 very office does in different organizations. And Aaron Carter in the breakout group that he was in, that's just what people did that on their own. And so now we're gonna put it into the room just so you have it. So Aaron, could you read that and then Aaron Malkin will put it on the blog. And it probably has more relevance to the first table and that first breakout, but at least we'll get it into the mix. Great. And so I'll just say some of these terms are umbrella terms that include some of the other things, but as a group we just kind of made a big list. So things we are doing. Season planning, reading plays, audience connectivity, lobby experience, marketing support, playwright relationships, writers groups, scouting, writer advocacy, post-show discussions, workshops, readings, ranch writing, in the room, dramaturgy, catering, and so on the list, program, newsletters, study guides, various meetings, and of course all of our administrative tasks. So that's the list we came up with. That's the, this one we wanted to move into this, the challenging area of this role, this sense of gatekeepers. And it's certainly something that comes through loudly in the outrageous portion of work. It came up a lot in the conversations that were sparked around the closed submission policy arena, and it comes up a lot in conversations, especially in the world of the playwrights who are relying on the open submission world. And it, particularly some of the, you guys at this table, a lot of people who are moving in through the, trying to move in through the play lab world, or through the competition world, I'm not sure how many of you actually have competition, but it comes up all the time. And so I wanted to just talk about it a bit. Here, is there a sense, do you feel yourself either perceived as or being gatekeepers in this role? Or is the role, whether or not it's about you? The gatekeeper role? At times, yes. At certain institutions, and then at times, no, I think it depends on the culture of the theater. Kind of, I think if we look at the theater as an artistic home, which is thrown out a lot, instead of like having a gate at your home to kind of protect your home against the community, think about like if the artistic office, the literary office is the living room, then you're actually bringing playwrights in, you're having conversations with them, you're saying welcome, we'd like to work with you, let's sit down and talk. And so it's not a gate and a moat and a tower, it's a home of a living room. And I think there are some institutions that feel more that there's a moat and there's a gate over the century, and that some have living rooms. One of the things that came up in our discussion that we just had a breakout was sort of about the sense of the pile getting burdensome or the... Can you talk louder, I'm sorry. Yeah, sure, the sense of the pile getting burdensome or the process of vetting material and managing that flow of material getting burdensome when there is not a particularly healthy alignment between the leadership of the artistic director relative to the work or the tasks and the jobs that the rest of the artistic staff and or literary staff are supposed to be doing, that the sense of becoming a gatekeeper or just managing traffic flow or just trying to keep the waves of scripts in bay somehow tends to emerge more disconnected that processes from actually what the artistic director is interested in or an actual expression of a forward vision that's mission-centric because the more specificity you have about who you are and the more specific leadership that you have, the easier it is to sort of figure out what the role is relative to the people who are approaching you and wanting opportunity. It makes the messages easier to send because you know what your purpose is. And so as multi-cost as the tasks can become, if they're untethered to a common sense of purpose, that's when we run into a problem. I've decided not to get too hung up on this gatekeeper thing and I spent some time thinking about yeah, is there a better name for the living room idea is a good one. But the fact of the matter is there are thousands of people in this country who are calling themselves playwrights and my living room isn't big enough for all of them. So, while that term was being bandit and I, I kept thinking about that scene in the Wizard of Oz when they get to the Emerald City and the gate is closed and the gatekeeper opens that little door to see who they are and decide whether or not he's gonna let them in. Well, if we weren't there, there wouldn't be that little door even. The door would just be closed is kind of my attitude because literary offices were created because artistic directors didn't have enough time in their days to deal with all of the scripts that were piling up in the corner of the building. That's why we were brought into the lives of our theaters is to help them deal with that. If we weren't there, the scripts would just keep piling up and the little door would stay closed. Yeah, I mean, I feel like, you know, I try to not be the gatekeeper, but more like the open the door for people. And yes, does that, do I open the door for everyone? Absolutely not. And is that sometimes unfair? I'm sure it is. But I don't know what other model there can be at this point, given the structure that we have. I mean, maybe there is, and maybe we can imagine a different one. But I certainly don't, I mean, I don't take pride in keeping people outside the gate. That's not where my pleasure comes from. And I don't feel like that's my job. I feel like my job is to try to create openings. And sometimes it's about opening, like we're gonna produce your play, come in. Sometimes it's figuring out more incremental steps inside. But I try to look for openings for people as opposed to keeping them at bay. Well, and the other thing is that a gatekeeper, and the truth is the word stays on one side of the gate. And I think if we're doing our jobs right, we open the door and go out on the other side of the gate. And we talk to all of us, right, to decide whether or not they belong in our living rooms. We start to make those relationships that are happening on the other side of the gate. We also talked in our breakout about defining your gate. You know, if you align your submission policy with your mission and with the aesthetic of the organization, then there's less people banging on your door that shouldn't have it in its, or are not currently in a position to come in. And the people who are knocking at your door, you can open the gate and say, come into my living room. And how many metaphors can I put in one second? But also just, I mean, we were talking as well about, we talk about is the literary office the right phrase? Well, sometimes it's not about literates, it's about office. You know, the literary desk or the literary closet. So if you're inviting someone in and you don't have a place for a playwright to sit, it's kind of, it's showing that the value that that department has with the conversations. You can't have a conversation with a playwright. Nowhere for them to sit. If you