 So anyway, in the paying attention in the hall, we have somebody out there who you can negotiate business with and actually get a fabulous souvenir of city rights, thanks to you. Yeah, we're selling them at discounted rates, so this is like a conference rate. What? Sorry, copyright's serious. It's a single edition for six dollars and three for fifteen, which is quite a bargain. I have that for five. Yeah, but they're out in the lobby on the side, so yeah, just know that they're there all day and waiting for you. But each of you buy one for me. Thank you, Amy. Thank you, Amy. Thank you, Amy. Okay. If anybody finds a man, found them, there's probably a reward. You will take a fair play from them. Oh. Ah. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Kevin Visera. Yes. Will you let me know when I have time to find a man? Yes. Great. Hi, guys. Hi. This is so much better standing behind the podium now. I'm going to have to give this to you to speak to you today. I have so much time here to be here. Thank you. Okay. So this is to talk about National New Play Network and new plays and a couple things that we've been pursuing. You probably know, well, first you know, Rob Cates. Rob Cates, Lee. I mean, I'm sorry, it's T.D. Yaki. On the far side down there is Eileen Swartz. Eileen is the managing director of New Theater here in Miami, which is our member theater here in Miami. And we're going to talk, they have just completed recently a production of Rob Cates, Lee's Happy, which was a rolling world premiere and they've done several of them over the years. And we're also doing today by Bill Kirschman. There was a South Florida resident writer and critic. And also is the president. No, actually, I'm the chairman of the American Theater Critics slash Steinberg New Play Committee and Contest. I have a lot of other hats, but that's the one that you guys care about. And I'm in charge of the competition hardcore that gives $25,000, which is why you should care. So since Bill's started, let's go there. I asked Bill to come today because the Steinberg Award is the, you know, preeminent New Play Award in the United States right now. And it's really interesting because it's done by critics throughout the country. And so it's not about what plays had the biggest production on Broadway. It's about work that's being recognized in communities across the United States. So can you just give us a little background and tell us what you're doing? Again, the American Theater Critics Association, which is sort of like the AMA for critics, has for, since 1977, had an award to recognize the best produced professional playwright since 1977 in the country outside of New York City. Our feeling is that regional theater works that are created and first produced in regional theaters had very little opportunity to be recognized. And so this was created specifically and to this moment to get, in fact, if your play debuts during the calendar year and makes it to New York, it gets disqualified, which we call the Augustos H County Award, which because Augustos H County almost won the award that year and then it premiered in New York two weeks before the end of the year and that gave it out of the running. So we're very, very committed to that. Several years ago, the Steinberg family, whose name is all over any New York theater that you can hear of mine, very generously increased our award. So it's not called Steinberg. The Steinberg Attica Award, it gets, there are three prizes. They're $25,000 for the first prize. And we hate the word prizes in first, but that's the way it goes. And then there are two citations for $7,500. We get somewhere around 40 scripts a year. They are, and this is one of the things you were talking about, it is not self-nominated, it is nominated by critics. In most cases, it's something they've seen, but if not, we have a very proactive system in which we go out and search for new work that's being done in, I don't know, we probably have 60 to 80 theaters whose rosters and seasons we look at at the end of the year. Again, the criterion and it has to be done in the previous calendar year because we judge it in January and February. It has to have been produced, have a full professional production, not a college production. Its first professional production has to be done during that calendar year outside of New York City. It can have 25 productions that year. Nothing can be in New York. And that's primarily it. And then we have a committee of about 12 judges from all around the country who spend an intense two months reading all of these and we go through three or four ballots. And there are those three awards, I should also point out that there is also the $1,000 of Elizabeth Osborn Award which is given to an emerging player. If you go on our website, AmericanTheaterCritics.org theater spelled the British way, you'll see all our criterion but among those people who are nominated for the Steinberg, we also pick someone who is just coming to national attention. In fact, that's the definition, someone who is not coming to national attention. We also have the Francesca Primus or Kravitz or depending on whether you're a brother or brother, they pronounce their names differently. And that is recognizing women in the theatrical field mostly playwrights, partially for a body of work that's usually contingent upon a particular work in that year, but it's more of a career award again, it's for people. It isn't necessarily for some of those people. I can go on, trust me, forever. I hope I get a chance at some point since I read about 40 full length plays a year and that I'm going to make sure they fit our criteria. I got a lovely list of advice to people on how to get your plays noticed, not just by judges or but also artistic directors, literary managers, anybody who has a slush pie. There's about four or five big mistakes that people make and if I don't get time tonight today, I'll see me, get my e-mail and I'll send it to you. But there's a lot of really easy stuff that the most experienced playwrights don't do well and newcomers don't do at all and it will help you avoid work fault. Great. So, the Stardom Earth is presented every year during the Humana Festival and we at NNPN have become a great feeder of scripts towards that award to the point where this year Jim Steinberg is a part of giving