping with them? Well, I'm just, the writing process itself is its own process. In terms of writing music, composition, that's, I'll just say to all the non-musicians out there, you're not non-musicians. You're totally capable of any of that. It's just another language. It's just like learning another language. When you took Spanish and high school in Latin, music is just another language and there's a language too. There's a way you converse and you talk, but also, you know, things get high and you know, things get low. You know, things get loud. You know, things get soft. And that's pretty much the basis of all language and all music. It's just recognizing the boundaries and the opposites and all that. So that's music writing. Oh, there you go. And then there's a collab. So this is, then there's the process of actually putting together musical, which even a ten minute musical ideally takes months. How long, can you remember how long it took us for Alan Schaffer when we started talking about it? I think, but Alan Schaffer in the almost a month took us maybe three months prior to talking to having a final draft. That sounds about right. There is another ten minute musical that's on the podcast, which is called the Answering Machine, and it took about nine months for a ten minute musical. So that's my only kind of correlation with the longer form, you know, five, six, 15 year musicals over there. It's like, that's kind of the equivalent. And that one went on to be, go into this festival called Soundbites in New York, and won best music and best lyrics. Got produced in France and at college in Ohio. That was a success story. Then there was another one where we had two weeks to write it, and that's the one that I'm still kind of embarrassed about. But that's just the kind of, so then there's the writing part of it. After that, there's the, once it's all written and rewritten, then we go into, then there's sometimes readings that I would have, I try to get at least one reading of everything, or try to get a song, critique in the VMI workshop, and try to fix that, and then recording the actors individually for the most part. So I'd record all their dialogue, rehearse, and record their songs. But hang on, meaning like there's six people in your closet with your microphone in your garage, do you have a studio? One at a time. Yeah, my closet, it was just me, I bought a microphone and an audio box, and I'd sit on my bed and the cat would be knocking over stuff, which was really helpful when the actress was allergic to cats. But yeah, so then it's recording that, and kind of trying to bust it out and trying to get several takes of each line. And even sometimes if the actors are in trouble with the song, actually for Evelyn Schaffer, the actress, it was she was a third actress to play that role because the first one had scheduled conflicts, the second one got sick, and then it was like, okay, well we need to get this done in 24 hours. So we found somebody who was willing to learn all three big, epic solo songs and then record them the next day. And she was not quite as quick a learner as expected. So at times I had to record one bar at a time and I put them together. So if you listen to the actual podcast, that's the culmination of me putting together one bar at a time, fixing that note and moving things all around. So then, okay, so then there's the editing and then putting together where there's conversations. You can hear these conversations and these actors, and it sounds, sometimes it sounds like they're in the same room and almost certainly they were not recorded at the same time. And then it's editing together so that it sounds like they're listening to reacting to each other. So figuring out which takes sounds like they're listening the best, placing them apart, how much distance between the lines would be, are they overlapping, whatever it is, are there certain non-verbal reactions like grunts or laughs or whatever the way it's put in. And then, you know, recording to a piano demo track and then after that piano demo track orchestrating it with all my fake instruments on garage band and logic. And then mixing, remixing, putting that together, sending it to the collaborators. Is this okay? No? Okay, fixing it, sending it back. Is this okay? Until midnight of the first of the month every month. Jennifer is thinking to herself, I'm so glad I'm a solo artist. My wife is a musician and she's wanting to start to do musicals together and I'm hoping you're listening to this. There may be a conversation together. I'll tell you what, my last question before this or whichever one it was about budgeting time. Yeah. I have no idea. I don't either. All I know is I started off by saying I'm going to get this done on the first of the month every month. And at the end of the first episode I said, next month on the first of the month and every month we're going to have a new tenement of music before you. And I remember after I released that first one and I came home for Thanksgiving break and my mom said she generally liked it except for this one character that she hated. She was like, it was pretty dumb of you to say first of the month every month because now you should have said periodically and I said no because otherwise it would never get done. So I'm a big believer in deadlines and pushing your back to the cliff which is a metaphor relating back to the story of these ancient Spartans fighting the Persian army as that number was 300. Anyway so there were 300 Spartans who were up against the 10,000 person Persian army and they were just they were clearly screwed. That was the understanding was there were 300 of us and there were 10,000 of them there's no way there's absolutely no way we can win and so the general said alright well what we're going to do is we're going to go out to that cliff and when they come up then we're going to take them and the soldiers were like that is crazy because we will not be able