have to go outside of the theater to be able to sit somewhere. I mean, that's saying something about the value of the kind of connection of relationship you're having with a playwright. So when we talk about an office, I think about a living room. What does it look like? Is there a comfortable place to sit? Can you spend time talking there? You know, because it's gonna be conversations that then define everything else that's gonna happen with that idea or your play. In the play lab world, in your world, what's the, how does gatekeeper resonate? Well, we don't have the ability to really restrict our mission to a specific style or genre. And we hope to also serve people at different levels of their career. So that makes it hard. Well, your mission is to not restrict. Yeah, so to restrict that way. But inherent in the gatekeeper is the focus in some sense on the saying of no. And I think that you're right in saying it's the opening of the door. And that actually there's a whole lot of yes in just reading the script and taking the idea seriously and just saying yes, I'm going to sit down with this. And the yes of this idea, this idea is my business for this time. And so I think there is a lot of yes in this part of coming outside the gate that we are saying yes in small ways, very, very often that are sometimes obscured to the rest of the community. And that is where I find the most value-enjoying in my own life is just the small yeses. And then, yeah, let's figure out what path but with a lot more yes than the gatekeeper. I mean, I feel I am also one trying to open the gate because there are projects that I want to get noticed and that I'm like, hey, Phillip, you need to read this. Let's invite them to our lab that I fight for personally. That's the reason I mean, I feel Phillip is at the actual gatekeeper where I'm just the one who I have a set of keys but I can't keep the gate open all the time. So, okay. You know the secret box. I do. But yeah, I mean like can I, I help control the flow of what's going in and out but I don't have that ultimate decision and I don't necessarily want it. I mean, I'm more interested in trying to find someone who doesn't necessarily fit completely to what we want but I think is an interesting voice and just bringing that person into the mix and having a conversation about it as opposed to someone, you know, this perfect project that we will take to our lab. When Morgan Janess told me her possibly a, not by now apocryphal story of, you know, getting hauled into Pap's office and she said, I don't work for the public, I work for the American theater. It gave me like an intellectual contact high like I never thought existed and I thought that's it. That's what gets me off on this work and in some ways, you know, the fact that I work for a little few of those three plays I say, okay, well fine, you know, most of the stuff that we are psyched about is not gonna be able to get produced but I love this sort of, you know, Mark Ravenhill said I was like hello Dolly, you know, and sort of making the connections with people with, oh, this is a fabulous project. Let's see how we can get you into this person's pile or this person's radar. And I think that is, I'd say, you know, half of my job is that, you know, half of my job is yet looking for projects with a OREP but the other half is doing that and I find it's such gratification and to speak to, this is point about not having a place to sit with a writer. I think most of my week has been at La Cologne Coffee Shop on the corner of Lisbon Art and Church but I take that very seriously, you know, I am now going to leave this building and we're going to go and have a teta-teta with a cup of coffee and I'm going to listen to what you are interested and excited about. I think it's just a different kind of message to send to a writer. I also think it's kind of like this Monty Python sketch or something where it's like, this vision of the game, like all these writers are trying to get in and there's like a drum tour going, no way, I gotta read all these scripts first or, you know, like, you know, with all these people, like, I don't have time to read all the scripts versus like, but it's about the people. Like, it's as if having a copy with someone is going to take up time from reading the pile that you need to catch up on. It's actually like, it's a conversation that the coffee shop has been really important and yet it feels like all the knocking is getting in the way of the pile. Like, it's like the efficiency gets broken down because humans are coming. And how do we move away from this to this next, you know, the jazz communication? Like, it's actually about the people. You had this provocative notion last night is that maybe there's not actually a problem here. Maybe the plays are getting done and playwrights are being served and there's more people wanting to be served than can be or would be in any system. So, no, I was just saying, I was just saying in some ways, you know, we talk about the problem. I was like, well, have we really talked about if there's a problem, plays are getting done. Playwrights are enjoying that their plays are being done. People are enjoying working with playwrights on the plays that are getting done. Not all plays can get done. I'm sure there's wrinkles in every system. I'm not saying there aren't problems, but I'm just wondering if we're making a problem later then. Well, there's a point, I mean, there's a, we work in an industry or a field where there are tons of people in every discipline who want to be in it, who can't be. Right. Or can't be consistently enough to make a living or to feel like they're really in it. But, you know, I mean, we talk about a lot about within our programming scheme at Atlantic about, well, is it our job? Is it our job to sort of satisfy that what people perceive as what is owed to them because they've staked out territory as an honest, or is it our job to make sure that we're affording opportunity equally? That we're not excluding people for nefarious reasons or strange reasons that have to do with bias or something. It's sort of the core of deciding whether there's really an issue is about sort of how you orient yourself to like, well, what do we owe people, I guess? Or what is the mission of the organization? And how does that dictate how you track that? What constituencies are you really trying to appeal to? Are too many of these theaters that are struggling with the identity of their artistic staff to their literary offices mired in it because they're trying to do too many things to too many different people or are their artistic staff sort of segmenting their jobs because the thing that they thought they were supposed to be hired for isn't actually, is it broken somehow internally? So they're having to focus their efforts in other places, you know, that, I don't know, I'm sort of just riffing now, but I think there's an essential question about who you serve and what the purpose of the organization is and whether anybody sort of fundamentally owed something because they said they were a thing, whether it's a playwright, a