 the president of the Samuel French said, well, I want to do 45 contracts. So we worked on the arrangement where they would have a standard contract, actors, theater, and then they would arrange that, which would play that. And there was a place that I knew about that I wanted to take a walk, and I wanted to want my Mr. Jory. And basically I said to John and Michael, just pick the ones you love the most. And the one that John mentioned yesterday, someone asked, what was your all-time favorite? And it was a play by Mark O'Donnell called Mark Liss. And I'm pretty certain that that's in that book. So we published it, and I was supposed to play it. I watched a collection of 25, 10 minute plays, and it just took off. And it did so well, but a couple years later we did another one, and now Samuel French is up to something like six. And now they're attended to play festivals and productions all over the world. I mean, there's an organization out of Australia that's called Short Plus Suite. And they produce festivals in countries in that part of the world, all over. I had a playwright who had been helping me a little bit. She sent a play out there. And it was done, but Short Plus Suite picked it. And it was done at the Malaysia Festival. And one of the more from the best of the festival. So who's married? Your work can get done all over the world. So this is just a quote. So Smith and Crouse, well, I'll get to that. With Samuel French was obviously a lot of plays, which by playwrights, that subsequently became famous. And I had two varying degrees, was instrumental in getting Samuel French to publish it. It was really famous, but Tina Hall, Don Nigro, lots of things. And then I started editing my books for Smith and Crouse. And I did my annual model on books. They did an anthology of new plays by women, which they don't do any more than this is we know of. Thank you. Yeah. And then also, you produced the Boston Theater Marathon. Yeah, I'm not involved in that, though. You see, Smith and Crouse is basically all freelancers. You know, it's a man and a woman, Marisa Smith and Eric Crouse running on their home in New Hampshire. And they hired various people to do various projects. And about three or four years, they published all of the Boston Theater Marathon plays. And so then they were publishing an anthology of 10-minute plays annually that Michael Dixon was editing. And then I'm alive, but they asked me to do it, I don't know. So I said, OK, so I started doing that. And originally it was they would be two books. One was plays for two actors, and one was plays for three or more actors. And I did, and then about two or three years ago, they said, it does promote together. And I said, that's a big one. And they said, OK. So not that I've done the last three years, but what I've done for the last two years I want you to know is that I've been collecting a list of all the people in the world that do 10-minute plays. And with contact information and everything, the hoo-ha festival thing, yada-yada, and so on. For the last two years, every book that I have in the back, there's a list of all of them. So you get that form, and you can put it, make your own database for submissions. And probably some of them don't do it anymore, but I try to update it as much as I can so every year. So the most up-to-date one is the new book, which just came out in 2014. Why do I hope so? They have some. But they have sent some down and down, but I don't know, maybe everyone's bought it. But you can get it online or call them up. And they didn't send my new playwrights book, which pissed me off. But you know what they also have in there that I highly recommend? Because their most recent publication, I call them they because I really don't work on the freelancer anymore. The most recent hot-off-the-press title is by Michael Bigelow-Dixon. He's right here. Yeah. He'll probably tell you about it, but it's my opinion. I mean, it's a brilliant, brilliant book. I disagree with a lot of it. Not for having passed. But it's, in my opinion, could become as influential a book as the theater in its double or the empty space. It's the manifesto of what I call the burgeoning anything of realism movement. And it talks about why. He's very persuasive, and I highly recommend that book. Great. Yeah, so that's me. Great. Thank you so much. So, yes. Next I wanted to go to Linda's project from a dramatic publisher. What's interesting about everyone here and these publishers is that there's some things that are shared and there's some sort of things that are different. And so I wanted to talk about that. And one of the things that I'm very impressed with what's happening with you is the dramatic collections that you're doing, the editorial decisions, and in some ways they're trying to improve the editorial thing that's happening with several of these publishers, which is really interesting in terms of that kind of imagination to put things together. So, yeah. Well, most of our Tim and Pipe collections have been commissioned. The most recent one is The Mullen Pipe which I commissioned, and we asked 22 of our current authors to write Tim and Pipe around the theme of bullying. And didn't expect all 22 to agree that they all did, so it's also a big part of the collection. And we have others like Stephen Grant, you know, me and Gregory. Richard Dresser, who was a Christmas dollar, really wanted to play, but really took off and sell tons of copies of this in their offers and questions. And because they're 22, they can be done in different ways, and a multitude of ways. So, this is good. So, it's 10 by 10 Tim Short plays a team about ethics and values. It's also commissioned by one of the years, and just submitted University and Love, Death and the Proud by John Jory. We published those probably 20 years ago. And after the beat, Seven Short plays that took place in September. There's one on here, the Tarantino variation that gets done all the time, by itself. And it's also included in other anthologies as well. And the cell phone rings for the, which is around the idea of cell phones. In case you didn't know. And so, yeah, but they're mostly commissions, but we do look, usually when we get submissions, except on solicitude submissions, very, we seldom get that many 10-minute play submissions. We get collections of 10-minute play submissions by the same office. But when we pull together something dramatic, we usually commission those as results. