 or work here at a remissation development and I'm also a playwright. I'm Rachel Mox. I'm a fellow here in Greek sales and audience development. My name is Alyssa Getches. I'm a local artist and recovering literary literature. Stupid. I was majoring in a playwright. He's going to be Gregory. I'm a playwright. Rebecca Gingrich-Jones. I'm a D.C. area playwright and along with Gwydian Sullivan, one of the co-moderators of the D.C. area playwright's group. He's sorry you can't make it tonight. I'm Pat Comily. I'm a D.C. area local playwright and I'm a director also. Luna Temeco. I'm visiting. Luna's my partner in life in all the industry. Yep. It happens to be in D.C. with me in the industry. My name is Erin Washington. I'm a new play producing editor. Hi. I'm Danielle Moulin, D.C. area playwright and also the company manager at Studio Theater. I'm Kevin Becerra and I'm one of the new play producing fellows. Cool. All right. Well, we have one minute before we start. Is that right, Pajae? Yep. So I, oh yeah, Erin, come on in and sit down. Introduce yourself, Erin. Have a seat and introduce yourself. And then that'll make it seven o'clock and then I can actually officially start. My name is Erin Malkin and I'm the senior literary fellow here. So I'm going to make this a kind of a Q&A. Are you ready for me, Pajae? I mean, I don't want to, you know, I don't know your system, your TV system. So the idea of this thing we're calling knowledge sharing comes out of basically two things, which is the first is we're trying to establish in this last couple of years what the new play institute that we're working on here at Arena is. And there's a lot of clarity that we have playwright residencies. There's not a lot of clarity about what else we do. And so there is a kind of whole other, lots of other things that happen besides the great and much more newsworthy part of giving money to playwrights. And that thing is really about a commitment by the institute, you know, which is the work of David Dower, you know, being so moved by the real reason that the regional theatre movement started, which was about believing that theatre had something to offer beyond just sort of a commercial value, that it wasn't just about commerce, buying tickets and putting butts in seats, that it was really a knowledge, a value proposition and it was based in, you know, sharing resources with communities and that it was a part of a kind of cultural commons and the cultural commons being, you know, like a library or like public works or like the hospital or it's something that you bring that yeah, there's a cost to it and yes, you know, there's money exchange but there's also value above and beyond that. So the institute is very much, there's a kind of what we like to call a documentation and dissemination portion of the institute that's very interested in reinvigorating that commons idea and figuring out what are the ways in which we can share resources with one another and bring the theatre back to that value proposition that started it but using 21st century technology. So it's just sort of, I like to think of it as looking back to move forward and so we have this goofy, not goofy, I say that in the case, like don't say goofy, we have this great thing, we play TV. It's only goofy when you're being filmed on new play TV that it feels very good to be, but we have this great thing, new play TV and it allows people who are not in town to be a part of conversations that they otherwise wouldn't be able to be and sometimes, I don't know, maybe one person will watch tonight, maybe next week somebody will see the video of this and maybe it'll be two people and maybe it will double the room, who knows. It's not really, we know we're not broadcasting into 50,000 homes nationwide but we are comfortable with that and it's a relatively new tool and we're going to let, if anybody wants to, David Dower is in a Starbucks in San Francisco, I just got a tweet from him. So we at least know that David is watching. We have a couple people? We have a couple people? We have a couple people? We have a couple people? Yeah. So that was impetus one, which is this idea of knowledge sharing. Impetus two is of the many conversations I've had over the years I worked in the theater, the one that gets asked of me all the time is the question of, this question of agents and I've had it at least a thousand times and I thought, wow, what if I did that same conversation to more than one person? How efficient would that be in a sharing of resources? So this is actually a selfish gesture on my part. And then finally I thought I personally wanted to meet some DC playwrights because unfortunately I've not been in town much because of projects that I'm working on, some work I'm still doing in Chicago and so I haven't really had an opportunity to do that so this was also an opportunity to invite you all to come and say hello. So that's the reason we're here. What I want to do is say a couple things about this topic at hand and just talk a little bit about this agent question and then really take questions from you and let you kind of drive what you don't want to tell you what you want to hear. So the question of agents comes up all the time. For me, I've been working with playwrights at all stages of their careers for a number of years now. In my work at the Playwright Center in Minneapolis I did a lot of work with emerging writers in particular where that question comes up. I also had that conversation all the time with people frustrated with their current agents who are further along in their careers who feel their agents aren't doing what they should be doing. And I feel like we're in a very evolving culture in the American theater so I have some, like