designer, director, an actor. We don't tend to treat actors like they just fundamentally deserve something just because they say they are, you know, there's a dialogue that's an awkward dialogue between institutions and artists that sort of kind of has to happen a lot about like, well, we've given you access, you don't necessarily have to give you opportunity, we've given you the opportunity, we don't necessarily have to give you production. Well, and this is the thing we were talking about too, you know, it's nice to be all fluffy and warm and all welcoming and everybody's equal and, but the fact is, you know, there's man, mercenary, wet, blood, thick. They're not all equal. There's work that needs to be done and there's work that doesn't need to be done. And I don't know where we got to the point where we're not afraid to say no to actors or why are we afraid to say no to playwrights or why is it a bad thing to say no to playwrights? I mean, that's, I want to be as encouraging as possible, but sometimes it's. We don't want to own the subjectivity of that a lot of the time. That's right. And let's folks ask us, you know, we don't want to own the subjectivity of that. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great. Sorry. That in the gatekeeper in some sense, we're assuming that you can have an expertise in deciding the worthiness of this subjective experience. And it relies on us essentially saying that, yes, you can become an expert in this way and be a filter for a larger community. If we were to say that there was a problem and I don't know that there is, what is the other alternative? And for me, the other alternative was only, it would only be a kind of mass reading of plays that's involving all of the American public. So instead of us standing at the gate, people are being thrust forward by other communities. I can't see, other than expert, it's only kind of wisdoms of the crowd. But to do that, you have to get to such a high level of readership. I don't know, it's plausible. The irony of all of this is like, all of these issues are kind of like brought onto by ourselves. I mean, we could actually plan our seasons with just the playwrights who we know from MFA programs and all of this. But we go out of our way because we want 10 page submissions and we want someone from Ohio to be able to submit to us and we want to give that play the satisfaction of a full read. I mean, we tell our readers read cover to cover. Like don't read 20 pages and give up because there could be something in it. And because of that, we're going the extra mile but at the same time it's just a burden on ourselves. If we don't have to do that, I mean we can be the American theater without MFA people from Ohio in the mix. But we love that and that's what makes our jobs exciting is when we do discover that new voice or that new person. And that's the reason we fight for the stack. I mean, I think what Kristen said for me, I mean, I think that it's, we all know that it's a fiction that there's somehow this objective great play and that everyone agrees on it and that there's objectively mediocre plays or bad plays. I mean, but that I have taste, I have ideas about what's gonna work and what's not. I also have, I mean, I'm reading for a particular theater so I have ideas about what I think A will work in this theater and B will appeal to the people that I'm reading for the artistic leadership. And I think the best I can do is own my own perspective and try to be honest about why I'm responding to certain things and why I'm not responding to other things and try to be clear about, I mean, I say to people who are reading for me all the time, like the goal is to try to look at what the play and what is the play trying to do and how well is it doing it and try to be aware of your taste and what you're bringing to table as a reader and who you are and what appeals to you but to know that your taste is not ultimately the only, it's not the primary deciding factor as well. It's an element. But I mean, all of this is, yeah, it's subjective. And we've all championed work or produced work which by all of those usual standards wouldn't measure up because we respond very personally to it because it's speaking to us on some very elemental level because of the voice of the writer or because of the subject matter or because of the way the story is told or because of the way it breaks convention it could be anything. But, you know, we break those standards all the time when we're actually making programming decisions. So on the one hand, I think it's fair to say to people who are reading for you and you're getting like the first layer of that material, like this is the way I wanted to think about this process but we're happy to be subjective when we love something, you know, and we, but we give them art. We need to own it on the flip side too, which is like at the end of the day, we don't like this stuff. It's not, if you know, whatever structural assessment you might have in the play, if you're getting a letter that says we're not doing the play right now, it's because someone at some point in that process didn't like it enough and now the done is not enough. And that's not, and I don't think you want to put it that way to people because that's harsh. But, you know, but that's what's true. That's what's true. And that, and that's the gatekeeping role. Well it is, but, and that's where, that's where the gatekeeping role I think gets fuzzy for playwrights who are getting mixed messages in the way that they're being communicated with by theaters. You know, it's, it's, it is a gatekeeping role. I don't, I think keeping does sound like such a, it's a defining itself as a barrier as opposed to a. Well, well the way you just described it, which makes sense to me is that you're, it's, there's a, it's distributed, the reading is distributed. And the, at some point along the way, that it wasn't loved enough to keep going. And that could be any part of along the way. It could be the very first person two layers out who actually doesn't come to the theater. Who reads, and I don't know about yours is very interesting, I don't know how you guys do it, but that, that, that didn't love it enough, can go way down there. Or it can come all the way up to the artistic director. And that's, so it's not even a gate, it's a series of gates. It gets to what Morgan was saying in her phone call about the, she got into it to say yes and found that it was mostly a collection of no's. But it's actually a sequential collection of yeses that are required to get into that, better read this in 48 hours kind of thing. Well, you wanna be the gatekeeper slash killer of dreams or do you wanna be the gatekeeper slash mentor enthusiast and sometimes you have to be both in the same day, in the same pile of scripts. And that's hard. I think for a writer, I mean, I remember a long time ago, I was doing a play at Actors Theater in Louisville and I was invited to go meet and talk about the play in the office and I saw 4,000 plays. And I said, I was like, I don't wanna meet me. I don't wanna think about this. And I mean, I think it's