 really I still remember. Thank you. As do I. And what was the name of it? Because I had misremembered the name. Pick up Axe. Yeah. Lucky things. Yeah. You can't quite plan for it. So, so it was really exciting to me when Anthony moved back to Berkeley. Somebody over to me, not me, who myself. And we had coffee and just have been connecting ever since. And so one of the things that I've been thinking about over the last couple of years and I've encountered in various ways is, is the proactivity of the playwright. You know, of what, what is it, in the, in the way that the consolation of the theater sort of hierarchy in this country is such that it's an impenetrable forest, basically. You're competing, we get 500 scripts a year approximately. I know that the Humana Festival gets about a thousand. So, you know, that is, you know, whenever you have the opportunity to submit an open submission process, your chances of having people read your scripts that are at the upper levels of the theater management are extremely thin to mill. You know, and so, and yet, here you are writing these beautiful works of art and they deserve to be heard, they deserve to be read, they deserve to be seen. So what's the, what, what do you do? You know, and we often kind of have these conversations about, and when it was first the artistic playwrights foundation, we'd bring in all these literary managers to talk to you, you know, about submissions and how to submit your play and what to put on your cover letter and, you know, what font you should use and, you know, all this kind of stuff, right? And but ultimately, the real answer is, I read your plays but we pick plays that my artistic director goes to London and sees or some artistic director X tells our artistic director Y that they have this play that they're going to produce, do they want to do a co-production? You know, I mean, that's, that's, that's how much of the work is produced at sort of the regional theater level. Let's just forget about Broadway and all that, you know. So, so I think that's a really dead-end conversation, honestly, and that's why I don't want to talk about it. So, you know, I think what's more empowering is to say, you know, what is to say, what do I want to do with my work? And how can I proactively gain that traction and do that? And so that's what I'd like to, you know, help open that dialogue today and help you, and this whole idea of mapping out your own career path and beginning to pursue that and see where that takes you is sort of the, the way to go at this point, I feel. And here is someone who did that and can, you know, come back from the war, the 900-year war and death. Just a little PTSD. So, Amy gave me a nice segue as, and so often the case, to the, I'm going to try to keep actually the war stories to a minimum and focus more on process and, and you guys thinking about you and where you are now, but I will say that for me the, in the current phrase, tipping point between being a guy who was writing plays and somebody who really thought of myself as having a career was, it was a couple of things, was deciding that I was going to be quitting my day job sometime in the next couple of years. That was one big thing. Immediately, and I will say this, immediately my writing got better. My writing got more focused because it had a purpose, which was what I was doing every day, getting up, this was how I was going to do this thing, my life. The other thing that happened was I happened to write a play, just out of my experience at I.D. I had a thing that I had that I realized the Eureka Theater, as it happens, really ought to do. So often we're in this position of going, I wrote a play, oh, somebody please love me. Oh, if anybody will please notice me. Oh, whatever. And the Eureka was in a transition period at that point. They were a major company. They really, so were one of the two places in the country that introduced Carol Churchill to the American audience. They were doing exciting, engaged, political work. Their alumni, you know, David Cooke, Robert Woodruff, and Tony Teconi, and Oscar Eustis, and I'm not leaving out Richard E. White. And people who have gone on to major institutional careers around the country, they were doing really important work. But they had mostly moved on. They were a little rudderless. They were bringing a new leadership. And they were struggling. Well, I had written this play. I had written the first back of the play that was, I thought, right in their wheelhouse. It was relatively small, one-set play. It just worked out that way. It was politically engaged. It was dealing with contemporary issues of interest in the Bay Area. And to my surprise, it had come out, you know, a relatively funny entertaining scene. And I thought, this is what you guys need to do right now. This will be a good thing for you. And I proceeded to, you know, send copies to their almost non-existent literary department. We had, you know, readings that were taped. And I set those tapes. And I followed up. And I followed up. And nothing. Nobody, nobody home. And they couldn't register with me. And then, as it turns out, I was also simultaneously applying to, back then, they had them, you know, fellowships and playwriting at the National Endowment for the Arts. That play was read in New York City by, as it turns out, a juror for the NEA, who, as it turns out, was about to be the new artistic director of the Eureka Theater Company, who got in touch with Eureka and said, hey, there's this play. And as an out-of-towner, it would be, like, really smart for me politically to do a play by a, you know, writer from around here about something local. Not, I'm carpet-bagging in by New York friends or whatever. Can you find this play right? Can you find this play? And I'm told that, you know, literary office said, how good can he be? He's local. And then they said, and then they, like, looked in the phone book and called me up and said, could we get a copy of your script? And I refrained from saying, yes, if you look on your desk, there are at least two copies. And I said, no problem. And took a copy of my script and walked two blocks from my house to the literary manager's house and dropped it off, having bounced it off the New York, you know, satellite to hear about me from two blocks away. And lo and behold, they did that play. They gave it a sterling production. It was a big hit for them to put another app and we're off to the races. The point of all that being in your lives, I approached people from the point of view, not of supplication, but of presenting them with an opportunity. One. Two, I set myself that goal and continued to try to find actions that would enable that goal to occur. And I partly point this out because, you know, it's not like this is a natural thing to me. It was just what I needed to do. So that's that war story now. And so lo and behold, I found myself, you know, in a position where I was being a playwright and really had to start thinking about how to make that happen. And if anything has gotten more challenging since then. So there are a number of processes that is really important just to be conscious of to think about. And it's not just obviously a playwriting career question. It's a whole life question, especially those of us who have children or other responsibilities, who don't have big trust funds, whatever. They're really your your life breaks down. Even just even the career, let's just look at your three jobs right at the top. Here we go. This is why this is impossible, because basically for a playwright, your life consists of whatever else is going on personally, three full time jobs, well, like three quarter time jobs. Okay, one, there's the writing itself and everything connected to that creatively, whatever your process is. That's one. Two, selling the writing. Okay, that's a whole thing. You are your own marketing and PR department. Even those of us with agents, even those of us who've been fortunate enough to have publishers for years and years, fundamentally, it's still on us to do the branding, to do the outreach, to do all those processes. That's a whole thing. And it needs more time to be budgeted for it. And then three, supporting yourself and whoever else is dependent on you. Now, those are really important things. And what tends to get put by the boards is the selling the writing part. We manage to support