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm here to my right. Dramatist play service, which would be affectionate for the DPS. Sure. Yes. And it's shorter. Craig Possible. And his table's quite impressive, because if those of you who write 10-minute plays will see what good company you're in, for Wendy Watson's scene, and Chris Drang, and Terence McNally, what John Patrick Chandler writes when he's made to go home, maybe. And really wonderful prolific writer named Craig Possible. So, I don't know. Well, I think, you know, for us at DPS, kind of the 10-minute play explosion, I think, started with all of the timing. I actually tend to call it short plays, rather than 10-minute plays, because I sometimes teach workshop on short play writing. And I tell people to focus on the word play, and not necessarily the exact length of the time. Write a play at the beginning, middle, and not just a skip, or something. I love skits, but, you know, it's going to be a play. So, all on the timing, David Ives' follow-up, Mirror Mortals. We have three other collections of his after that, another one of his, I mean, all on the timing was just revived in New York this past year. He's got another one coming up, I think again, in primary stages. Christopher Durang, of course, but we have a collection of 20-some of his plays, and we're talking to him to look like that. Every time I bring into a conference and I tell people what the overall price for all the books are, they always pick that one up and go, this one too, assuming that it's like twice as much. Shell Silverstein, we have a lot of really dark and absurd pieces by him. You know, yes, John Patrick Chandler, we have a collection of short ones by him. This just came out a couple of weeks ago. Everybody always seems to express surprise when, Wendy Wasserstein, we have a collection of seven short plays of hers. And, yes, one of my own. Life is short. Going back to what you're saying, that play is being done all over the world. One of my short plays, which is actually published by PlayScripps, is my single most produced play. It's been translated into about five languages. A Greek theater company, in Athens, stole it, ran it for three months. It's recently stolen in Zimbabwe, as well. I also, we started getting into, most of our collections, obviously as I've shown, are by single authors. Because you tend to get a single collection, unless you commission something like that, or if you put out a daily call. But I, you know, knew that a lot of our authors were maybe writing a one-off, you know, like they did the 24-hour plays, or some other contest. So I started editing for us a collection just called Outstanding Short Plays, where I would get about ten of them together. And this was the first volume, which came out a couple of years ago. I got it at the second volume, which will be out later this year. So it's just a way, you know, to work with our authors when they don't have six, seven, eight, nine, or ten of them. You know, but, you know, the biggest and latest, I think, of The Ten Minute Things is almost made, which some people may not think of as a ten minute place. But actually, you know, it's a series of them, you know, on a theme and strung together in a lovely way. And this has been, I think, one of the most produced plays in North America. The last three years alone, we've had over 500 productions a year. It just did a revival in New York. Yeah, it just did a revival in New York, which John Kerry on me was acting in. And, I mean, this is a real Cinderella story, because it was done in New York. You know, it ran for a month, or so it closed. It didn't make much news or headway. And slowly, people started discovering it. We got out there, and slowly, we were licensing it constantly. I put it in my new playwrights book, scenes from it, and I think that's one of the ways they started it. Yeah, I'm sure it is. I'm sure it is. And suddenly, every school, college, community theater, you know, you know, a lot of side of the road started. And it's a lot of it. Yeah, it's a lot of it. It's a big hit. And, you know, it's been a huge success, obviously. And it shows what you can do with the 10-minute play form. You can put them all together. Two of my first two full-length plays, if you look at them, are, you know, they have an overall kind of story and arc and character and everything. But I wrote them in short segments and kind of pieced them together that way. So, for instance, I love the play as well. And I have a play here. Yes! Don't stand out too late. You've got to hang here. Thank you so much. It goes upstart, who's, I think, for a play that's more galvanized. This is Morty Kool, who had a box of plays at Fennec's Laws. Are they here? Okay, good. So, can you talk a little bit about that? Yes. So, just imagine, this says, great short comedies. Great short comedies volume nine. I imagine this says, those are really great plays. Except these are also really great. So, about 20% of our open submissions, we also have an open survey. 40% are plays that are one-acts for our high school competition, which is something that play scripts really, that's how the company was built and it's something we're really passionate about. And we also have plays for the professional market as well. So, we're cross-market, but I would say that short plays are really big for us. We have ten volumes of great short comedies and dramas, and we define short as anything under, like, 20, 15-ish minutes, but a lot of those plays are 10-minute plays. So, what we do is, if you send us a 10-minute play, and we love it, we say to you, hey, we love this, we'd like to make a publication offer. We don't know when our next collection is coming out, but when it comes out, you'll be in it. And so, sometimes that, we usually do about one a year. It's not, like, super regimented that way, but so, potentially, we could say, we want to put this in the next collection, and it might be up to a year before it actually hits the stands, but that's kind of how we curate the collection. And then, sometimes, we'll end up sort of splitting them off into different genres, like these ones, the comedies and dramas, and so, we have a fair amount of collections for short plays, and they do really, really well. I mean, some of them, some of our authors that have full-length plays, their ten minute play, actually does better for them. We just have real reach in that market, and community theaters love to do them for benefits because they can involve so many different people, and you can have, you know, like the middle-aged couple who's the star in all the community theater plays can be in this one, and then the young people who are just kind of getting involved with the group can be in this one, and it really allows communities to, you know, make things flexible for themselves and involve a lot of people, or it also allows professional companies to use two actors or three actors over and over. So it works for lots of groups, which is, I think, why? It's such a popular form. So we have that, we have plays that come in through the transom, as we say, but we also, then, like, for example, we have a group of Adam Simquitz, who's a great writer based in, well, Connecticut now, sent us a group of plays that are all around the theme of love, and so we're publishing those. So it comes either way, but I would say for us, mostly, it's cherry picking ones that we're excited