it, gave a little speech about NNPN. So, let me just back up a little bit. We talked briefly the other day. National New Play Network is an organization of right now 27 core member theaters. Again, any company outside of New York that has a dedication to creating, developing, and producing new work. That and producing is a big piece of what we do because one of the criteria for membership in addition to, you have to have at least three paid staff members and you have to be a professional company and use whatever union category you want that sort of thing is that you have to agree to either import or export a new play from another member theater at least once every three years because the original concept behind the company was that there was all this great work that was not getting done, that was dying on somebody's shelf after a world premiere. So, the idea of the second and third productions became the role in world premieres which officially are called the Continued, they are funded by the Continued Life of New Plays Fund. And that means, as you've been hearing, that each production, artistic director gets together, there's a group of artistic directors, a minimum of three partners, at least two of them have to be core members of the organization. And they determine that they are going to produce within 12 months from the first opening night to the last opening night a minimum of three productions of the play in three entirely different cities with three entirely different artistic teams. I'm going to ask Steve and Rob to talk a little bit about their experiences. We have several additional programs as well, including commissions, including producer and playwright residencies. We do an annual showcase of new plays where through a long selection process they are whittled down and they're actually somewhere between five and eight are done as readings in a city where the core members are paid to send someone to part of their membership. You get travel stipends for people to come to the showcases in the annual meetings. There are pretty much guarantees that at least someone from every theater is there closing by the guests. Steve has, I believe, holds the record for being a part of the most of our projects. Beginning with the lowest level career-wise you can step in at which is the MFA showcase that happens every year in conjunction with the Kennedy Center. And that is we have MFA programs that are allowed to submit scripts. They select about six of them. The MFA playwrights are brought to D.C. for a week and they're partnered with a NNPN director, and they're allowed to work on that script for a week to whatever ends they would like. They can do a full public reading. They can do zero readings. They can spend their whole week working on one scene. They can spend the week working on the play. It's totally playwright driven. Or they can give you a Broadway caliber puppet designer to build a bird puppet for you and then spend the week teaching an actor how to use it while you watch. Which is what I did, it was amazing. I didn't know Steve got here. So Steve has been an MFA playwright. He has been a playwright in residence. It's creepy to hear you do it like that. Yes, MFA playwriting workshop, playwright residency for year we're in theater company in San Francisco. Which means that NNPN puts $10,000 towards that theater hiring a playwright which gives them time to write. And then the playwright serves on the staff of that theater in whatever negotiating capacity they determine that they want to work with in the theater. In some cases houses doesn't help them find housing, subsidizes their housing and they go and live and work in that community for a year. And producers now as well. Kevin as we mentioned is here because he's just beginning his second year residency at Actors Playhouse in Atlanta also for a member of theater. You've had how many role of work from years? The third one was last year. The third one is about to start. So Octopus was a role of work from years? No, it was done by several members. The three NNPN theaters but not within a year. Afterlife which is the play that I wrote in the Kennedy Center workshop. And then Wolves this season and Pluto access. Right. Okay. And you had a commission hand? No commission. I love that you said yet. Not on everything. No, I did the showcase for the first time last year and the Australia exchange. Right. We have an international exchange program as well. Steve was able to take Pluto which was done in the showcase. Pretty much immediately became a continued life project with producers signing on that weekend that there were at least three of us who were going to do it. We had Australian playwrights as a part of the showcase last year and then Steve and another playwright went to Australia along with an NNPN representative and presented at meeting a sort of an equivalent of the youth of the new play. Her play Lasso of Truth is also getting a Rolling World premiere this year. Robert has just finished the Rolling World premiere happy. Who was the first in sequence? Well you folks were the first. They were the lead producer but I think they were the lead the lead theater but I think with a calendar issue it actually opened first at Montana Repertory Theatre and then it came down to Miami and then it went out to the 6th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa and is currently playing at the New Jersey Rep. So when we say it went to it means the play went to not the production so Steve having just come off of Google's talk a little bit about the difference in the three productions in terms of the house sizes and the audiences There were four theater struggles but it was I don't know I thought at the beginning of it that it was a very heavily it is a very heavily prescribed play that has to be a certain way because of things that happen to be in the play there's just it's very specific and what I got was four incredibly different productions that had a lot to do with the performers that were involved in each one but everyone used the same blood which Nan alluded to in her speech the very first theater actors expressed in Atlanta had to figure out there's a lot of blood in the show it takes about 45 minutes to clean up the show after it's done they I know it's just and I also write kids shows it may take an hour and a half