foolish for playwrights not to know what the kinds of seasons look like, the different theaters do. That's foolish. That's just not good business sense. But I think it's also foolish to think too much about it, to as far as what plays you're gonna write or what you're gonna do is more, I mean, that's why I guess I'm older. I do like the open submission thing because it's not so much that you think you're gonna get this pie in the sky. Although I will say a couple of times that has happened. But it's actually that you begin to build up this network of relationships and people that you think, you know, when I finish this play, he'd actually read it. It doesn't mean that that's more how stuff happens, but I almost don't wanna think about what goes on in these offices. I really don't because you have to write the plays that are most urgently in you to come out. And then after that, I think, well, you know, be a big girl and send it out and take your blows. I mean, Helen Merrill, who was my first agent and I was in tears about something. And she said to me, no one asked you to write these plays. And I thought actually that was good. It was like, fuck up, fuck up and it's tough. It's full of rejection. But I feel like the lobbying them out there, you know, and then you find your tribe. And they're scattered around the country, you know, and they, so yeah. I am not gonna plug my ears, because I don't know what this is. I just wanna say that a word that keeps coming back to me is something that Dairy said the first day about just humanizing. And there's something to me when I hear people say, like, I sent my play to, and fill in the theater thing a little earlier, like I sent my play to South Coast or to the Lions. As if it's, you send your play to a building and then the, or, you know, the Lions rejected me or South Coast, like the building said no. But the people, it's like I sent my play to just, you know, that it is relational. And so to be able to be honest about it, yes, people read my play in this building with walls. They felt they had certain reactions and maybe hopefully it'll be transparent. And, you know, this was, if you have a relationship with this person, you know what, this one wasn't our favorite. We love all the, whatever the conversation is, but it's human. I mean, we're not robots yet reading these and it's not, again, walls that are just, like if you stick the spaghetti, you stick to it, we're gonna do it. If not, the theater wall rejected you. It's, you know, it's people. And so to be kind of honest about the kind of conversations we're having, we send it to people that we might have affinities with and we can have an honest conversation because that's what we, I feel like we're doing, in this business, we're building our networkable of alliances and collegiality and friendship. And you kind of find where life meets like and tastes and you have those honest conversations. That's where I would, I'd like to, you know, like we, to sort of turn the question of rejecting play a little bit towards all, towards the possibility of being a positive experience though, is that I really believe that one of the reasons why playwrights may perceive that they're sending a play to a building is that the way that they're being responded to suggests the content of the letters and emails that they're getting often suggests that the building rejected the play, no one individual did, which isn't the truth as far as I've experienced it. And so being able to write to a playwright, particularly one with whom you might want a relationship down the road or whose work you do essentially if I are, and say, this, the buck is stopping here. This is not gonna go forward. Here's what I like about your writing or I'd like to meet you if you're in town or I, you know, or I wouldn't, you know, I mean, or you don't say that if you don't mean it. You know, that being able to take the personal risk, the humane personal risk, as somebody on the inside of rejecting someone who might get angry or upset or stalk you or whatever it is, is actually the way to be able to build a relationship if, even if not without person, or to build a reputation for somebody who traffics that way, as someone who traffics that way so that people will look to you for your freedom or for a relationship that's real, as opposed to just being the stand-in for that number of years that you work in that building that tends to be a different place. It's about the honesty of it. It's the honesty of your mission, the honesty of your submission policy, the honesty of your rejection. I was living with Laura and was saying this morning about here's 10 places that do accept open submissions. So, you know, we don't, but here there's something, you know, I think that should go out with every letter if you're sending something back to someone that you think should be, but can't, for your reasons of your mission, go forward in your organization. Curious, but I woke up thinking about this today. It was this notion of honesty, because I think it is really important, you know, and I certainly don't wanna lie to people and I think it can be destructive and waste people's time, but I also, I question whether we actually all want honesty all the time about everything. Like, you know what I mean? I mean, I think that there's, and what that means exactly, like what that really looks like, because I know that, I mean, maybe it's just me, but I spent a lot of time not being entirely honest in my life, you know, in my work. That's just your time now. Yeah, well here, I'm the only one here. And sometimes that's wrong. You know, sometimes I feel it in the moment like, I wish I hadn't done that, or I'm hearing some things that people are saying and I'm thinking about some of my own practices and thinking, you know, maybe I need to really think how I'm doing that, because it's not, but then I also think about ways in which, you know, I could have been honest at that particular moment, but I'm not sure how good that would have been. You know, I don't know how much that would have helped that relationship, or that play, or that conversation. You know what I mean? Like, I just, I wonder about always, I'm not saying we're necessarily doing this, but always saying that honesty, you know, and I'm not sure that we all mean the same thing when we're saying being honest. That's my thought. For me, honesty just comes also to the fact that it is subjective and I may be totally wrong. Like, I mean, there's numbers and numbers of words that have come through and not gotten through and have had amazing lives, and that's just the nature of the beast. And so I feel, you know, at a certain point, you know, the really hard one is I liked your play, but I didn't advocate for your play. That's the really hard thing to say to someone that you like the right or you like the play, but you didn't advocate for it. That's a point where I think maybe I could do better with my honesty. But in general, I also think that when I don't like something, my honesty is helpful. Oh, I agree. Because I'm not the guy. Right. I'm not the one who wants to carry this water