about and putting into collections. We also pretend this is a book with a really fancy cover that says Naked Angels on it. So we have a collection of Tempted Plays by Naked Angels, which hopefully will be here later today. We also have a collection called 24 by 24, so it's 24 short plays by 24 writers that are all ten minutes and they're great writers. So those hopefully will be here later today as well. So it's something we're really excited about, something that we've seen a lot of success in and something that we feel like is really appropriate for cross-markets, and I think that's why it does so well. Thank you so much. And the book ending, even though she doesn't look like the grandfather, the grandfather, all of this is Sam's French in March. Oh, man. I just wanted to say that this panel, I believe in the past, was just Sam's French in this whole festival. And I just want to give a nod to Amy who sort of said, oh, maybe we should invite other publishers. Yeah, so Sam's French published the first Actors' Theater, really, where a lot of this really started. I don't know, I think Schnitzel wrote short plays. Really, it started at that time. Yeah, and we don't do this anymore. And I think part of that that Actors' Theater's kind of changed their model. I think what Larry was saying about handling 24 contracts is also very true. We also published the Boston Theater Marathon for some years via Baker's plays which used to be a subsidiary of French nuts. Part of the company that Baker's did Sam's French these days that they published Boston Theater Marathon for five years. And today, I think it's interesting that most of our short plays submissions or publications actually happen via Sam's French partnerships which we have a really intricate network of partnerships that we work very tirelessly to build. So, for example, we published Sesame Playworks which we have people in Nebraska right now at international best bands but they, PDTA commissions or not commissions, they have a national competition for high school students to write plays and we ended up working with them to publish a license and we also have our own off of Broadway Festival Short Play Festival which I'll probably talk about a bit more during a later panel which is kind of become the pipeline for short plays. Which is the publications for how many? 30? It's going, it's 39. Casey McClain is my colleague which is probably why I'll be like, man! But, yeah, so we're going into year 40. I've never done this research in the oldest continuous short play festival in the country that we've not ever had a year off and it's gone through lots of different incarnations so we've outsourced it and now it's finally after six years we've taken it in-house so the whole competition, actually Casey and I are the core artistic directors this year and all of our staff who's licensing the plays by day we stronger them we make them volunteer at night and they help implement the festival and we host all these great playwrights but it's a this year we had 1400 submissions and it's 30 plays that we'll be going up for a week and then the result of that is that six of the plays get published and licensed and these collections do really well so they kind of look like this but it's a bunch of them in the back and that's very interesting too because we've actually we choose the six playwrights with the help of a lot of industry colleagues so it's not just Samuel French making these decisions it's actually like kind of a collective hive mind from the industry what often succeeds is the non-realistic stuff which I think it was very interesting to hear John champion for those plays that maybe take more risks or the short plays that are kind of adventurous or have unanswered questions at the end so it's very exciting I like the short play festival is my favorite time of year because we get to see some really crazy stuff on stage and kind of get out of that commercial like oh will this sell or who's interested and really see playwrights kind of in their rosts like let's just throw it out there and see if it works for and we've gotten some I think the most exciting writing coming through that festival so it's very exciting and we've also forged some really great relationships I don't think Steve was in the room which is highly skeptical but yeah this is it and Steve is also sort of almost mean I would encourage you to check out his short play collections because he does this interesting thing with his shorts where he kind of leads them together to tell a larger story or a larger even like aesthetic story so he has a very like certain style in a lot of the plays and when they're together on stage it kind of creates this ambiance to the evening and also I have talked you know I think the political ideas are very exciting too or like having a daily news kind of approach to plays because it seems like there's a large trend right now with theater breaking through barriers just doing plays for people with disabilities and we're seeing you know short plays about wars and short plays about so as a writer like getting things together you do publish a lot of collections by one writer but even going further than that seems like you publish a lot of collections by one writer with a theme so like Tina Hough for example I brought last year I brought her a place for women she wrote this like it's called towering tiger lilies and that's a great collection where it's very there's like a water robics play where people are lactating in the pool it's like the nursing mothers I mean it's so adventurous and exciting so I would yeah I mean so as a writer I think you know you can kind of curate your own material so that it really makes sense for a theater to put it at this kind of an exciting motion and you know there's lots of fun things you can do with that do you guys have a date marriage? yes we are standing on ceremony and is that something you commissioned? no they were they were being done a lot of them I was in reaction to proposition 8 in California and there were actually more I think to begin with what we contacted them what they always done on Broadway well it started in LA and also mother heard out loud which is the same right? yeah mother heard out loud there's more along the lines of love loss in what I wore or you know but again it's like it's a bunch of different writers coming together around the theater that's an interesting question because it also leads into the whole idea about what you look for how you get something published what's the best way what submission policy is for each of you is it a good idea for a writer it's very fascinating to me because editorial imagination that enters into that is it something that if someone has a couple of places on the theme maybe they find taking initiative to find writers they know and suggest so I'm curious in terms of what do you look for if people have 10 minute advice what's good advice someone