to retreat but we have to draw a buckler so it's okay so for me I got that podcast done because it had to come out and there were a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of last days of the month where I got nothing done couldn't go out for Halloween or New Year's Eve there's several times where that was the case even actually my birthday is on the 29th of the month and my parents were visiting me in New York and they were visiting for my birthday we went out to see so I actually sat in Vegas and after the show I said great I now have to go to Brooklyn to record violence and they took me and that was kind of and it came out on the first of the month and at 2am or something like that we just staying in there and there's a lot there's a lot that you can do if you just make yourself do it and so with budgeting if you just say I will do this or otherwise I will die or something and that's called states that's called blended states right where would I have died if I didn't make it? No but I couldn't make that one deadline and that's why I'm on hiatus right now and it's great to have all that extra time right now and I look back and I think about all the time I've put into it all the ridiculous hours and I can't I cannot figure out how I did it because right now it doesn't much work so it's really just making yourself giving yourself a deadline and you'll come up with something which is why musicals very often have reading and reading and reading because you need that reading and excuse it like those actors are going to need to learn this material and time we've got to get it done and I'm a big believer in deadlines but yeah yeah no definitely so we've been talking a lot about other platforms in terms of sort of self-created platforms that you write is one of them you're a writer you want to come and network here's a place to come off of Broadway play festival with Sam French is one and Casey can you talk us through a little bit about how do you reach out to writers to make sure people are applying I know at least one short play has become a full length play because Joe correct those directing it at the signature this season so have there been collaborations for years so we're old festival and we have had a lot of great Theresa Rebeck we found her through the festival which is you know she's okay Shirley LaRoe wrote a short play for the festival that then then went on to be a full length on Broadway so you don't know what's going to happen Jennifer here she left our festival and was it you were at the airport yeah I was going to be doing the festival and it ended up one of the six winners and that was even crazier and we were at the airport leaving and I got an email and I got an email from a producer in New York who happened to see Friday Night Show and said I loved your play and I wanted are you still in New York if you are I'd love to meet with you if you're already in Seattle can I call you and she contacted me and said do you have any full lengths for that long and she said how about more shorts and I'm like well I do have some shorts and so April 17th of next year I have a evening of my short play it's going up off Broadway okay thank you you never know yeah you never know so like another story that I'll have outside of the off Broadway festival so my company we toured in India Greg and I we toured in India for two weeks we submitted a play called The Whale it's a one man movie dick it's much better than it sounds right and to the only English speaking festival in India which is in Chennai and they were like okay yeah that sounds great come on over here so it was like full movie dick here we come so we went and it was really cool we saw some I saw one of the best plays it was the Indian piece there was also the Indian piece about what they thought of the American president and there was like 2008 so it was like right before Obama so it blew my mind so but because we were going to this festival they paid for our airfare there but then they were like why don't you reach out to the US embassy and so we did and they were like great since they paid for the big airfare why don't we tour you guys around so then the embassy became our hosts for the next two weeks and then they flew us to Kolkata and Dubai and Delhi and Bangalore we ended up doing five other shows in India and then they called their Sri Lankan embassy and they were like hey we got these guys over here in Sri Lanka like great send them over and so then we did two shows in Sri Lanka so like and you know there's also this American jazz band that was following us too so the US embassy is actually a great booking agent you guys they also like we like so and we submit to these international festivals and then when we called the local embassy and like we were seeing it five star hotels we were first off and last off on priority on planes like people would like the stewardess would come over and she would be like oh you guys are coming down oh my god you're big celebrities so like you never know what festival can lead to you know off-Broadway or a whole tour of India and then a blog about travel and that's a lot about travel so surprise question that we didn't discuss in advance but I just feel inclined to ask it because we have the time um I've become podcast obsessed over the last nine months and one of my favorite things to listen to is the pop culture happy hour and at the end they always talk about what's making you happy this week so it doesn't even necessarily have to be something from the art world but I'm just wondering if there's what do you turn to for inspiration for sucker for happiness to keep yourself going what's making you happy one thing that I did in Seattle is I curate a one same month um cabaret night and it's in a little tiny big black box of like 55 seats and I get different artists from around um Seattle to do work about family because as a as an autobiographical storyteller I think that that's one thing