with you. So my honest grotesque assessment of your piece may be absolutely invalid. Oh, yeah, in my manifesto, I was thinking about the manifestos yesterday. Like, if there's one piece of the manifesto I would rather do. Can you speak out? Yeah, sorry. Just thinking about the manifestos yesterday and one of the things that I was thinking about like if I was writing one would be, can we please have a moratorium on copious feedback to people who we are fundamentally rejecting? There's no reason they should listen. Right. Because we might be wrong. There's no reason to say because we have an MFA or a position that our assessment of the flaws in someone's work when we're not interested in that work is what they should take forward as they're looking to find the next theater to go to or rewrite their play. But then it's a catch 22. Because it's like, how do you be honest with these playwrights and at the same time you're like, I could be wrong. Why listen to me? So it's like, how do you give the value to the rejection letter if you know? But that's what I'm saying, like don't say that. Just say, if you really don't want to pursue the project just say you're not pursuing it. Let them come to you if they really want it and then you can or cannot do the feedback. But like this, there's a problem out there I think with offering up criticisms of a work to substantiate the rejection when in fact you're not looking for a relationship. Right. Tell them we started having to change your submission letter. Oh, at Sundance we had a few years ago we had a submission letter, Janice may know this where it was so nice and people actually thought it was being personalized to them and I would get phone calls and be like, oh my God, I'm so inspired I will write plays forever. And I'm like, oh my God, you weren't even we didn't even like your play it wouldn't even pass the first round. But it's just that perception and it's hard to because a playwright will see what they want to see in a rejection letter. So I mean, it's like we can't control their perception as in our letter. I mean like we actually had to make it a little bit tougher because you know they would want we changed our rules if we no longer submit except plays that have been submitted once before but we just don't. But they'll get this super nice rejection letter and they're like, oh but you liked it so much and I did this work don't you want to read it again? And then I had, you know, no we have this rule and the question got posed to me like, well are you honest enough with them to say that if you had liked their play enough you would make the exception and bring it back from the ring and I have, you know, I'm not honest enough with them and maybe I should be. I mean it's just when you get to that honest level you are engaging them in some way and that adds an extra level of work to me. I mean like if I'm working on a pile and I'm trying to get through that engaging on the people from last year's pile I'm like, how do I have both how do I keep both of those balls in the air? And as you know, you're trying to act as a responsible American theater person and go forward but you know, you could only do so much. Well and I think it's also about how many people you think a playwright should be listening to at any given moment. If I'm not gonna produce your play I shouldn't be one of the two or three maximum people that you should be listening to for notes and we're very resistant to giving writers any notes until after we pulled the trigger completely and said yes we're definitely producing it now let's have a conversation about what's gonna happen. And it's not about people being fragile or about, but it's about not wanting to be a voice in the head for someone that you're not going to be useful to because you're not in love with the play to begin with. I mean, Christian said something in our group, you know, it's a matter of trust. If you can't have those conversations with playwrights unless there is some kind of relationship and there's a trust level there. So do you engage in those relationships with people who are absolutely strangers to you? It's like you don't even have the dialogue with them to even go through these conversations. So like, it's almost not worthwhile and anything. I just think there's an element of ego in it on the theater side to suggest that, you know, that they should somehow absorb or tear detailed criticism without that trust by virtue of the fact that the letter comes with Atlantic River letterhead, you know, but I just think of presumptuousness and not, you know, I think my own sensitivity is significant enough that I just don't know why I would take the time to care about this play though. I think it's helpful though. It's the same thing with an actor auditioning that if you're told no, you're not right in the role. If I'm in the director position that I will sometimes say, you gave a terrific audition. Like I kind of want them to know. So for writer, I don't mind hearing flat out no, but it's nice if they actually really liked your writing. Oh, I think you should say that. That's not a big part of the thing, but that's enough, things think, you know, or someone says honestly, send us your next thing. Or if they say, you know, staff all liked it, this isn't going to be our artistic director's cup of tea, try us again, like that just feels very clean. But I think we've all done that. I mean, when we read something and we know it doesn't fit into our season or our lab, I mean, I do that all the time. I mean, I'll have coffees with someone or I'm just like, I mean, yeah, I might submit to me and I flag their project and send it to another, there's ways to help. I think that's the kind of way we don't advocate. It's just, don't follow that then with, and by the way, here's the five things that are wrong with it. Yeah. Well, it's on you then too, you know, to have to do that, that much. Let me ask something else then. So if we, I still want to understand why there's the perception of a problem in the outside world, but in this, the circle of people doing it, there's less of a perception of the problem. But then when you get to, let's say it gets all the way through all of the levels and now we're moving into the world of you, think yes. What, how much, what happens there in terms of John or any of you who have been at your theaters for a very long time, it's probably different from people who are newer in the theater, but what is a yes, when you find a yes, what do you then have to do with it? You go program it. No, no, if it gets to yes with me, that's the script that I walk into the artistic director's office and say, I think we should do something with this and I work in a theater where that something can be a lot of different things. Okay. Lots of different avenues to move it forward, whether it's the Pacific Playwrights Festival or we have a Monday night playwriting series, play reading series that we do three readings a year in. It can just be an in-house developmental process or it can be an outright offer of production at that point. And I will offer an opinion to the artistic