want to leave on that? yeah I mean I think it's a practical side of me other than the curatorial just make sure whatever I think what Larry said about negotiating for 25 different contracts can be very overwhelming and very difficult in some cases especially if writers aren't willing to take a favorite nations agreement so if you're and I'm sure favorite nations agreements will get covered but yeah you know making sure all the legal uses in place if you're getting together a group of friends and you're like hey let's write things about Obama you know make sure that you're really looking long term so that there's a vision of publication down the road and you kind of counted for that in your early discussions about where this is going I think that's really important I mean I've been approached recently about several collections and it's difficult because there hasn't been that for thought and then there's multiple agents involved and there's writers have different expectations and royalties of publishers that gets a little complicated yeah so I'd say there's that but also I think French is not unsolicited anymore we have a query process so we've reviewed 10 page samples and kind of project ideas before asking to see oh thank god that's very, yeah so we asked to see the history of production I think we have a very at least I kind of have a philosophy that things need to be stage tested that the rating is as much a performance craft as it is a literary craft on the page level of production factor in to pass that market so I will say if you're writing please and you know they're for high schools and if you have a track record of okay we've done this at a high school it doesn't necessarily need to have a high class 5 off Broadway production or anything but it needs to be you've tested it in it's an audience and there's some evidence that it works with that audience so you know the people are contacting you about it it got great reviews it extended it sold crazy amounts of tickets with everybody you know you're like oh my god I'm getting so many licensing requests I can't even deal with it yeah 2,000 people like that are paid for them. Yeah, actually social media recently, we've been, I have to say, it's supposed to go some of the larger shows. It's like knowing that, I will say, I always say this, but I do Google everyone that submits because I want to see like, ah, you know, we're using. Yeah, it's helpful that having a web page, okay, well I can go back and see like, if they want awards, like, do they have relationships with theaters in place? Like, if we pick this up and, you know, we need to, we have a marketing team, we have a great marketing team at French, so, you know, and the really proactive licensing team, so we want to call the theaters, you have relationships with them and say like, hey, did you know they have a short play collection? You know, or do you have a place for that in your season? So really, yeah, it does, as much as it is a play, is a play a good play, is it a successful play within its own parameters, you know, are you, have you thought about your career as a playwright and are you a successful playwright, which is a weird thing to say. Yeah, I mean, you just see what we say is they're a motor. But you have a different view. Well, no, I mean, we've got a similar submission policy. I mean, the question that I get asked all the time is, you know, do you take new plays, unproduced plays, and I say, well, you know, if you go through the submission process, you know, we'll certainly take a look at them, but I try to dissuade them from just, you know, finish it, hit print, or send and get it to us. Because we're the final stop for your play. We're the last thing. If you just send it to us straight away and we love it and publish it, it's probably going to vanish because there are so many plays. In so many, yeah. But even so, it's very hard because, you know, there's so many, there's so many plays fighting for so many slots. And everybody is really looking for, you know, well, what was big in New York? What was big in Chicago? What are they doing, you know, in Seattle or Los Angeles? So that they tend to go to, you know, schools will go to a lot of people, favorites. Schools will go to what is, you know, brand new that they think they should do. So if, you know, your play can kind of get missed in all of that shuffle. And so it's incumbent on the writer and to kind of push that boulder of their play as far along and up the hill as they can on their own to get into the point where it gets some kind of visibility. It doesn't have to be a New York production or anything like that. But to get it along, to give it a production history so that it's not just like you have to read it to find out how great it is, it helps if you've had some kind of, like, presence that is available. I'm gonna piggyback to you after that. And I won't, I don't want to dominate so much. But, urgh. That's fantastic. The other thing about you publishing being a final stop on the New Play train is that published, there's a document that's out there for the community at large that's a testament to that. That is the writing. So it becomes very difficult to change players once they're published. And so I think all sort of published with... How do you still? In theory. I think that's one of our licensing agents. It's a nightmare. We've had off of very successful large players that all of a sudden they're like, oh, well, you know, I want to intermission or I'm gonna change the ending and never like the scene. But then there's, all of a sudden, there's two different versions of the play that are out on the market. And if you don't want that early version performed, it's very hard to please. And sometimes if the writer is suddenly like, yes, now this is the definitive version, go out there and find the 40,000 copies of my old play and take them back. Oh, and I want to see it. So then you're really surprised when that old version is produced somewhere. Like, how could this happen? It's like, it's been 20 years. Well, I'm trying to explain to you at theater now why they'll be like, but you printed this and you're like, yeah, but it's not, you know, you have to do it the way the writer wants it. Well, they'll be like, I like to film version. Yeah. And you know, there were a couple of writers that's like every day they got out and they got to do it. Oh, no. There must have been eight different versions of it in the Google group. And the all-time worst of mine was Robert Patrick with Kennedy's Children. And he wanted us to, you know, not to sell our edition with a 2,000-pound, anybody that wanted to produce a play would, he wanted us to send them his new version. And we're going, Robert, what are we gonna do with these 2,000 copies? And so he finally got so annoying that he just sold all his copyrights to Samuel. So now Samuel first shows the copyrights to Kennedy. But yeah, if there's any