that finds us together as family artists is the families that we make the families that we're born from and um I get five different artists from different disciplines so for me it's really important that the literary world meets the theater world meets the music world and then we get different artists from different um disciplines into the same house because we rarely mix and um they the only thing needs to be something about family and then we raise money every month for an artist so somebody's having total making rent is money so my favorite night of the month is every third Wednesday and my favorite morning of the month is every Thursday Thursday morning when you wake up and it just makes it all kind of it's that connection and um makes you feel good for doing the work that we do right anybody else something that makes you happy I'm gonna I'll speak again um just so like something that is important to me and my community theater or my theater is community so we we actually have a couple different ways every reach how we work with senior citizens on writing plays and doing performances we go to schools we teach with schools I work with a lot of autistic children teaching them theater and actually when you get out of your like professional bubble um and you still get to do theater it's so rewarding and plus you are connecting and they start to support you and they start to come to things so for me it's when we get to do those other collaborations workshops and such I think that that's a big thing like being represented for the Guild I do a lot of stuff in my community for playwrights writing my blog which is really about advocacy inspiring playwrights um I think playwrights you know can get into that and be part of the greater community so that you're not so focused on what you have happening and you just you're giving back and it just makes you forget about that and then you know things happen anyway so far less altruistic than everyone thank god that was his final when I was over here feeling horrible when I need to feel happy um I ignore our artists and read him I read Calvin and Hobbes um and I when I was young I owe a lot of my artistic disability to Calvin and Hobbes when I was young every year I would like reread the entire like what seven volume said um and I haven't done in years but I still just have most of the comics like seared into the base of my brand stem and I think it's I think the the simplicity of most awesome evil babies that are ever are what I aspire for in my own Andy uh could you repeat the question yeah it doesn't have to be anything in the world of art but what do you turn to to kind of recharge reconfirm get back in touch with yourself let go what makes you happy uh sex drugs and rock and roll we have young people in the room be careful yeah what do I it's a hard question I'm very lucky that I get to do that a lot for living I get to play piano I get to make music I get to hear a lot of extremely talented people sing right in my face um it's it's great I got nothing good for you Netflix and just being bored and it's lazy and it's terrible so I have to force myself to do other stuff things that make you happy what helps you recharge books you've loved any ideas impulses I put my garden gardening yeah perfect anyone else yes freaky and gracy excellent perfect not even cast albums you put on like Sweeney Todd and run around your living room singing at the top why why why okay anybody back there gala okay interesting two votes for gala all right what do you turn to recharge reinvest travel excellent travel he took mine beach it's a beach excellent you may have just won that answer we'll let people keep trying Elizabeth anything meditation great meditation we can probably all take a where's my yoga teacher is he still here the guy there you go yeah go talk to him over here things that help you recharge or re-inspire you it's a hard question Susie flash flash okay walks in nature clearly numb you live in Brooklyn excellent awesome yes cuban coffee oh yes I've already been pitched on the cuban coffee but the description scared me all right young people away with the future what's inspiring you it's not a challenge talk to him finally I have a client a playwriting client who says everything he understands about how to structure a play he learned from reading architecture reviews that when he would read architecture reviews and people would talk architecture critics would talk about how the structure of a building worked or didn't work in relation to itself in relation to the buildings around it somehow those dramaturgical impulses about building an architecture spoke to him about how to structure a play so you know inspiration can come from anywhere excellent anything in particular go for catastrophe on Amazon excellent excellent plays good standby I'm changing house yet I agree awesome anybody else at that table I guess video games they kind of help me out wanting to lead it excellent video game designer talked to him after other impulses from that table meditation and friends excellent okay table hiding in the back kids yeah don't come talk to me about my nephew so play your videos anybody else at that table great get a date over here and tell me a context into something you have a hard time walking so you know that therapy in the day is trying to get a life to work better just basically stepping away from my desk to pay attention to the real world perfect ten minutes that's awesome great this line at the same time does the dog also get some soaking animal yeah other folks hot yoga do you do hot yoga yeah okay yes love it Michael Sheen other folks inspiration phone calls with my 95 year old friend oh my phone calls with his 95 year old friend excellent Georgia when you just need to cut loose and dance around what do you listen to Amanda excellent Jennifer is such a musical theater person great so I think we have time for a couple of questions so now that you're all