director about which of those many options I think is appropriate for a given script. But that's what happens when it gets to yes with me, then it goes to the artistic director. And one of the things that we hear and read in a child's study as well is that the, that whole process that the play has been through gets that far and then it still gets the next no. And that there's not really any, you guys have precious little to none authority, little to no authority in the actual, but yes, that meet that everybody's very important. Is that true in your experience? That you have little influence, I mean, at that point then, you have influence over what gets to yes, but then at that point, how much influence does the, do you guys have in your processes for getting it, getting yes to meet something that theater engages in? If it's yes with me and no with the artistic director, that's not necessarily the end of the conversation. You can move into other ways. I mean, it's rare that once an artistic director has said no, I can get him and it isn't him in my case to change his mind, but I have been able to change his mind in the past, so I try. Well, and that's the advocacy part of it. That's where not only are you saying to your artistic director, but you know, you may say to somebody else, we passed on this, but hey, you shouldn't look at it. Do you, do you have the, when you say you have the opportunity to move things into other programs, do you have a conversation with a playwright at that point, when it's a yes for you, do you always talk to that playwright, whether it goes forward or not? I tend not to start talking to the playwright until I know the lay of the land, because I know the fact that I happen to love a play does not necessarily mean it's gonna go anywhere there, and I don't wanna create false hope for a playwright. So I will wait until I know what the lay of the land is, and then the conversation with the playwright might include, you know, this was a near miss for us. We're excited about your voice. We wanna keep reading your plays, but unfortunately this one just didn't quite clear the last hurdle, you know. But yeah. Are you likely at that point to have some level of relationship with the playwright already? I mean, not prior to the situation, but by that point in the process, is this not the first to hear anything? It might be the first to hear. It depends on the writer, you know, if it's someone with whom I have a long relationship, then I've probably been in conversation with him or her along the way, but if it's a writer who's new to me, then not necessarily. What about you guys, in the world of yes, what happens to your places? I mean, my world of yes is just getting a play to a finalist level, because, I mean, as I said, Phillip is the ultimate gatekeeper, so I mean, I'm just trying to get a play to the top 25, 30 spots, and so we can have a fair voice in that one day we select our projects. At play that I say no to, or yes to, Phillip can easily say no to, we try as much as possible to all be super psyched about the three things we do a year. Though ultimately, you know, it's the AD's prerogative, it's her decision, but it's a constant back and forth, and you know, she said to me that she just really appreciates the palette of the five or six I give to her a year, because they're all valid, but it's just, it's this dance between her personal choice and what can we all get behind? Because it's five of us making this work, we have to be behind it to really be able to do all of the elements and getting it to production. There's also a difference between little influence and not ultimate decision, because we know we're gonna have the ultimate decision, we're not there, just a director. If you feel like you have no, if you have little influence and no ultimate decision, then it's like, well, what are you doing? And it's power management, and it is the soul suck, and the man was saying, it is because there's this big disconnect, but you can still have a lot of influence and advocate and be at the table in the conversations about season planning are happening, and yet, still someone else makes a decision. And if at least that conversation has been satisfying, you felt like you were listening and heard in the advocacy, and sometimes that play gets through, sometimes it doesn't, but the process to get to that conversation decision has been rewarding. You know, your influence was felt and decisions were made, and you didn't make them, because that's not your job. And then that's, I mean, that's what we're hard on. That's how you're building that list. I mean, things that you're advocating for, and what kind of conversation that's coming out of with an artistic director about the mission of the theater and what your priorities are. We all know that you're not building programming lists just based on your own loves and tastes. Like, theoretically, you're filtering it through the lens of a mission. You know, we have an ensemble, so that's part of what I have to think about when I'm thinking about work that we're looking at. You know, there's always the usual concerns that people talk about with money and budgets and venues and all that stuff, but you're never just creating, I mean, maybe some people are just sort of handing over the list of things that they love and hoping that the artistic director will pick one from column A and one from column B, but if you actually have a transparent relationship with your boss, then it's actually, it's a more porous process than that. The buck does stop with that person or people, but hopefully your work is being infused by their interests. What if I ask about this thing about case that, I'm struck by, you were saying, Martin, about the, I'm not your guy. I'm not gonna give you feedback about it, I didn't like it. And I'm wondering, look at this group and we did sort of curate this conversation. What happens to plays that come from outside your case? Whether it's, you know, other cultural communities, other forms, how does, what, I mean, that may or may not, I don't know, but does it mean that these things that are coming from outside that actually don't have a home necessarily, even at the end of the day in the institution? Or how do you manage your own case in relation to this pile, in relation to this work when things come in such a range I think that's the development of expertise in the field is that you can not be generally excited by naturalistic, you know, stages. But you know that's not what you're necessarily excited by and you can pick up something and see that that has done really well. And I think that's the journey of becoming an expert is going beyond personal preference, but that also demands that you know your personal preference very, very well to be able to see something outside and advocate for it. Because the list that we assemble for me, it's a similar process of about 40 finalists and it's diverse in form and content. And it is not, you know, there are genres and plays in there that are not my personal joys but that are works that I respect immensely. We have a joke at Sundance is that are we