including that the script has not done, I mean, I think, yeah, you could like, just play with it until you feel like, okay, I'm exhausted, I know. I don't care if it gets the bad high school production where they're, uh, they're, And it will. And it won't get the fuck away. That's a testament that you've made it. Yeah. I also, on an artistic level, like just, like on an artistic level, I'm a writer and almost everyone on staff and play scripts is also a writer. So we're a little bit wary. Like why would you send your play out to the world if you haven't heard it in a production? We all know how valuable that is. And so it makes us a little bit like, does this person really understand this craft if they feel like they can jump to publication without hearing it out loud? That's really different from the amateur market. We're more likely to not feel that way for a high school play because a lot of people don't have access to a high school production or something or we have writers who write for the high school market know it so well that they don't need to hear it with high school students. We trust them and they have a brand. But generally, in the professional market, we're a little, we're always a little wary if you send it and you haven't had a production just because we know that means that you didn't feel like you needed to see it on stage before you were ready. And that's, if you're like that, God bless you. But most of the writers still do. I always wanted Samuel French publishers that is that one. Oh yeah, of course there's exception. And he's one of the greatest geniuses in the American community. And hopefully all of you are. And everything that he writes when he sends me or he's still sent me, but it's absolutely perfect and ready to go. It does not need any development, you know. Thank God, Samuel French could, and now you're quoting his, the one you haven't got on the public yet, there's a lot of website digitally and you can play all of the points that you have. Don Iger. But I would say Don is an exception to the real. Very much an exception. Yeah, very much an exception. I will say too, like, I'm sorry. What about Don? Go to the market too, like you do know. Like I think with the bullying collection when you were in the movie star, I was like, oh that's so genius. Yeah, I was like, oh, that's a good deal. I was like, okay, it's about bullying. Do you have any ideas about, we also get like, vampires. When Twilight was out, people would be like, will you get anything from me? Those are, they're off into the, the vampires are over. But occasionally there are these trends that flare up and there's a need in the industry, I feel like, yeah, I'm just choosing anything. Yeah, can I just interject something on that? Because I suppose in the next few minutes we're figuring out how to put it out there, not only just the festival, but also the school tours. We do a middle school tour over the course of the year and I think this year it was like 40,000 kids saw short plays. And this collection included, or maybe last year's collection, included two pieces from the bully plays. And one thing I would tell all of you out there is if you, one of the things to think about especially for schools, if you're getting funding from grants or from school communities, they want thematic, they want, Ricky you know that, a connection to a theme. So bullying is huge. So we went to Linda's collection and suddenly went, oh, this is really wonderful. So we found plays within that collection. But the other thing that happened is that one of the young ladies you might have seen last night on the stage, the willowy one, Mary Sinsome became so captivated as a young actor working the school tour, she's now one of our playwrights who was writing for the tour. And I'm gonna be sending you her plays because they're terrific. And she's two minutes out of that age group and we can relate and looks like she does, she's 26 who would know. But I will tell you that that was a brilliant idea and I'm hoping it's really successful out there. It is very successful. And then we haven't really looked at him in place, that's changed. We accept unsolicited manuscripts, we get about 500 a year. Usually they're one episode full length but we started to take a much closer look at him in place and like you do, if we take the ones we like and we keep them until we have something that follows some kind of theme and then we plan to go and publish collections based upon that theme. And one of the collections I'm collecting for right now are more from place for the type of collection. It won't be called a bully place too or a bully place, more bully place or something similar though, bully will definitely be in the title. Yeah, unfortunately. They can still residence in that. Yeah, I mean that's the thing like that. Any unfortunate residence topic is probably something you can think about dealing with. I wanna open it up for questions. There was one that came from over here. Can I add one time? Yes, please. I wanna say on the nature of these is that kind of thing. If you have a publisher, if you already are like published with one of us or ask us, like say I'm thinking right in some time, what is there a market for? I would have said bully place. So, we're looking for a step. If you know you're thinking of writing something, feel free to ask us because we're very aware of what people are asking for and what teachers are asking for. So one question came here is in terms of like you license all the place. Do you do any trade applications that are just apologies or do you license everything? That's a question for all of us. French has, French has, we're old. We're old. I think we've done everything historically. There was a time where we were doing trade and I'm actually working on for the OOB 40th anniversary next year to hope all of these flight in New York is gonna be the best party for short play. We're already planning it, we've been planning it for like two years. So I am heading together a trade more, a trade book of winners from that festival. So Theresa Reback actually got her feet wet in the short play festival. And I got a story to find those two options. But yeah, okay. It's not bad enough. But that will be more like a trade and we'll probably bend it through the trade channels. The differences between acting editions and trade editions which maybe we'll get it on a later panel but if you guys do the one-on-ones then we could probably explain further but our activities are designed to go with licenses. So if someone is calling your expert to get a license of the show. This is an acting edition just like this regular thing that doesn't happen. It's holding up. This is too basic, yeah. It doesn't just pull trash on the cover and fancy things, it's just very nice. Well, sometimes it's fine. Well, it's okay. That's fine. Whereas Smith and Carl's only publishes trade editions, they're more expensive, they're