warmed up who is a question for the panels for the room for me if not I'm going to release you all early anyone that just means I did a really good job oh hard casting which requires looking at you yeah I'd like to do a family affair podcast but we have yet to get there great well if you didn't scare you off I know I would love to be involved with animation somehow that's kind of I was thinking about you know big inspirations and like Pixar is a huge inspiration you know they're not musicals but also lots of great cartoons but also adventure time is there any adventure time yes thank you so like they get it and it's it's a cartoon a cartoon network and it looks like this it looks like dumb from the outside and it pretends to be but it's so smart and morally complex and the music the score and the songs they throw away and they throw away feel very kind of haphazard and random just sort of accidental but there's clearly it's so wrong in a sense the music is so structurally doesn't make any sense that it has to be the work of a genius and completely on purpose and there's a lot of brilliant animation work and music and otherwise awesome anybody else play it I would love to write in the serial form app at some point like webisodes or anything serial I used to work for silk opera digest and I have appreciation for the serial form and just staying with a group of characters for a long time great anybody else well last week I just did lighting for a fashion event and it was amazing there was like no pressure great okay I'm the one left I mean in the past years I've been trying to they have a couple TV running fellowships where in order to apply for them you need to write a script of an existing show so I've been putting together a script for that do you say what show you've been spending? sure I've been working on a kidney sketch I don't know excellent Susie you have a question? David of all of you up there have spoken to things and interconnected but that's why you're here and that's how you got here if it was Casey inviting me to come in and and to Sam French and then seeing Jennifer's work and starting to see what she's doing and that now she's doing this anti-bullying anti-bullying girl thing which is part of what our tour is about that's very interesting to me and then of course seeing what was going on with Evelyn Shaker I hate to say the name Evelyn Shaker because it gets in my head and then it's gone it's gone I can see it all here and the one from Warp that's the other one but truly I'll get up at three in the morning and I'll have somebody's words floating around in there but because so Sam French has been great because then I'm seeing new stuff short format sometimes longer than ten minutes but I like to see so you know like really what does how like something different that runs 18 to 25 minutes different from what I'm looking at you know and and then of course finding Donna through multiple layers of relationships and what you know just sort of following the things you're writing about has also informed opportunities were brought to light other writers that I think oh well that's somebody I should probably take a look at or go into NPS and try to find the work so I mean all of us that are sitting here right now like running into France loose at Sam French so just briefly France loose was my student 24 years ago don't tell them all about it we'll edit that out over the last year too late and I was supposed to direct a play which I'm not a good director but we didn't know that then and I was pregnant and I said to her you know I'm going to go have this baby and then I'll be back it was the end of the school year and I'll you know and then I'll direct this play and wisely looked at me like you know I don't know that that's how that works but as it would turn out it isn't how it works for us but we remained in touch and then I was at Sam French and I was watching shows and I suddenly see her walk in and it led to this conversation well what are you doing what are you writing why don't you send me something and thus the last couple years I had to do two pieces of translation in summer short but she also became a playwright I commissioned for the tour so I mean all of this in here I could you know sort of go on and on because it's a few degrees sort of as I said last night but each of you is here right now for that same purpose and I'm sure in conversations and drinks or listening to any of this and talking to these folks now that who we are all getting to know so much better we are making connections that are leading to opportunities or ideas for collaborations that any other number of things they may seem benign at the moment so well she's been with me for six years every single city right she's a veteran Susan Chulman so that's all I really wanted to say to this in Beth and I go back for many many years as well but it is for you guys an opportunity now to be a co-worker because years from now you all will be remembering how you met and how you first began to write or work in a theater then how do you are helpful to each other or unhelpful but sometimes that happens but but then around here you know that's what we're all telling you that because there's truth to it so thanks for that we'll see yeah I think that's so important thank you for saying that Susan because I think the interconnectedness of this industry the sense of community the falling out of touch with someone and then coming right back as if no time has passed it is a testament to how to build a career and I think one of the things that I like to do what makes you happy is also just a reminder everything always has to be about theater and then in fact you know watching a movie may help you crack a structural question or you know those kinds of things so I think that's really important um any final remaining burning question from anybody no okay everybody run to the bathroom we'll see you in a bit thank you thank you for telling us