going to find the next hip hop musical? Like, and that's our, we don't know anything but you fill up in our like, whoa, hip hop. But I mean like we, I mean we actually had that this year where we had a couple of these like big hip hop musicals and we could, and we're reading through it and we're like, okay, we see a story, we see this but I mean like we're not responding to the material so we actually go out and find a specific reader who knows that genre really well. We trust their opinion. We're like, read this and tell us what you think. And if they're like, oh, this isn't it then we're like, okay, we gave this play, it's fair do. How many of you are doing that? Like, you find that you have to go outside your own expertise to find, but when you work for an organization that has several people in the literary department, you can kind of do that in-house. So I will sometimes read a play and say, this is not speaking to me personally but it feels like there might be something there so I'll hand it off to Kelly Miller, the literary manager of Jovey Colburn, the assistant literary manager, or sometimes Martin Benson, the one of the founding artistic directors and say, give this a read, let me know. What am I missing here if anything, you know. So a lot of the responsibility comes down to casting the literary out, casting that group of people widely enough to truly represent your purpose. Or you can, I mean, I also will share, like the Goodman has a group of artistic associates, many of them are directors, and I will, if there's a play that I think, you know, I'm often sort of thinking about what might be a good match for a director, and I will share with them too to sort of see, so that we can have a more ongoing conversation about what they respond to. So I'll sometimes share it outside the literary department. We shared a play with someone in our marketing department this year, because we knew that he used a very specialized vocabulary that he was really well versed in, and that we thought it was really cool and interesting, but we wanted to see what he thought of it as someone that was more of an expert than us. Like, I think it happens. We use our ensemble, you know. We use your ensemble? Yeah, I mean, not formally, but there are several of them who will come to me and say, hey, what are you guys looking at? Can I read some plays? And then I have someone have some things that nobody's read, and sometimes I have some things that I'm not sure I get or love, but there's something that seems to be something, or that's something the literary manager or artistic associate has passed to me that I, you know, maybe disagree about, but there seems to be enough consensus around, you know, that if there is another love for me. We all have very different, all of our artistic staff have enough overlap, at least in my Atlantic, I think, that we can see the same values that the others see, whether or not a thing aligns with the taste, so that it ends up usually being a fairly smooth process of advancing that play forward or figuring out where it should stop based on taste, or what we imagine this taste would be, or, you know, it's sort of a built-in, I think if you have the right balance among the staff, you end up with a sort of a healthy sense of values. And sometimes the difference between, when you talk about taste, do you mean like quality or aesthetic taste? And how do you discern the difference there, because sometimes they're totally related, sometimes two different things, like I'm acknowledging aesthetically, maybe this isn't my thing, however, they're just, they're gonna might love it, so just acknowledging where I come, but I'm reading for you, so you might love it, or I don't, I'm not sure this is good, but I need someone else to check, because that also could be, or maybe an aesthetic thing is coming in to block me from, you know, so you'd need to kind of have the checks that are both for quality and aesthetics. Well, listening to this conversation, it sounds like we're all doing everything right now. Like, like that. And that, and we all have the things that we do, that we're proud of the way we do them, and that, what would we do better? Could we do better? What, and what needs, what is the baby here that's good, that needs to come into the future? But it does sound very, and so the disconnect I'm responding to is the amount of pressure and noise in the world about this whole, that everything gets stuck here, and that it's a monolithic kind of notion of what makes a play, and that there's no access for new voices, there's no access for new forms, and things are stuck there, and that it's stuck here in the literary arts. And you guys don't feel that. I mean, I definitely feel that. I feel that it comes from people of color. Like, I hear this all the time. People coming up to me, it's like, why aren't you doing more Mexican plays? Why aren't you doing more of these plays? And I mean, I will be completely honest. When I read a play, I look for that. Like, I mean, I will earmark a play if I see. Like, if I get any type of good remarks, I'm pushing that through, because I want to advocate for those. I mean, I hate saying this, but part of me feels it's an excuse. Like, people don't know, they don't know what else to say about why their play isn't gonna be produced, or why it's not going through these doors. So, I mean, you have to blame something. So you blame the system, you blame the establishment. I mean, we talked about in our breakout group, I don't understand now why there's a stigma about self-producing or going to smaller theaters. And like, playwrights just don't want that. They want the taper, they want arena. They don't want to go to their local equity waiver house to premiere their show, because it's not good enough for their work. When I don't necessarily see that as bad, I mean, if you have work, get it out there, that's the point, get it heard, but they don't want it to be heard by just anyone. They're picking their audience. So at the same time, it's like they're self-selecting where their work can be done, because they want a big stage. So it's kind of, I mean, it's a catch for me too. I recently got asked by an artistic director who's transitioning between two theaters and found himself in a situation where he had to program like five spaces because of where he was and where he was going. And he came to me and said, can you just put together some pitches and just pitch me some plays that I don't know? Which is kind of the opposite of what we're talking about here. And it was a person who I know, but he's going from one theater with a very specific aesthetic to another theater with a different aesthetic. And I sat down and made a list and was kind of surprised that right off the bat I had 50 plays I wanted to talk to him about. And the diversity that I had within those pieces, I was surprised myself. And when I sat down and looked at them, I was like, wow, I know more than I would have thought I had known. Yet there is that idea of we're self-limiting. I think we do it as we read work, we do it our artistic directors do it in a way where