ourselves, somehow or other, either ourselves or through partners or through whatever. We do the writing on some level, or we wouldn't be here calling ourselves a playwright. Very often, what does go by the board or is kind of an afterthought is, how do we let people know this thing that we've done, this endeavor that we're engaged in? That is why people go, ooh, right. How do I do that? Then comes the panel and asks about literary management and all the rest of it. I will get into some of the nuts and bolts of that, but some of the how you need to live in order to facilitate that as a natural, just part of how you are in the world as we move on down. And you guys, I'm sure, will have lots of examples that we can share. So those things, those processes, that's part of how your life gets structured. Now, some of us manage to do these things all at the same time. Amazing people who can do all three of those jobs kind of every day. A lot of us do sort of look ahead and plan and go, okay, if I can support myself, if I can bank some dough, if I can find somebody to take the weight of that for a period of time, does that free me up to concentrate just on the writing? If I know that I'm going to have this writing done by this time, do I then budget the time to focus on marketing what I've done? If you know in advance, right, of course, here's a deadline. I'm going to have that played out. What's going to happen after that? Well, after that, somebody's going to need to know either people are already working with me on this play, it's a project for the Fringe, one actually Olympians or any one of them, many, many things. Then the question is, what happens to that piece after that? Do you know? Do you have a plan for what that's going to be? You should. If you've devoted the time, you've devoted the talent, what's going to happen to that piece next? If you know that the whole time you're working somewhere in the back of your mind, then it's not going to come as a surprise to you. Oh, look, I've got an editor. Oh, I had a production. Now what do I do? You've already begun to talk. And one of the things that that will enable you to do while you're writing the project, before the project is being produced, you will already just naturally be telling people, right? Not only this production is coming up, not only just people who might come, but people in your national network who might be interested in taking a look at it later. And you're not going from the standing start after you've already written it. They are on some level aware that this is a thing that is coming from you, along with all the many other things that are going on. And in their lives, it's just part, it becomes part of their social networking, internet, touching their fingers to the pulse of the American theater environment, your upcoming play, right? So that's just always going on. Can I interject? Go, please. So in terms of what Anthony is talking about, I think you also take a look at where you are. What is your baseline as a writer in terms of your sort of street cred? Do you have a lot of people seeing your work or have you had no productions? It doesn't matter. This is not a judgment statement. This isn't actually like, let's take a real snapshot of who might know about you. It could just be your parents, your family, and your closest friends who have come to a reading in your living room. And that's fine. And I think that that's where you start. You start where you are. And you reach out to that group of people. And there's nothing wrong with taking somebody to coffee, who's a friend of a friend of your mother, who knows someone in the theater or works in a theater, or getting to know, for instance, if that's where you're at, then your job is to get to know a couple of people who are key players in the small theater community. Why? Not because your play belongs in a small theater, but because those theaters, you have something to offer those theaters as opposed to them offering you something, although they do have something to offer you. No question. But you actually are in a peer position in that case, if that makes sense. And so you can go to their shows, get to know them. I've always, for instance, had the very first festival. So I know who comes to the festival. And I love it. I talk to people. People come up to me. We meet. And I get to know folks that way. And then if somebody calls me up to the festival and says, can I take you out for coffee? It's like, yeah, it's absolutely. I know who this person is. And I'm more likely to make room in my schedule. Not because I won't make room in my schedule for a stranger, but just because I know them. And they've come and invested themselves in what we're doing. So there's this relationship that started. And then you say, I'm working. And then you've launched it. I'm working on this play that I think you might be interested in. This is my pitch. So part of preparing is, and I love the way Anthony is phrasing this, which is that it's kind of percolating in the back of your mind as opposed to, well, what's my marketing elevator speech going to be this way, you know? But it's only percolating. And then you can kind of naturally move to that level. It doesn't have to be exact. You probably hone it as you go along. But get started with that by just telling someone about what you're working on. But you don't have to be Anthony Clairvaux. I think this is my point right now to do this. So he can call Loretta, Greco at the Magic Theater, or Tony, or some other people who say, I've got this idea percolating. It doesn't have to be at that level in order to begin this process. Great. So, yeah, that, I mean, Amy just ran through a number of things that will be also parsing out, I think, in more detail. That's okay. So just giving you a head to, yeah, okay, fine. Further down the page. Three sets of people you need to get to know. And I'll just say parenthetically, right? I mean, I love the theater. I partly went into writing because it's the part that has the most privacy. I'm not actually necessarily somebody who wants to be out there in people's face and vice versa all the time. And I think it's easy as writers to go, yeah, I'm kind of shy and quiet as I sit at home. I do my thing. I put it out there and my work speaks for me. And that's really great if maybe you're a poet. But we are in a very collaborative, very public medium here. We are about creating blueprints for public events. And the extents to which you can acknowledge that and embrace that reality, you put yourself in a really much stronger position. So that means that you are part of the community. You are part of several different communities. And it's important to be aware of what those are and who else is in them and what else they're doing and what your place is in it. So those three just do it. You should know your fellow writers, right? Not only locally but nationally. What are they doing? If you're working on that, you know, swell play about, you know, somebody building a robot in his garage and it turns out three other people are doing the same thing. That's a thing you should know because your niche just got a lot smaller, right? And because, you know, you may be able to learn from things. I just, you know, I just saw a film adaptation. I know, I'll leave it. I just saw a film adaptation of a Henry James novel that I've been thinking about doing a stage adaptation of for a while. And it's a good job. And I'm like, excellent. Okay, that's one project I really don't need to worry about for a while now. They've they've done that just fine. That's one. The other people who work in theaters where you want to do your work. And I want to emphasize on this. It's not just know the institutions. Of course you should. You should know what's being done at those theaters. But the people who are those theaters, they're moving around a fair amount. And, you know, whatever, if you guys don't know Meredith McDonough when she was at TheatreWorks, well congratulations. Now you have a friend at Actress Theatre of Louisville because that's where she is now, right? That's, you know, that's beyond your relationship with TheatreWorks. And that's now a relationship with somebody with a person who's, you know, going to be around in this perspective for a little bit long time, as you think you will be too. And so, you know, this has happened to me a lot. I mean, Oscar