to clean up they found out that the San Francisco opera's blood recipe has coffee made in it and some other things that when you cook it up makes it easily it comes out of clothing and it's also edible so that it doesn't show you and die so once they found out that all the theaters shared that information on the website that an NPN set up for all of them to use during the rules and so that was a good example of those theaters sharing I don't know the most different was the one in Los Angeles because it was in a three quarter for us which that play's not designed to be and so I when I first saw the space I thought this is never going to work and then the director made it work but it was really fun Rob the house sizes were having more drastically yeah New Jersey Rep is a very tiny house so it reminds me of like a Chicago store front it's 62 seats you guys had about 150? yeah 100 the house is a lot bigger but we saw 100 again and Montana Rep was quite a big 250 275 something like that so significantly difference in the aesthetic distance between the audience and the actors and I think the playwright asked this the other day if an actor does something good can you steal that I steal all the time from not just from the actors but from directors if they've got something that's particularly good in the staging I'll memorialize it in the stage direction if I think oh that makes absolute sense to do that actors are wonderful with inventing business and so I've taken a lot lots of little bits of pieces of what the actors in various cities have done and embedded it now and will be preserved now in the published version of the plan I'm glad that you said that just because the other day on the panel like someone said what if the director does something really cool and you really love it and I was like take it the only thing that City Theatre tweeted that I said like in direct quotes and I was like super live streamed and streamed great you guys have done a few part of the deal is the funds that come from National New Play Network and NNPN is funded mostly by foundations and generous individuals and most of what we do is refunding so funds come to us specifically for these programs and we did put them out the idea behind the funds for rolling more premieres initially was that it would help you defray some of the costs that you are taking the chance on this new work that's kind of gone away because we have this group of theaters were very successful doing new work now it's become important about getting people places to see things and having the playwright come along you've had multiple experiences talk to me about playwright involvement in your different experiences well it has varied we have been lead theaters I think out of the four or three NNPN continued life that we've done only one of them the lead theater is the first one to go we actually were to be the lead theater but again calendar issue and stuff like that we had another theater company that opened before us communication happens usually the NNPN plays our director of our artistic director Ricky Joe Martinez he's a playwright himself so he's very good at Robert can probably play better communicating a lot with the playwrights so that they're involved in the process and then though they may not be physically in the room and they do a lot of work ahead of time before rehearsals even begin to do any work or any questions or you know what I think he praises everything he's the type of director an artistic director that doesn't tell you you need to fix this, this is wrong and if you don't fix it I'm not doing it that's not the type of director he is what are you trying to say about this and this is what I'm getting from it is that what you intended he praises everything more as a question for the playwright to fix or not fix so he's done that with Robert he's done that with for or better with Eric Holwell and he's done it for several playwrights for Edith which was another one and which by the way if I may say we're very very lucky that we've either been part of the or world premiere of productions which have been winners or awarded Steinberg's and an award nominee for the Oswald as well numerous times so we've been very happy about that and the reason I was saying the thing about talking to the playwrights and keeping constant communication is that I think that it gives the playwright the opportunity of seeing it three, four, five times in some cases and working with different directors and seeing their scripts from a different point of view and finding things they may or may not want to tweet or and see it within a 12 year period span. Where it's been a little different is when we've had a playwright that has been is very very much closed completely in the sense of they've already had the world premiere, they don't want to touch the script at all because they think it's amazing and it's never going to, you know, that there's no issues with it. Which is fine and it's dandy but that's how the communication sometimes worked. It all happened really with the chemistry and the way the playwright works with other people's you know playwriting is very much a sitting-in-your-room type it up or write it out longhand. It's a very singular thing. Once it's going to be produced it's more of a team you have to be very very protective of your baby but you also have to have a little bit of an open mind whether you take the advice or not that you need to be a little open about it. You only have like one case for that and a little hard to deal with. Sometimes playwrights and again it's the playwright's choice in how this project works. We have had over the years playwrights who wanted to be at every rehearsal they could possibly be yet for all four productions. We've had playwrights who are part of the process for the first one sit the second one out maybe just go and see it a couple of times then do a set of rewrites and want to go participate in the rehearsal process for the third. We've had playwrights who got to oral premiere said that's it. I'm done. The script's locked and then they just go and see it. One of the things well you guys talk about that. I wanted to mention that I think you all know that I teach playwriting at the university and one of the things one of the trends I notice in my students is this sort of crippling fear that the