snazier covers. And I want them on people's bookshelves. Yeah, and they're taught in, they have different distribution channels. The college is course-adopted, bookstores, yeah. So it helps to know that difference and most agreements with publishers are not exclusive in terms of trade and acting. So like, for example, Larry published something in Bust Short Plays and then the author can send it to us for OOB and it can be in multiple collections. Yeah, because Smith and Carl's doesn't do any licensing and they don't ask for exclusives. So they could then have it published by dramatic public or anybody and we love that, like Year of the Roosters getting printed in one of your books and we're licensing it. So if someone encounters it this way, they're just gonna come to us so it's a happy friendly. Yeah, almost, you know. Yeah, yeah, there's a nice symbiotic relationship. And that's where, yeah, TCG as well, who, yeah TCG, most of our larger phase are published in trade editions that are gorgeous and we have a great working relationship and yeah. And both are good because it gets it out there, you know. They're obviously available in market places. It's more revenue for the writer, ultimately, depending on what agreement they have with the trade publisher and yeah, but the more you can get your play out there, great. There was a handout over here. Yeah, you were saying we could query topics with themes that I just thought we might take advantage like after bullying, are there any, a couple other themes that people are looking for? I wasn't able to. Yeah, what do you have a sense of like what people are hungry for? We have one that's kind of fun. It's a stage combat collection. And it's by the writer, you know, I'm having a brain fart. It's really jumpy, but he did make Seven Santa's. So we also have a bunch of themes that are like naughty Christmas books. You're supposed to have eight reindeer monologues which could stand all over your nose. Actually Matt Holmerman, who was here last year, had his Christmas shorts, and which we've seen kind of a spike in that, and then he's one of Andy, which is crazy. Clarke was like, but yeah, so holiday collections are always kind of fun, and there's a lot of them, so just be aware of that. I would also like, I didn't say this earlier, Google the publisher, do your research before you submit. If you send us a collection of shorts to me that are holiday, people will probably come back to you and say, well, we have like four other ones, I don't know if this is the right place. And that's as much about being an advantageous relationship for both of us. I don't want to take your play if they don't think it's going to compete, because that's really an injustice to you, and I don't want you to be like, well, why did my play do well? Okay, well, you're- And I'm going to write the rules for the other ones, so why don't you take them? Yeah, I'll throw out some themes. Good writing. I think I'm always wondering why no one ever does like a 10 minute little short, tiny, funny riffs on classics. Like, I feel like a collection of that. A teacher would go- Christopher, I saw it that way. Yeah, like, a teacher would go crazy over that. Think about what a teacher, we're really for 10 minute plays, thinking about universities, high schools, and community theaters. We're thinking about professional theaters too, sometimes they'll do that for a benefit, but think about what are teachers teaching, so, well, these plays make sense, because that thing gets better. That's a really big movement right now, that's derel-tolerance bullying policies. Like, they're really, that's really potent for schools right now, it's really important to them. So, yeah, like classics, because then they can, the other thing is, this is- A great sample is Tom Stockard's 15 years ago. Yeah, that's true. Really, yep. You know, like, schools now, because of all these crazy curriculum centers, no longer believe that a play is just literacy, because it's a play, you have to like sell it, and it has to fit all these strands. So teachers are looking for things that they can claim as like English class. So, you know, what's ridiculous is of course, we all hear this root note that any play is English class, but, you know, so things like that are rich on classic, that are fun for the kids, but also educational in the traditional sense for an English class are really great. They make sure they're really classic, like, that there's an underlying rights issue. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Public jo-mains. Public jo-mains. Yeah, public jo-mains. Public jo-mains. Public jo-mains. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every market is going to have its own, its own special themes, obviously, you know, high schools like bullying, you know, I would think that colleges, there's been so many cases of sexual abuse going on, where we've been hearing out in the news on the college campuses these days. I would think that that might be an interesting theme. Community theaters are probably going to want lighter fare for the most part, you know, the high school ones, no foul language. Lots of roles for women. Lots of roles for women. Lots of roles for women. Colleges are always looking for everyone who plays and have like girls. Plays that you, you know, like... High schools, they always ask. 15 characters. Can we ask the police officer in our second old place with a woman and a girl? So, yeah. Senior theater would be another scene. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have a bunch of stuff. All the addresses are being issued. Yeah, we just have a few. As an activist, I wonder if that's climate change, because I've never seen a lot about that. I would love to see more about that. It's not light, but it has a bit of a effect. Yes. So, anyone who loves larger castes, what castles are like? I don't know, really. Yeah. I'm just kind of, I'm not sure. Why you guys? Well, say for the, you know, for the school margins, for the larger castes, for the larger castes. Well, and I'd like to... What, well, I think there's two, you just lived that two ways, because I think, I personally think a 10 minute play, a short play, that was more than three or four people, is getting too big. But if you're doing an evening of six, seven, eight of them, and they've all got two pairs of three, four, two, you're gonna be able to involve a lot of people in that evening. So, that's a lot to be able to do. Two, three, four. Yeah. Because we can't handle it. More than four is, just as a writer, it's really hard to kind of like... You can't handle it, how are you going to get it? Where are we? But even there, with the 10 minute plays, I think, I think, that even there, if they have a fundamental role, it makes it more... I would say, if you have a large cast show, to reading other plays, like I know Israel Borowitz, who is a great short play writer, we have a great question that I