Eustis first became aware of me when we were both, you know, in arts management in San Francisco. He went down to the taper and we, and he directed a couple of things of mine down there, commissioned a play for me that he didn't wind up actually producing until he was at Trinity Round. You know, so it's like that. These are relationships. It's not just, you know, attention to literary manager, right? And the third really important community that you need to be aware of is people you want to communicate with. Who are you writing for? Who's your audience? You know, people think, oh, the pinnacle of ambition is a Broadway career. I actually, I've never thought of my career in those terms. I am no interested whatsoever. I've never pursued it as a goal. A large part, because for the most part, I'm not interested in having communication with people who are seeing theater in a Broadway context. I'm about a different kind of experience. I'm about a different kind of event. And so, that is what I focused on. I'm low on the pole. The goal that I focused on is the goal that I've been able to achieve. Maybe if I had focused it in a different way, different things would have happened. I don't care. This is what I want to be doing with what I got. And I hope you guys, you know, are thinking similar terms. And that's some of the work that we want to talk to today. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, that's the way of thinking of this, not in terms of, ooh, institutions, how do I break into doors? It's people. It's just other people. It's not the audience that faceless mask. It's not institutions, those big buildings. It's not, you know, other writers, those shiny famous people or whatever. It's just other people trying to get this stuff done. The more you can focus on that level, the easier it will be to reach out. The easier it will be to imagine yourself in conversation or in communication with them. Are there any questions at this point about any of this? Or are we just like beating you into submission? I would like to just acknowledge that we have people watching us on the live stream. Good morning. Well, it's good morning. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. And you can tweet questions as well to hashtag BAPF36. Is that right? And hashtag just BAPF or new play. Okay. Just BAPF or new play. That's hashtag BAPF or hashtag new play. And we'll get those questions to Anthony and he can answer those as well. The rest of you. Okay. So planning, ostensibly the purpose of the morning. Okay. A lot of this really is about telling us, we're narrative writers, right, on some level. This is about telling a story about your life and who you are. And we'll get to this. A lot of the questions about planning a career are on some fundamental level dramaturgical questions actually. So you are better poised than you know to tackle these issues. Okay. To start with, there are three basic kinds of planning that is worth considering. And different ones may feel like a better match for you and what you want. So let's go through the three. One is thinking about planning in terms of goals, i.e., where and how do you want to be working? So this is a lifestyle question. What kind of life do you want to have? Who are you working with? What kind of working day are you having? Are you facing like screaming pressure to you know write your chunk of that sitcom episode? Are you going and doing you know developmental exploration in some site specific spot with you know a really interesting ensemble of human artists? I think that's pretty much the two ends of the spectrum of your career as a dramatic writer. Know that and that way for one thing it lets you out of a whole lot of pressure to be something you're not, don't want to be and have not equipped yourself for. You know, I never wake up in the morning going how is, you know, how are my punchlines coming for that Simpsons episode? Because that's not my world, right? And you should just let yourself off the hook of all the stuff that's not part of your story. So that's one of those goals. Another age is just you know what do you want to be doing by the time you reach your next milestone? Now this is really a life story question. You know by the time I'm this I will have done that. I don't want to be in my whatever, I mean for me it was I don't want to be in my 30s and not have had a play for this. That's not a story I want to tell myself. So what do I do to prevent that from happening? So that's another and the final one to think about is thinking in terms of projects. What do you want to get done in your life? This is kind of a life work question. By the time I die I will have wanted to have written a thing like this. I would have wanted to participate in theater like that. I want to look back and go that was my life's work. So for me that was when I was in my 20s I said I set out to finish one stage worth equal length play per year. That was one goal. That was a kind of con and not have a lot of lifestyle implications. I set out to be professionally produced by age 30. I did not make that thing. It worked out okay. So and that was kind of life story question. I didn't want to be somebody who said I'm a playwright, I'm a writer, I'm a theater person who wasn't actually doing it. So I because that was not temptation I had was like not to get out of the house. So all right, I have to do that. Who was a lighting planner. I worked with extensively when I was young. And I and she said to me one day Michael I've decided that if I don't have a show on Broadway in five years I'm going to quit being a lighting designer. And in that absolute instant I knew that she was going to quit being a lighting designer because it was an impossible goal. Not to say that that she couldn't have gotten there because she was very talented and ambitious. But it just seemed that that was such a big you know statement to make you know. And so I learned a lot from that moment. That's great. Yeah absolutely. And the last thing was along the line of what's the scale of the ambition. I set out to write the plays that interested me and work on them with artists I respect. So I said it's not that I want to be professionally produced and I will write whatever it takes in order for that to happen. I'm not going to become a half in order to do this if I can't which for me would mean you know not expressing myself not writing what I know not writing in a way that I would want to see as an audience member. You know I'm not going to try to spend all my time figuring out what they might want and giving it to them. I'm going to try to figure out how to do the best my writing I can and imagine myself watching it and being moved and thought provoked and and entertained. And yeah and wherever institutionally or wherever collaboratively that places me that's where I want to be. As it turned out you know that's put me at different places in different times in you know the cultural history of my generation. Sometimes that's meant I've been on you know off-Broadway and more main stages and sometimes it's meant I've been you know working with that interesting also a little bit artists on that development work you know somewhere pretty private. Fine that works for me other people yet it's more of a it's got to be whatever it is because that's what you want that's what entertains you and that's that's what you see as as a valid thing great just so you know for yourself. Amy Freed told me a few years ago that you know and this is obviously after she had already had quite a number of productions done at Woolly Mammoth and other sort of edgy theater companies around the country she said you know I knew it was time for me to to to write a play that was going to be on Lord Stage and so I decided to write The Beard of Alon because that was going to be my Lord Cullingard. Oh Slares of course is now Woolly Mammoth is a Lord Theater so she just stayed right there she'd have been fine but yeah absolutely yeah I had the same thing I was very lucky and docked on Lord stages very early in my career but it was always second stages and I said you know I that's great I'm so happy I could be happy you know the rest of my career working at this scale but I kind of think I'd like to write something more symphonic than this you know this is great chamber music but I want to see if I can create a larger canvas so I did set out sort