production of the play they have to get it all right that first time and one of the wonderful things that NNPN does is that you know this play is going to get produced more than one time and so you actually become I think more courageous in the way that you rewrite and you experiment. I know that one of the things that I've done is I continue to cut and cut and cut and play. The more I see it the more I realize the actors are doing this and I don't need to deal with somebody's words and so you build up my process always begins with the hardest pencil I can find so it's three light trace remarks through and then I shift the pen and now I find it's like with a magic marketer taking out huge chunks because it kind of builds up your confidence again and again and so that's I think one of the great things I know one of the early role I think actually the first who was with the playwright who had done the first one at Florida stage we were working on it and worked like yours where the first two theaters basically were on top of each other we one had a fair state eye opening and one had a Saturday night opening and the playwright was really struggling with the end of the play literally like the last three minutes of the play and he actually gave us two separate endings so the Philadelphia production had an ending and the Florida stage production had an ending by the time they got to opening night which was the Thursday before we opened on Saturday in Philadelphia during the first previews he determined that the ending that had been his first choice the one was in Philadelphia was not working and they scrapped it and put the Florida stage ending on it so it was actually only ever reviewed with the one ending but we went down to the like the last 48 hours with two different endings I was just going to say I mean most of the people know this but you know back in the day playwright would work on play in their garret then they would hook up with producer usually in New York or in their major city and they would talk it together for some time and then and here's the part that doesn't exist anymore you'd get four or five weeks of rehearsal you know you guys know what two and a half when they get new works they do three and that's it and the paradigm as you all know has changed and the expectation I think in theater producers and particularly now you guys are working a lot in regional theaters has got to change to where and you guys in Florida stage talk like this I learned by going over and over again your new work and your new work but as a critic I have to learn to read a ten new work with a different kind of body and you taught your audiences a different way of looking at new work no one who goes to new work now your audience no one longer goes and I'm expecting to see Arthur Miller's polished six month polished version of Death of Sales they know that they are seeing the work that you are expecting at a certain level of quality and professionalism but it's probably going to undergo two or three more changes and I think one of the things that regional theaters need to do is to help playwrights feel like you say free to not feel like that first production and people paying money for it even though I'm coming to see it and probably aligning on it as I have on several of these works it's a new paradigm and everybody in the system from the audience member the producer to the playwright has to really embrace this and because our old system just doesn't even exist anymore No it's suited I'm giving you five Steve So just some nuts and bolts for the playwrights in the room about how you get involved with the national new play network because that's always the tricky thing is just that it's not the important thing to know is that while I more than anyone have benefited from playwrights benefit immensely from the national new play network it is in fact an organization from member theaters it's a theater service organization that sponsors new work and so you can't apply for things directly from the outside of the national new play network the way that you get involved with the national new play look and that may change in the future because we're working on an alumni playwrights council right now that may in fact be able to help playwrights enter the network programs in a different way but for now the way that it works is you go back to your community wherever you came from you find the closest national new play network theater to you you start attending that theater going to see shows there getting to know the people there the theater is the one who's going to take your work and introduce it into the network it's not anything that you can do yourself for me you can also get in through it if you're in an MFA program right now and you get into the Kennedy center summer workshop that can kind of, that's how I entered the network and then I was just lucky enough that there were a couple theaters Actors Express, Marin Theater Company that I had relationships with but the important thing is to find your local national new play network theater and not just walk in the door and say hey here's a play of mine can you please submit it for the for all of the national new play network stuff but it's a developer relationship with that theater and then see where that goes because there's all these fantastic programs but a lot of times players will come up to me and say it's so closed off it's so closed off how do you get involved and that's because it's not for playwrights it's for the member theaters and I just think that's an important thing to throw out in our last play we also have just opened up an associate membership I think I mentioned the other day and there are about 30 it's probably going to go to about 50 pretty quickly associate members which are people who have their theaters that don't have maybe new plays as their mission but they have a new play arm or they're small they want to be doing new plays it's everything from teeny teeny tiny storefront theaters through center station Baltimore and actress theater of Louisville so if you hit the NNPN website it's just NNPN.org and you'll go and there's a page that has all the core members and all the associate members and I mean we have associate members in little tiny towns in the middle of nowhere so there is one close to you and as of this last annual