didn't bring, but it's a real big change. You can order it. You can go get me free champagne if you ask me. He has a play where people are all jogging in a marathon and it's like eight people and it's 10 minutes, but it's fantastic. So, I mean, we need a lot of plays. Like, fine, I know we're all pushing our books and it's kind of... But, there's a reason for that. And the more you read, like you can see examples of where like, oh, this film's really working and it's our cast and like, this is how, you know, like, look at the form too. You have a question? Yes. Do you want us to send them in? Yes. Go ahead. Oh, okay. All right, I work at books and books and I'm actually part of the children's department. I have a charge of book buying. So, I was just actually just intrigued on whether or not you pay attention to the literary trends, i.e., we had the vampire dystopian kind of, like, if the trends correspond to or correlate to what submissions you get in and what submissions you pay attention to. Now, it's like what I call Siklin, which, like, the main character has cancer or they have, or they just speak here. There's something, yeah, falls and earth stars to pay attention to when it's released. So, thank you. We wondered if the child is speaking. So, I don't know if that's corresponding because I know we were talking about bullying and I know what I had to do ordering this coming fall. I had like six or seven books all about bullying. Either the perspective was a bully or the perspective of the person being bullied. So, I just was wondering if everything was really panitizing with, like, literary media and with, like... I have to say, yes, that's my children's. I mean, I mean, you just have to write a play you're not necessarily thinking about or what trends in my train did. I mean, there are publishers here that aren't presented that are more tied into those, well, I mean, you guys publish a lot of children's literature in dramatic or international literature, but like, do you have a giver or you have the... And I think actually, TYA, yeah, the Minneapolis Children's Theater and Seattle Children's Theater actually, when they commissioned work, they retained the licensing rights and they had a whole slew of stuff that specifically for young audiences. Called PYA, that's for young audiences. Yeah, yeah. They may actually be more on those trends, I think because... They didn't obtain the licensing rights. Yeah. Yeah, that's why I couldn't do that. I will say that we often look for work for, we do a lot of one-act competition plays for high schools and, yes, we're very much clicked into what high school kids are watching outside of their theater classes, like Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars and, you know, obviously we're not able, because of rights issues, to get those exact things, but we're often looking for things that we know kids can gravitate to because it's what's in the ether right now. So, I would say for the school market, that's been already true and those things speak to each other. So, Brian, how is the self-publishing trend affected your industry? Because we've seen some plays brought into our workshops that they've published. I published this on Amazon. You can buy it right now. Have you? And they've never been produced. Yeah. So, it's probably more... How is that? How is that? How is that? How is that? How is the self-publishing and licensing really different? So, if somebody sells and publishes something, we can still potentially pick that play up. So, it doesn't, and sometimes we've found people think maybe a handful in our past years where that's happened. So, it doesn't, it's fine. It doesn't hurt us. I would say the same, but again, I would say that's probably the case of somebody who's just written it and wants it published and thinks that publishing is a first step rather than a last step. Right. Or that by having it in book form, it's like... There's actually several short playwrights that I interact with who've gotten, and, you know, the short play model is not necessarily, you're not gonna get rich from writing short playwrights. I think that's something that everyone, I mean, there would be a few exceptions of people that have made a really, some sense of career out of it, but, you know, I think French is really scaled back overall on the amount of short plays we publish. And then had some writers, we have a lot of writers in the front. Not a lot. I know there's like several hundred of them, maybe. I think Robert Cusley, who was there last year, had sent me a collection of great short plays. And I was like, yeah, you know, it's hard for us, we have a lot, and we've just published a lot of books and short plays recently. I think they'll compete. He actually published his own collection which was the licensing them himself, or in the agent. It's like quite well with it, but he just wanted the book in hand to give to people. I'm trying to figure someone else to that series Oh, like Indie Theater Now. There's not a lot of our ask her to play the sheet piece a lot. Yeah, Martin Denton, who's surrounded your theater.com, started an online platform called Indie Theater Now, which is a totally a digital publishing platform. And he ends up taking a lot of 10 minute, I know you published Matt Freeman's 10 minute plays via there, which I also, unfortunately, could not publish. And so, yeah, so there are other options. And they say that Indie Theater Now has a little different than self publishing, because I think Martin's actually asking people if curating, if curating together. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. So Adam, you know, a lot of these 10 minutes of business events have like 1400 submissions. So like, what advice would you give in terms of how would you make your plays about the staff? That's right. Streams. Yeah, really, what advice? Yeah. Is, you know, we see, there's like, things that are in the cultural, like, DNA. And we see, we'll see like 10 plays that are all set in a bar. Like, we divide up the submissions and the package says 20, and in a package of 20, four plays can be set in a bar, four plays can be on a park bench, four plays will be at a bus stop, and like, three are break up plays. And then you'll have like, two plays out of that packet that aren't take place in the supermarket, aren't take place. Like, it's the end of the world. It's, you know, there's like a little more. So, I mean, really, if you're writing in a traditional setting and you have a short play, really the idea has to be super original in that setting because you have to know that there's, there's so many other plays that also happen. And in the end, I was just actually talking about that with you, is that, like, for our composition, it does come down a bit to programming. And I think a lot of these festivals, you have to have variety. You have to have things that are a little off the wall. You can't have, you know, we