of formally to say how can I learn to write a large play something that demands main stage resources from you know from a Lord Theater. What kind of thing is going to attract their attention how is that going to do what I realized pretty quickly the way at that time and at that place for you know a relatively unknown to the field but you know not what my name was ever something that was going to sell tickets how does that person go on the main stage probably about piggybacking on you know somebody more famous of doing adaptation, adapting some work of literature, whatever and I looked around for that now as it turned out the work of literature that I fell in love with was unadaptable in his form and so I just was inspired by that wrote a great big play inspired by the same source that it was inspired by and lo and behold that got me in somewhat inadvertently onto the main stages of a great many lords this is a play called Living and you can read it in American Theater Magazine if you keep that many baskets and then lo and behold having made those contacts having those relationships I was able to say to three of those places I do want actually do an adaptation of this will you commission it from me and they said yes and I went forward with that and that was the brothers which you know has also gotten around some and you know but that not only expressed some it's brothers come on this is probably my most autobiographical play it also fulfilled that formal project that can I write big and it fulfilled that career function of you know I want to be working at that level I want that kind of visibility so you know these if you plan these goals and if you plan them with these several strands in mind you know remarkable stuff can take place but it doesn't happen without your plan and and even as with the living if you have a plan and something else happens it just seems to have more purpose and more direction than if it didn't there's an old saying like you know plan better than no plan uh with a little greater than sign there is something about it sounds like a tweet to me doesn't it yeah from before tweets like I think they were carving that in like times old rolling speaking of fonts Julius Kaiser said greater than no plan there is something that directed ambitious professionals respond to in writing that feels pervasive when it feels like you're saying it and doing it for a reason people who get up in the morning with a similar motivation feel a kindred spirit there's just a snappiness to the communication that is welcomed actually and rises to the top of that pile like nobody's business um so I want to say one more kind of thing and then I really want to turn it over to everybody um and that is the whole question of the pipeline the project being just asking me this morning what are you working on well this and this and this and this and this and this um we you are not like you know 15 okay you've all been doing this a bit it's really helpful I find as somebody who's not the natural I have a five-year plan guy he's talking about Jackson sometimes he's great he's exemplary about this he does a series of like five and ten-year plans about what he's going to do and he makes big life choices based on I'm going to go to Berlin for the fall okay why mark because I've had a long term goal of working in Europe excellent all right small steps local steps short-term steps leading to a large a much longer term goal fantastic for me for all of our talking about planning so many things have happened by accident that I tend to need it to be a plan with some regular movement and a little flexibility so I don't necessarily go you know hard things this far out but I do find that it tends to help to think in terms of relationships and projects both ones that have happened and ones that are coming up and if that means relating to people you want to work with if that means it's about kinds of what you want to do if it's about projects that you've been wanting to to get to and think about whatever that is it's a nice structure for thought so really and I want you to begin this is your first assignment here to think about your work in this way and you can jot down a little outline of this based on this and it's chronological okay scripts you have written and produced that you're looking for subsequent productions of what are those okay those are the ones back there right next scripts you have written that you are looking for productions of now that maybe you've got it scheduled already you know you've already got the premier in line but what about after that who knows about that who knows that's coming up have you told people this is a thing I'm using that tone of voice because that's the tone of voice I have to do for myself in the morning I haven't told anyone this is happening for you because maybe some of them will go let me take a look at that script before it's even produced which can be really helpful then you know when you know because they're already interested before the reviews come out you know they form their own opinion and that could be a good thing next script you are rewriting with development opportunities lined up okay so you've done the first draft of this and you know it's in the works plays you are writing right now those you know what ones those are I bet you do okay script you so that's like you know I'm on the second draft script you are writing with a deadline coming up so this is what are you writing a first draft of scripts you haven't written yet that you're reading with possible collaborators about this is a really important category of script this is the first category of script you haven't started writing yet but these are your scripts and the last one because it's the one furthest out script you haven't written yet that are still just means in your eye now these are really important because in part because they're really important to you you know the carrot of if I get this one done then I can do that one this this one that was my dream to write which is now this wheelstone around my neck uh then it was like okay well if I can only get this one then I'll do that one I find the best way to procrastinate is by working on a different project you know that I procrastinate from this play by writing this play or better yet I procrastinate from writing this play by telling people about that play from back there like when your marketing becomes the way you procrastinate from your writing you're actually in really good shape so but the reason that those would lean in the eye things are really important is then when somebody interesting that you are meeting somewhere says what are you thinking about you might like to write you're in a position to say you know what I've been thinking about I've written a thinking about ghost stories I really don't do that because I'm doing that I really think you know whatever I've really been thinking about doing an adaptation of what faze you by Henry James good movie go see um you know whatever that is you've got something ready you've got an ambition you've got a dream you're not just a play wrote right you're not just somebody who wrote a play you're somebody who again people respond to this people with ambition and drive of their own people who have goals and plans responds to somebody who goes I have a dream I have a plan I've got a twinkle in my eye and I'm just waiting for the right person to come along to work with me on that because a really very high percentage of the time whether you know it or not that project is going to get a happen you know the next time the next chance you've got the next interesting conversation that happens somebody will be interested the other thing that happens amy's elevator speech amy's you know pitch the more you've been thinking about it ahead of time the more people you've just bounced it off of those the more ready you are when you're you're you're the deer in the headlights of somebody who actually has resources to offer you to go is this and you can like boom reflexively come out with that thing that those resources would be really opportunely applied to I have an opportunity for you resources person and it's this and you never know when you're going to get that phone call you know somebody and what happens behind the scenes is producers and even new new play development organizations are saying you know I'm looking for this