meeting, last two weeks whatever it was we were all together we've determined that associate members are also going to be allowed to submit for showcase so we are starting to let those people in cricket and then two questions I'm assuming we're talking about full length plays here we are talking about full length plays although several of our member theaters and Susie is going to be one congratulations we have the associate members do have festivals and small plays and we didn't get to talk at all about the new plays which are really disappointing if my plays don't produce in little community theaters is it disqualified? if you've had a premiere, yes just write another one like that side so the process is you have some time until Tina shows oh great so the process is so the global theater nominates you and then there's a showcase I know that there's a showcase there's a showcase so people will be submit plays there's a series of readings that it's gone through it's chosen and they choose about six a year but once you're submitted and sponsored by a theater your play, whether it's chosen to be in the final six or not goes into a place that's accessible which takes me to new plays changing let me just give you guys a little brief information because you're going to be hearing a lot about it. This is a mega mega deal we are creating from the ground up what is designed to be the most comprehensive searchable database for new plays in the world is being piloted through National New Play Network in conjunction with Lark Plarritt Center in Minneapolis Bay Area Plarritt's Foundation Chicago Drovidist Literary Managers of the Americas the LAMDA LAMDA whatever their initials are we talked about this core group the CDC that's getting together and building and we are literally building we're not building code ourselves but we're hiring someone to build code many of you probably are on duly Lark has a commercial version that they've been assisting with it's going to be called Congee there's several programs out there that will do different pieces of this but the goal for this is to get you any of you that have been through the college application process in the last few years know about the common app right so there's a common app that you can go in and put basically your information in and then each college might have a couple more questions you as a playwright will go on create your own profile and you as a playwright are then responsible for keeping your materials automated there'll be a whole series of boxes you can check I want people to be able to access my entire play which means you won't then get any sort of notification about who is reading it I want people to be able to access a 10 page sample if you say you want to just put up the synopsis and there's a box then they can contact either you or your agent directly and get your play here's the thing about it they are recommended and it's not like a thumbs up like on Facebook it is a 150 word recommendation and they have to be positive they're not reviews of your play they're not synopsis of your play it will be someone who's a reader who would go on and say well I love this new play I'll use Pluto because we've been working on it the only thing I could say after the showcase reading in DC is I touched Stephen the arm three times and said motherfucker motherfucker motherfucker he made me so angry and upset and moved and it's just a gorgeous piece of theater and I was really angry with him because he keeps writing such a beautiful piece of theater and as the mother of an adolescent it's a very disturbing play so I could go ahead and say that you could just go ahead and say this is brilliant and you guys got to read it you anybody who is accessing the site will be able to follow readers so if you think I love Steve Yockey's play you can check off and every time Steve posts something if you like Liz Engelman who's a major dramaturg and you really think she's interesting if you like your local artistic director that you deal with you just go in and like and every time he likes something you'll get his reviews you can post updates you can post drafts it will initially be totally free because the Melon and Duke are funding it and at some point down the road there may be a nominal charge 5 bucks to set up your own profile but it is good morning Miss Sack come on in we're just killing time you're ready we're ready come on I'm not interrupting anybody want to give me what obviously I'm here 15 seconds as I mentioned at the very beginning I've got a list now of ways playwrights chew themselves in the foot when they submit to literary managers or to contests if you come up and catch me sometime in the next hour I'll give you my business card and send me your email and I will send you actually a half written article that hopefully will say and this is experience for playwrights this is brand new playwrights I read 40-50 plays a year that makes people make that hurt themselves and qualify them is far easy to avoid and some of them are dead obvious but you'll be amazed what people don't do and will help them in that way also when you play exchange you'll be able to do submissions so you can go on and post your play and you say I want to know about contests for women writers every time anybody posts a contest you can either get a notice or you'll have set it up to your play just automatically get submitted you'll also be able to see a full submission of history so when you go on to your page how many of you have submitted twice to the same contest when you go on your page you'll be able to say oh last year I submitted Thresh and Lulupekker to share I need to submit Pluto against Thresh and Lulupekker you'll have your own history and I think that's in the development stage what we have now as far as the exchange with how we share our scripts and how we can put it in there whether it's a national showcase or just something to recommend we use I always call it the wrong thing Basecamp Basecamp and if you can get to one of your artistic directors who's a core member or an associate member they have the ability now to upload and recommend plays in a much smaller version that's not really a circular database but you can make these people your friends don't be obnoxious don't bother people to the point where it makes me crazy go, go, respond, thank you