have 30 plays. We can't have five of them set in a bar. I mean, it'd be easy for Casey because then the set would be the same, but, you know, for the audience, it would be a little tiring. So, yeah, I mean, I think- Outside the box? And once this year, I talked to some people about the programming this year because it is such a weird festival. Like, the ones that really goes to the reading process. We have a play where they like, these two girls kill a baby on stage. Oh my God. And it works in the context of the play. Well, people work on stage. We have, you know, a play that's a Japanese robot play that's, you know, Wigglers. That's really crazy. So, plays that have really taken some big, big risks and they seem to land a lot better. So, I'd say, you know, use it to try out your most adventurous idea. And it's- I loved what Tom Jury was talking about, like, to push out of the realist box, you know. And I wonder, because in, you know, the pulling play does not necessarily, you know, I wish he would explain what, you know, is that more possible in the short form? I can. I know. But yeah, you could do anything in the short form, you know. I, when I, in my books, I try to put a wide variety of different realistic play projects to the one that has a device that number these that Mr. Jury spoke about, is something really going to be done anywhere else that could only sustain. And I'll give you two examples. One was I put up Australian children playing a very successful semi-disployant. I put up one of my play questions. It was called, Ethla and Friends Go Pardier. And the characters were two helium-filled balloons and a children's birthday party. And I put up an interesting one. And then another one that I'm doing a collection for a pause, which is being prepared for publication that's placed specifically for teens. And there was one I found in that that was called Candy Lights Your Status. And it's provided entirely with Facebook exchanges. And it's hilarious. And so I, there's a guy in England named Nick Rice, who does a festival every year. And he takes him to the Edinburgh Festival. Edinburgh, Edinburgh Festival. And I sent that to him with a couple other ones. And he's going to do that at the Edinburgh Festival. He sent me actually pictures of it from their production in London. And it was these girls' ones. And it was very funny. So I think that those devices, you know, that I particularly enjoy those kinds of things that can only be done in 10 minutes. I kind of think that the most successful 10-minute plays are almost never, but the most produced at any rate. Not that successful, it depends on how you define that. But I mean, like, the most produced one, short plays that we have are, you know, David I's, Chris Moran, people who are not necessarily known for real, you know. So it seems to me that the 10-minute form, the short play form, is almost built to a more geared towards that. Because of the heightened nature, because they're so compressed. I mean, again, when I talk about workshops of writing short plays, I kind of, again, focusing on the word play. So think of it as a fully played, you compress down to 10 minutes. And so everything needs to be heightened, and under pressure in a different, weird way. Or at least when I write my own, they're certainly more absurd than the 10-minute play of Dr. Seed from a long time ago. Yeah, I just want to say just real quick. I think it's not just the content, it's also non-realistic. It's also the form that you can also play with form and style. So you can have a play set in the bar, but like, like I thought what Steve Goughy did with the chorus last night and that convention of the chorus was such an interesting way to tell, to add something to the story that was really fundamentally about differences in couples. But it was just weird, like, you know, it's fun. I think we have to wrap up with, did you want to say anything? One thing that the professor used for the writers, and to you folks here in terms of a need from the field, I teach at the university level, and I talk about graduate and undergraduate level. We use a lot of 10-minute plays in the classroom as a semester project or as a team. And what we can't find are there are very few plays available to us that are two women, which we need. I mean, really few. And secondly, we need plays which are indeterminate, two character plays which are indeterminate in terms of sex, so that it can be cast with two men, one woman, one man, two women to use in the classroom, because you never know what the class composition is, do you know what I mean? And those two areas are really wide open. I always include in my book exactly what, at least two or three examples, exactly what they're doing. Where I put in there, it could be in the title, like, they'll contact us like this at 3114. Well, you can contact the field, because I'm out there and I don't know how to find them. You jumped around, John. Yeah. Here's one title, exhibit this to Janusie, which is like, I love to tell my high school and college, because it's set, it's like short scenes set in a museum, but it's 26 men or 26 women or almost six. Like, it's like 25 different scenes that it's so interchangeable, and the set is just like, you know, like in like a, so like that's kind of the thing I really recommend reading something like that, because he does a great job of it. He also has all the Kings Women, which is about women obsessed with Elvis, it's like 26. And the other market, by the way, just that I've been amazed by, because I'm a Jane Austen adapter, is I would say fully 30% of the productions I get are from Christian schools, who are looking for material within their life view, which does not necessarily inhibit you if that is not your life view. I mean, Jane Austen is fine, right? You know, we've done that. There's a big Christian market out there. We actually published 10 by 10, which had a different name, and this was based upon, it was another commission given to ten of our playwrights to write a play, a 10 by 10 play based upon one of the ten commandments, wow, wow, which they just had to draw randomly, and they didn't choose their own programs. I'm sad. I'm sad. I'm sad. I'm sad. I'm sad. I'm sad. I'm sad. I'm sad. I'm sad. I'm sad. I'm sad. I'm sad. In that market, you're actually safer not doing biblical material because of differences in theological view. You're actually better simply writing plays that do not get the hotspots that they're not doing. These are basically a secular or a religious or whatever. That's why we re-named it a 10 short plays which means about ethics and values, because that's what I'm talking about. It's kind of like modern morality, right? Yes. It's kind of like going back to that type of thing. So do we have to wrap up? We do because Michael Dixon's here. Oh, wow, it has to be. There's going to be a continuation of the discussion with publishers. Down in the publishing room!