another project for three years down the line or two years down the line trying to think about this next part of our our organizational development what are you thinking about working on you know I'll have that conversation with Marissa Wolf that fire for instance Susan or Rob Melrose who are constant partners of ours you know and if I've just talked to a playwright that said I'm going to be working on I have this idea for bloody blah and nobody else has worked on it yet that would be very attractive for us and then I can go you know I am sitting there in the room Marissa and we're batting for an idea and I said you know I just talked to so-and-so and there's a really interesting idea it's not even that there's not one thing written there's no title there's no characters there's nothing that's you know saying oh wow say Rob says that sounds fascinating I'm thinking about my season for 2016 yeah do you know what I mean and then something starts to percolate and then just because that particular writer called me and said you know here's what I'm working on and the more things like that you've got out there at a time the thing that you don't want is and here they are seeing you again and it's you know months and years later and you're still hawking the same thing that's somebody who's you know OCD not somebody with a writing career um if what you want to be able to say yeah remember the thing I told you about last year well that's being produced by one of your peer organizations and they just wanted to have you for a word how are you and they will say I'm great what do you think about now and you'll have something and preferably it will be something that you are already working on with somebody else but there's this other thing that you haven't found a partner for yet and if these if there's enough of these and they've got your name attached to it and it's happening over enough of a span of time then you're branding yourself oh this is that kind of thing so you know if you're me then you're in a position of organizations getting in touch with me going I'm you're thinking about doing this kind of thing it seems like it would be up your alley would that be interesting to you can we send you this book can we send you the sheet of material you think this might actually fit in with the kind of thing you're going to want to be writing next year and you know lo and behold sometimes it is sometimes it isn't sometimes the cash flow says you bet um but um and I will you know fall in love by arranged marriage and some of those have turned out to be wonderfully most of them have turned out to be wonderfully personal personal self-expression projects I have found my take on whatever that is and yeah that's my play absolutely to the point that I have to go whose idea was that who brought that to whom I don't even remember anymore that kind of thing but it's about not just being your name not just being about what you wrote but what you're about what you're interested in what you do but that's but that's partly what you've done what you're doing and yet what's down the line and you know that changes that shifts that goes into different directions that people begin to recognize and continue any questions about any of that either here or from the bloggers any questions from twitter no of course not we're covering everything so satisfactorily respond to this answer I just want to thank I want to thank you for all of this and thank you for this whole forum but this is really nice because what I tend to do is I have a list of like this I can work on this I can work on this I can work on this I can work on this I can work on I mean in actual projects some that I've written and I go well which ones should I do uh I don't know this one right rather than thinking okay this is what needs to happen with this one next yeah thank you good yeah it's it's it's great to have an order of priorities and obviously the the more you can tie that to a set of deadlines preferably for people like who aren't you uh the better it is so a lot of it right so a lot of the only way I ever get anything done is to go blah blahs waiting for that draft that's the only way I've ever accomplished anything in my whole life and ever and if it's just about you know calling some friends and saying would you do a reading of something in your living room in three months time because I think I'm about two and a half months out and they say great then it's like crud that whole living room meeting is going to fall right through get up and Anthony who have you told that it's happening all that so yeah the more you can attach deadlines to those you took each of those things then it gets into an order then it really is a pipeline and not just a massive stuff so in that case thank you john uh given that there are it was that was that a hand up or a head scratch well I'm wondering if this is like an opportunity just to ask general questions but go for it uh so I have two what what do you do after you've produced a play one time yeah like what what happens like I've heard that for the only thing harder to get than the first production is something yes okay and the other question is how I mean you sort of answered it but I'd like you to go into more detail how do you know when a play is like really done like you've written the first draft to meet the deadline but it's like the first draft how do you know when to stop writing drafts those are good questions and I'd actually be happy to open those up to the group as a whole because I think there's there's a wealth of knowledge around here so by what process has that second production occurred uh you give me an example anything here did I see a hand movement at the airport no no no okay I have the same question oh okay anybody else want to weigh in on this chest uh well one thing is is judging on audience response I have this play that I have been working on for several years and probably is in the obsessive compulsive area but but but the thing is like a year ago the reading the audience squirmed through act one this last the last reading the audience was laughing at reasonably appropriate times through act one so you know I I think and they they always liked act two uh so I think you know I'm waiting for word on the stage reading and if it goes through the stage reading okay it's going out the theaters okay great I'll weigh in on this yes I think something that you talked about earlier Anthony is this idea of seeding the ground now you know squirm or not squirm you know uh everybody's going to squirm through the first read of the play you know right uh so even you probably mostly you yeah or that you know um you I mean depending on the kind of writer you are they will say that but but I think that having it in the back of your mind that the end all be all is not the first production but but how you know sort of the the length of a career that you're you're constantly you're constantly got the ball in play you know this is the project I'm working on I'm looking at doing a reading of it next year it's in the pipeline I've got this other project that I'm thinking about but I haven't written it yet that what what exactly Anthony was talking about when you have an opportunity to talk to people who are in the position to produce your work if you know if they say well do you have a production scheduled you can just say you're working on it you know um I think that waiting until the production is already up and the reviews come out or whatever it is that's going to happen is almost too late it's almost too late and have the nose we've all done I I certainly had so one one answer that question is if you're looking for the production after the first production that presupposes that you are thinking nationally because obviously you're not going to have a second crew most part I mean it does happen but you're not going to have a second production you know immediately following a first production in the same community as the first production you're looking for okay that was the bay area production now do they know about me in Seattle Chicago Minneapolis New York Los Angeles Atlanta Washington DC the greater Boston area who do I know there who is in a position to either do things with new plays or talk to people who are in a position to do things with new plays whatever that may be that may be a living room reading in Denver that may be you