you think, well, I only am looking for this. We were talking yesterday about the two men one set play. I'm worried that we have propagated this myth that things aren't getting done or that things are being blocked when they're really not. There really is a lot like you were saying, plays are getting done. And there's a lot of them getting done. I mean, I don't know if this is addressing what you're asking, but I think part of what can be difficult and frustrating both inside and outside maybe is that there's this system, so things get sent and then there's a process and people are reading and then it moves forward. And that is true, like that process exists. And as people have said, plays will come in and I might read something and be excited about it and pass it on and then the conversations will happen and that may lead to it being produced on our stage or it might lead to a reading that might then lead to something else. It can happen. But that's only one of the ways that things get produced. It's a way that things get produced, but it is not by any means the only way. And the other ways are much more idiosyncratic and much more to have to do with relationships and what people are excited about. And so I think sometimes it feels like this is the way work is supposed to get on and yet I, I from the outside or I from the inside realize that actually there's a million other ways that it happens. And so does, is this way a waste of my time? Am I being lied to about what the process is of work actually getting produced? And I don't think it's not a lie because work does get done that way. But it's just one of the ways. But it's just one of the ways. And if work isn't getting done that way, that's the conversation that has to be had. Artistic staffs that I'm sure don't just have to have openly about why are we doing all of this? If, if year to year what we can see is this isn't how you're going to use it. So something either is broken on our side or you're not interested in what these plays are. So we need to send a different signal out into the world about what we're looking for. Or you need to not have this stuff. Or you know what I mean? Those are the, those are internal conversations that maybe some theaters aren't having. If there's a perception of a disconnect there and a literary nod or something or drama or whoever feels like they're just spinning their wheels and getting their soul sucked out by the pile, it's because that work isn't being seen on the stage. And that, that, that doesn't, that doesn't seem to me to be essentially a problem of the theater to the artist outside the theater. That's, that's an internal. Right. So, I mean I'm really kind of stunned at this, but it's, so it's nothing of what Todd's studying, for example, points to as broken. Actually broken, is it just the whining of, or the complaint of people who are in other ways disenfranchised or, Disappointed. Trying to come through one gate when another gate would be more effective for them? Is this, is this in a sense, a lie? It's a trick question almost. I mean it really is. I mean, and because it's also a subjective question, I mean, there is no right or wrong answer to it. I mean, I would say that I really want to see more color on stages and I really want to see more female playwrights and I feel like we're getting to the point where we're getting more females, but we're not getting more color. You know, and you hear like the color slot, like I hate those terms and I feel like you, we've had these in our vocabulary for so long and we still haven't broken free of them. And so, I mean, there's still problems with diversification. I mean, like all the major players in the American theater can be argued as white men and like where's the diversity there? I mean, there's so many levels to that simple question. It's like, you know, how do you approach it in a very simple way you can because it's too big of a question on the rest? I was surprised. We did a playwright survey of our 900 playwrights that submitted this year and we had about 500 respond, which is a pretty good response rate. And the diversity within the group that applied was shockingly of really, I mean, 80% or more. So is that a function of how you're soliciting or is that a function of what the pool is? I think that's a real question of what we can do better. And I think also beyond just the diversity of background and it's been our gender diversity, our gender numbers were actually developing more work by women than it was actually submitted percentage wise. But for me, it's also the question of diversity of background by education as well. I'm somebody who came through from, again, school of hard knocks as opposed to NFA. And it's really hard to find the good writers in the pool that don't have other credentials to add to them. Partly because there are very few of them that exist, that you get better as you go along the journey. But that's a really hard process and a nut that I have not been able to crack and one that with the amount of time, I wonder is able to be cracked in this current model. So we need to break out so that you guys, the rest of you can get into this conversation. Can we, when we do that, when you go into your breakout start, try to answer some of these questions that these guys are wrestling with too. What is their problem? It sort of feels a little bit like we're doing things well and right. There's a disconnect between the language of this but then what is the, if we are doing things well and right, what is the literary office of the 21st century look like? What can we do better and what do we need to maintain as we make this change as it relates to this question of the gates and selection and advanced form? Yes, playwright has the last word before we do it. I know, I just wonder if the question is limited because it's asking if, and I'm not in that role. So if you're doing something right for the existing story, I mean, isn't the larger question is the story broken? Uh-huh. Is the story, not broken, that's wrong. Is the story shifting? That's what I think it is so that it's almost like people are being forced to defend against something that has worked for what it has existed but I think it's a seismic shift that's happening in all organizations, all business, all structure that is affecting how we're gonna create live performance, you know, performing live events. So I guess that's what, I mean, I think. So what is needed as we move forward? In the how to do live, like how is live performance going to go into, and is it going to, you know, that how, and I think it is, but I think it's massively shifting how are we going to take in the live shared experience in the future. So that's, because that's what interests me. I think, yeah, I don't think people are doing anything wrong. It's just that I think we're in this massive shift. We're in this, you know, one room has worked and we're in this liminal in-between period before you expand into what the next possibility is. So expand, in the breakouts, expand into the next possibilities. And we're gonna break out until 2.30, it's about 1.40 right now.