most things I have relatively strong opinions about agents and that conversation. So I thought I'd give you my opinions and take your questions and I think the biggest thing I want to say, I don't want to just say what agents will say to you which is the agent will come to you, you don't go to the agent. That's a pretty standard reply. But I would like to lay the groundwork of how I feel the agent business currently works and why the conundrum of finding an agent is such that it is. And I see that groundwork as mostly the way that emerging playwrights in particular, but any playwright, particularly how you get an agent in the early phase of your career, is you go to one of about five graduate schools. And those agents park outside of those graduate schools. I mean, I get to say, because I get invited to respond to all those festivals and I feel like we just have to have transparency about it. So if you go to Yale School of Drama or UCSD or maybe Iowa or maybe Columbia or Brown or, you know, then there will be a bunch of agents who park in the final showcase of your senior year or your final MFA year, I should say. And very likely you'll get an agent. That's the way you get an agent when you've had no success to speak of but you have promise, right? And that's really become a narrow version. I mean, it's really narrowed. Like I can tell you, when I started in this business kind of mid-90s we used to pick these emerging Jerome Fellows from the Playwright Center and those emerging fellows often were pre-MFA. So they would be, they'd come before their MFA and they really got selected based just on their script in a sense. And then within 10 years, and that's a short time in history, I like to think of 10 years as, you know, super fast, within 10 years we almost had no Jerome Fellows who didn't have an MFA coming in for the Jerome. So, you know, I'm sure there's an exception and maybe there's an exception, I'm not there now but I can tell you what I know. And those MFA students were all coming with agents right out of graduate school from one of those top MFA programs. Pretty standard. So just to say, the cards are stacked against you as a playwright out in the world writing plays to just find an agent. You know, so the question becomes, well, okay, I'm not at one of those five graduate programs, so then what do I do, right? And then for those of you who have an MFA, you know, you have an MFA, for those of you who don't have an MFA, you then have to ask yourself a question, do I want to get an MFA? And will that be the solution to catapulting me into the next level of a career? We can talk about MFA questions, I have opinions about that. And so feel the free that that's a question to be asked. But if you're not, so if you're not coming out of one of those MFA programs and the question becomes what do you do? And I think this is where, you know, I sort of say, it's not that you shouldn't try to get an agent, but my suggestion to you is that not be your primary focus. And the reason I say that is because, you know, you have to understand, you know, literary agents are available. They're in the world to make money. That doesn't make them bad people. I find them to be people who desperately love the theater and are very committed. Some have had been theater artists, they've been writers and dramaturgs and directors and those things. So it's not about that, but this is how they're making a living. And if you're a writer who's not getting productions that pay anything, so if you're self-producing, right, so there's no money in it for the agent, if you self-produce, if you're a writer who's not getting productions where there's a royalty check coming in, they don't make any money on that. And so hence, they generally don't go out looking for you. They go out looking for the people they think are going to get productions and bring, I mean, it's a money proposition. So production becomes how to build a career without an agent. And I think this is where it really is about figuring out how to make your work. And so my suggestion to you, and I saw this in Chicago better than any other community I've lived in, and I haven't lived in D.C. to say it's here or not here, but in Chicago, there's an incredible, what they call the storefront theater scene, and that storefront theater scene is a very savvy engine of that community. I think it's quite a model for how a city supports theater artists. And those companies, they form for often very short periods of time, three years, four years. They do a lot of shoestring budgets, but they produce plays. And they actually over time develop a reputation for being a director or a playwright or a dramaturge or a lighting designer. And then it becomes like, the storefront scene in Chicago becomes like a theater system in a way for that kind of larger theater scene. And it's not that those playwrights are making in that storefront scene, they're not making a career, they all have day jobs, most of them. It's not that they're making a career out of it yet, but they're making a reputation in a name and they're getting that valuable experience of writing plays. And there's nothing like writing plays and seeing how they fail to know how to become a better playwright. And that can never happen. It can never happen, A, from you just writing plays and then putting them in a drawer. It can never happen, B, from you just writing plays, sending them to me, I read them and say, you're my notes. Your play won't get better that way. Your play will get better when you put a bunch of collaborators in a room and figure out what works and what doesn't work with it. And that's, believe me, I'm not saying that's easy, but I'm saying that to me that's time well spent. And what