know something out of a new play development organization like the playwrights foundation there's nobody like the playwrights family you're a pure organization you know the playwright center and so on you know somewhere else is that you know someplace in the national new play network or whatever what's you what are you thinking nationally that that that's great if you're thinking that way but know that that implies something beyond your media vicinity that implies that you are thinking it has a member of the national new play community and all the work that you're doing here to get to know people has to be done in those various places so it it might be too much to bite off for your first production and if that first production by you the unknown does go well and there are nice blurbs obviously that makes it a lot easier to put the word out i'm not the best person to talk about this because i got for costars the lucky first time out i'm still learning how to do this given the resources available to playwrights in the world of new plays you know today as opposed to when i started and you know in some ways you know you're starting new all the time because the scene shows so there are various nuts and bolts ways to do that that lies outside the scope of what we're going to do today but know that that's the level that they're talking about and and it is doable so that was one question the other one oh when do you know that it's ready yeah that's just a whole eight week course on that subject matter so yeah absolutely like that right thank you thank you maybe and to find out if the answer to that no i was in more hours sitting with me no it's not it's not like the marketing pitch but it's more that it's a very very complicated question and i don't think we can address it today right no we should get you know begin to try to try to do it but i will say in terms of planning the planning version of the answer to that question is you're in conversation with more than one personal group of people about that project so that you have multiple opportunities to hear that play to hear people respond to that play at whatever level you can do if that's different groups of friends that's one thing if it's at different new play development organizations again scattered around the country or around this area fine if it's a theater that's you know expressed an interest in your work before either because you all went to college together or because you managed to break into their lead office and leave a script on the desk whatever it was uh then you know then you have multiple opportunities you have to gauge how interested people um so that in a large broad way this is it's more like getting heard as much time as possible as many times it is many different contexts and generating as much conversation uh about it as needed and as possible absolutely so yeah can i think i have a good question sure um for other kinds of writing you send it out to one person and you wait yes sometimes a year yes not not here not you send it out and then you then it's a lot of people come back and say i want to produce it then you deal with the traffic issue yeah yeah yes you do perfect and you should have such troubles but in some domains that's just a faux pas and i have committed i have committed the faux pas of of approaching multiple organizations with who think of themselves as in the same pool um and you know and bad things have occurred um we had to work out and you'd be contrite and bring people absolutely but yeah what's along with julius's you know plan better than no plan i think is you know better to apologize afterward than you know then get permission up front yeah so that takes longer when you carpet it's still good erin did i see a thing no you just okay no wrong all right so the next thing i want to do and a chunk in in our little handout there are questions that it's really great to deal with i want to raise these questions i want you guys to think about these questions let's take a few minutes go into yourselves and think about the answers to these questions and i don't want to come back and and i want to share answers okay this has been way a lot Amy and me and i know that there are people who have their own experiences of this stuff on a whole school level so i just let me say i'm allowed and then read up and go think about it okay these are the dramaturgical questions to ask about your life and career all right why do you want to write plans who's your audience whose audience do you covet either a writer or a theater company who do you want to work with whose work do you admire either or your peers what people and places are doing work it is like your writing now who's writing producing writing like what you want to be doing what resources do you have if we're doing that planning and your free jobs and all of that what do you already have going for you who loves and supports you and who owes you who you've been loving and supporting and really it's your turn sir yep Yeah, absolutely. I didn't know that. After now, I've been on both sides of the thing. We were both kind to each other. People. Yeah, that's true. I would say, because I've totally messed up. I would say, I said, broke up. It's like middle school. I don't even know what I need, but I know. Kids with a dream. Yeah, that was awesome. And how does that mean for you? That's right. Bus car. Yeah. I know. I'm telling you about the show. Because it's totally different from my new. Well... I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm not so bad. I don't even know. But it's a great mess. Mm-hmm. It's a great mess. All right. We can just start with that one. Yes. Ding, ding, ding, ding. Because we'd like to... 1130, 1140. So those of you who would like to go see the fight. Okay. Which is at the house? It's at the house. And I have a fairly... Oh, no. My car's in here. So I'm going to need a ride on you. I can do that. My family is expecting an event or two. That's great. That's been great. Yeah. That's great. I'm going to say we're basically back except for John, who's heard lots of me over the year. Okay. So, how did that go? Who's got an answer to a question or a great question that you've answered? Somebody start a song. Great. The question I chose, what are your liabilities? Yes. Always go to the dark side. Yes. I am crippled by my own inability and reticence to a soul. It feels almost unbearably rude and crass and pushes all of those ancient buttons about manners and appropriate behavior, et cetera, et cetera. And what I think of as consideration or lack of say for other people and their wants and needs is part timidity and fear of being slapped down and slapped down hard, as I was as a young actor in New York. There is a deep and incorrect assumption that it is extremely disrespectful to trust oneself or one's work on another. It creates an internal cringe. I'm aware that this is absolutely untrue, but nonetheless, a deeply held conviction. Good. Thank you. That is itself not an easy thing to say. All right. Anybody got an answer to that? How do you go about overcoming that very natural and pretty common liability issue challenge? I feel like I'm just starting to get to that. And for the first time ever in writing, I just lined e-mailed a bunch of people at theaters who I felt like are a step above where I am working or have the potential to work right now. And it's just like, I have a reading if you want to come. And nobody could come, but they all asked to go out and get coffee after this. And they all asked to read work. And it was like, I went without any ideas of what it was going to be just to meet people. And like, looking at it for me is just like, ampersand relationships. They're all really nice people. And once it starts to be like, oh, you're just somebody that I'm going to have a beer with after work when we're talking about life. And then we'll, theater's part of life. So we're going to talk about that for a little bit. That feels not gross. Yeah. And that's like, that was a revelation for me because I've had the same thing. It's like, oh, I don't want to be pushing because that's really us trying to do it. One other suggestion, that's great. And another thing that can piggyback off of that is, if you have a sense of who you're talking to, who you want to talk to. If you are trying to get to know who they are as people, then it's really easy nowadays to find out what they've been doing. What's their recent project been? What do they have coming up in their season? And if there's anything, just be able to say, I really loved that thing last year. I am really looking forward to this thing. How is that going for you? And then if they are at all polite, they will say, and what are you up to? And if they're not, you can go ahead and say it anyway because after all, you have paid them the tribute of attention to their work. So now it's your turn. And so it's not, I'm walking out going, hey, how are you doing? You know, being like the PR man, right? You're exchanging interests. That helps me do that. I mean, literally, you may not believe it, but I have the same problem. So that's a couple of ways. The other thing, remember, this is their job. They need projects. They need to hear about material. So you're helping them do their work? I was going to also say getting involved in the theaters is really helpful. I've done a lot of that. For last year for Olympians, I helped them with their box office for a couple nights. And then I got to meet all of them. And then when I sent a proposal to Stewart, I was like, oh, you know me. So I didn't have to introduce myself. That was really helpful. And like I work with Playwrights Foundation, like just finding companies and people that you really want to work with and seeing what they need help with and knowing them that way so that they're like, oh, what else do you do? Well, I'm also a Playwright, you know. That's an easier way to get into that, too. Absolutely. And so, yeah, early on, partly to get to know my peers, partly to be known by organizations, I became our reader for a couple of years in the area that did employees, which are no longer in existence, but I don't blame myself. It's an other very good following. Great. So there's a few ways to go. So again, it's like, all right, you already know me. Hi, here I am. And there's the other side of that, I think. I mean, I know you very well. But I think that thinking of what you have as an opportunity for other people, which is actually the truth, that when you think about yourself going out and begging for opportunities, I can see that that would be really difficult to make yourself do that. I mean, I can't do that. And when I have done it, I have felt nothing but deep humiliation. But thinking of yourself as having an opportunity for someone like Golden Thread, that was an opportunity not just for you, that was an opportunity for Golden Thread, because they were seeking a piece to put on their series, and your piece was the perfect one for them. So that was an opportunity for them as much as it was an opportunity for you. And that is actually the truth. It's hard to, maybe hard to accept that, but it is the truth. And so finding the right match and saying, I have this play that I think would be great for your audiences. It's right up your company's alley. It's where your sweet spot is. Can be a very good opener where you're not in a position of saying, please read my play, please tell me something nice, please, you know. And it also suggests that you have gotten to know that, again, that the reciprocity of saying, you know, I paid attention to your work, I respect your work. Please, anybody who loves me is, I think you and I would be a great team. Another question, another response. That was great. Thank you. And ironically, you went first. Come on, David, get job, thank you. Who is your audience? And this question sounds simple on its face, but I realize my audience is whoever comes to see my shows and if they like it, that's even better. And I don't think that I have a vision of who my audience is when I'm writing. I've heard that, of course, you shouldn't write to a perceived audience and I agree with that, you know, not try to write the hot new play or what's really coming from you, but this is a collaborative art also with the audience. I think we forget the audiences there. I think I need a better grasp of who my audience is from my work and I don't know. That is such a good question. Yeah, so any thoughts about that? Anybody figured that out? Did you ever have an epiphany of going, ah, I've actually communicated with somebody? You know, again, you're in a living room, in a reading, in a full production. You go, ooh, can I take you all home with me at this time you sit there while I work? It's not been me last night, actually. At the festival. Because I've written a play that, to me, it's not a sad play, but to a lot of people who come to it are really sad and moved by the end of it. I had a couple people, which I think is really interesting because that's not how I wrote it in my head, but it's such an open play in a lot of ways that people are able to bring a lot of wherever they're coming from to it because it's about living and dying and remembering like pretty universal things. People come up to me from very different points of view. One who was a Zen, and was like, I brought my Zen group here because this is the Zen that we're trying to do is we're trying to let go of everything. So this is the perfect Zen play. And then I had somebody else come to me who works with people in hospice who have been really ill and are now getting better. You know, this is the perfect play for people who are just dealing with dying all the time and thinking about it and have like, been at the verge of it, but now have recovered and what do you do with that? It's just kind of like two very specific groups that I didn't write for, but came to it really strongly. But, I mean, you would take away from that the notion that, I mean, I would, that, okay, clearly my audience is people who want occasions to contemplate on the questions. Yeah, that's a very smart way to go. Way to go. You've got no problem. Aaron, did you have an audience in mind when you were writing that play? No. You didn't have any? I mean, and that worked fine for you. I mean, not explicitly. But I also think there's another part to the question, which is that I wouldn't say that that play automatically would appeal to a very wide mainstream audience. Right. Right? I mean, it may appeal to a wide mainstream audience, but I would think that the beginning of, you know, looking at Aaron Redmayne play are people who enjoy puzzling questions, you know, people who like to work a little bit when they're in the theater, you know what I mean? For my co-stars, you'll love their rhythm. You know, so that there's a kind of, I think what you're talking about is, of course you want your play to be universal and loved by everybody, you know. But identifying, not just the topic, which I think is a really great thing to identify, especially from a marketing perspective, but an aesthetic question. You know, is this, is my work suited for the cutting-ball type of audience? It's my, yes. I wonder if you think that changes with each play, or like, because I feel like I have really different plays that appeal to very different, and do you think you should try to work, try to like get one audience or like one type of thing, or is it... I mean, that really depends on you. Yeah, for me, especially over a career, yeah, it's been a variety of things. It's been a variety of contexts. And, you know, and that's great. This is all about enabling the work. So, if that, if it's helpful to go, I have something specific to think about that's not the blank screen or page. It's those, you know, expected little faces of people who are looking to be, you know, moved and entertained and amused. Great, wonderful. And if that changes, I mean, you may find yourself at some point going, you know, I want to write leader for children, because I have children. You may want to go, I spend all of my time with children. I want to write really dark, god-awful, all-be-ask, with beauty and horror. Because it would get me out of the house. Great, wonderful. You don't know. Whatever keeps you fresh, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. In the audience point of view, one of the things I always end up finding, I don't write with an audience in mind, but I do find myself when I'm making language choices about, well, am I being, how jargon-y should I be to express, okay, I have engineers. Well, I don't want to be so jargon-y that I am speaking to an audience of engineers, but you don't want to be so vague that you are appending the people who are engineers, or there's also a level of profanity that's about, what you want to do from your audience is get a certain level of rise from the audience, and if you're talking to a tea society, then saying arg might be enough to get them to be, oh, she's upset, and if you're talking to a different audience, you may have to get really harsh in your language in order to get the same level of rise, and really what you're doing as a playwright is trying to get the reactions, and so you do have to use knowledge of who your audience is to figure out how you get those reactions. And so for me, exactly to that point, I find this very helpful to, hey, I've seen a lot of theater with a lot of different kinds of audiences, and what kind of experience would I want to be an active partner? What kind of audience event would I like to be facilitating? Because I didn't grow up in the Philippines. And so I wrote this play that kind of explored that being a first-generation child with immigrants in Filipino context, and really I was writing the play for me. I was like, well, I didn't experience that, I didn't get it, and I will write a play that I wish I had growing up. And then when we had the reading, and I was really happy that when we had that reading, there was a ton of people that probably have maybe seen one or two plays if that never in their lives, and with me growing up, I had never seen a play until I got, I was told in order to apply for a UC, I had to take a part-class. So I'll take the drama class, that's fine. And that's how I discovered theater, and I had never seen a play before that. And I was really happy to see that when we had the Q&A discussion, these people who did not have back-downs in theater did not have a lot of back-downs in general really connected to it and were really surprised almost to see the possibility of something that they understood. I had like five other people saying, you must have been in my living room because that was my mom. Actually, that was my mom. And I'm glad that all people, you know, ones are of the same clock. And I was really glad that, it wasn't just me, like the first time in the play, as a mom looking at her son saying, you should have been a nurse. And everyone laughed. And I'm like, oh, it wasn't just my mom, it was definitely not going to be a nurse. And so for that, it was really a big thing for me where it was like, a part of it was writing for yourself and at the same time, if that question of who you're writing for, if there's a big enough, I don't know, if that audience is big enough where there's enough missing there, which for me, I thought enough was missing there. And I got to write for myself. And through writing for myself, I reached out and was actually writing for a lot of people that kind of were in that same place. Like what you said about, you wrote because you got to keep your privacy, that kind of struck me because for me, writing is an opportunity to share your heart and soul with people while still maintaining your privacy. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great game for that. Yeah. Absolutely. That's great. Anybody else, either with more on that or with their own question? Yeah. You're back on that because I was writing in white, what I want to write, and there are two pieces of it. One of it is it's a chance to say, no, shut up, I'm going to talk now. Everybody, you're in the audience, but you're not allowed to talk. And yet, I get a filter of the collaborators on doing that. And you can't, other kinds of writing, you can write, write, write. You never see what the audience, you don't, you can't sit in the room with someone while they read your book. Yeah. And you, you could have an editor, but it's not the same. It's having actors who are pre-training and there's a director and there's all this team about making the story be as much as it can. And that's magic. Yeah. Though the first time I went to a rehearsal with one of my plays, I bursted in tears and I believed the room it just was such a weird thing to have that thing in my head. Suddenly people were speaking the words in my head with an Irish accent because I was in Ireland at the time and it was just bizarre. It was like having my brain was on the table and that was really strange. That's great. That's great. Anyone else on that or the question of your own for the questions? Yes. Okay. I'm going to bring up liabilities because I'm finding it challenging. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to bring up liabilities because I'm finding it challenging. One is I'm an introvert. So I have trouble asking people for stuff. I feel socially awkward. I believe I've occasionally messed up a potential opportunity by offending somebody inadvertently. I'm easily distracted. The internet is bright and shiny. And I love my day job which is a good thing in terms of my life as a whole but not so great for me but not so great for my playwriting. Yes. And my day job does involve being creative and finding creative solutions to problems and things like that. So a lot of my creativity needs are being met through my day job. It's the rest of us are suffering. So that's wonderful. Anybody else want to weigh in that does sound like so many of you are not liabilities. I'd say the big ones are the social awkwardness and introversion. Absolutely. So anybody so few of us have had that experience, right? And I would say in response to that and you're hearing that one of the best things that I've found and maybe other people can weigh in on this around the whole question of how to deal with the terror that is free range socialization is if you are involved in a theater group or a theater community where you have something specific that you are doing. That gives you a reason to be where you're at that gives you specific things to talk about and then aren't you that gives you a structure for social interactions and I have certainly found in my life that that has been a great comfort as opposed to I'm going to just I mean the social equivalent of that blank sheet of paper that blank screen is going I have to walk up and start a conversation with a tall stranger cold oh my goodness there are people who can do that they are superheroes most of us it helps to have context and if you've got the working relationship if you're volunteering somewhere if you're participating on that reading committee if you're doing whatever on the board of an organization given that you have a successful creative day job why are you not funding us that really helps a lot and then as Rachel and other people were saying your position say and I write plays too right and I think I mean just to give you some personal feedback you've been coming to the festival for several years and so I've gotten a chance to get to know you and so any kind of awkwardness or whatever it's kind of just got to the back seat so you know what I mean because I know that I can tell that you're a little shy you know what I mean and so it's totally fine with me because I know that about you you know and I'm always happy you know aside from the satisfying I just want to also say in the context of this aside from the satisfying and creative day job part of your self description have you met Edward Elby ever I have never I I that's all I can say alright how do you think I think we have two minutes we're going to be late for the show okay let's and one last thing I'm going to say one last thing I think right in the one minute you have left the one minute that you have left and that that means you have to provide us I'd like you to write down one thing that you're going to do this week and one thing you're going to do this month based on perhaps your liability your the audience question the why our place question any question that you wrote down just set one goal for yourself for this week and one goal you set for the month and you get to email it to me Amy at PlaywrightsFoundation.org and then let's talk about it at the end of the month and see how you did that's great and if a liability feels like so much of a challenge think about it and ask that and just how you might actually make use of it I'm sorry what was your name Amy AMY at PlaywrightsFoundation.org and you too participating at home for this as well thank you for joining us I think we're going to end and move over to the Bay Area Playwrights Festival thanks so much everybody thank you