I think you have to figure out when you're trying to be a theater artist is what's time well spent? What is time well spent for me? And I had a conversation with a writer who's been around for a while on Friday who was saying, this is a writer who's, I'm guessing in her fifties or something, been around and saying, I'm getting more active in my own work. I see that this idea of sending my plays out is not a way to make a living as a playwright. And this is somebody who's had a lot of productions and teaches at a fairly prestigious place. And still at this stage of that person's career is saying, I have to become more active in my own work. And so I feel like there was, I think there was a day, and certainly Edward Albee and others at the Dramatist Guild will tell you about that day if you ask them. There was a day when people sent out their plays and people loved them and they got done. That time isn't really here now. It's part of why my colleague David Dower got in trouble with the whole submissions policy by just telling the truth of that time has passed. It doesn't really exist anymore. And we can throw stones at each other about that or we can kind of embrace what that reality is and figure out how to go forward. So that's kind of my point of entry. And I'll just stop there and say, questions as you want to go. But that's, and then we can talk in any kind of specifics that you want to talk. Comments, questions, yeah. I guess I have a sort of chicken egg question. Yeah, yeah, you bet. Because you're saying that agents want, obviously they're interested in potentially revenue producing scripts. But it's very difficult to get a play in front of a theater that's going to generate some real revenue without an agent. So that's the question. It's like, how can you, how do you maneuver that so that you can get yourself in a position where maybe you've got a script that is potentially revenue producing but you need that agent to help you get it in front of the right people? Yeah. How do you work that? Yeah, so I think it's a great question. And I'm going to say a couple of things. It's probably not going to, they're not going to be earth-shattering things, but I do think there's a way, and I live with a writer, so I sort of know this, but the writer personality in particular tends to be fairly introverted. And that's not true always. There are some exceptions to that, but I don't find that most playwrights I know, my experience of working with a lot of playwrights over the years is what makes them so valuable, such a valuable resource is that the way they inhabit the world is particular and necessary to how one sees the world and tells those stories. It tends not to be the person who, you know, wants to go to coffee all the time and really know people and get to meet people. And then, you know, but I think it's a couple of things. I think one is, I think you have to be willing to sort of put yourself out there pretty much all the time in this business, and I find that, I also find, as a general rule, theater artists, myself included, are incredibly thin skinned, and so it takes a kind of really thick skin to put yourself out there all the time. And it doesn't mean putting yourself out there like, I mean, you know, don't call an artistic director 200 times, because then they'll just think you're psychotic. That's not really useful. But I think it means, you know, reaching out to as many people in the theater, you know, first of all, it's you doing your homework. You have to do your homework and research theaters that really make sense. Like, Steppenwolf was a perfect example. When I worked at Steppenwolf, Steppenwolf has a range of work that it does. Okay? Like, Steppenwolf, unless it's Tina Landau, Steppenwolf doesn't verge on anything that is pretty much gritty realism. Like, I mean, there are a couple of, I mean, Frank, Galati, there are a couple of ensemble members. It's totally ensemble-driven. It has to suit the ensemble and it has to suit the acting ensemble. So, I'll give you an example. There are no Asian actors in the acting ensemble at Steppenwolf. So if you have a six-character Asian play, you're not going to get produced at Steppenwolf. But people don't realize that because they haven't done their homework, right? So first you have to do your homework of what kind of work the theater produces. And you have to really look closely and go, and, you know, not your dream of being in that place, but the truth of your work, does your work fit in that theater? And then, if you can really answer, yeah, I see, you know, what I do there, but immediately, if you do that, you should stop focusing on a whole bunch of theaters, right? I mean, I mean, you go, that actually isn't going to be my theater. So then you start to narrow in on, okay, here are five theaters or here are 10 places that I'm really interested in. And then it becomes about how do you build relationships and how do you become a part of that community? If you're young and you're not, you know, you don't have three kids to support, you do things like get internships, you volunteer, and you become part of a dialogue in that community. The number of people I have seen come through large theaters with resources who get to have experiences and participate in what's going on in that community, it's because they did their time working in that place. Now, if you have three kids and a family, and you can't do that, then you have to figure out other ways you get there. So I would say you figure out who you want to build your community with and make your liaison to it, and you focus your energies there. The other thing I really suggest is to look at those organizations, and there are a lot of them now who are doing new play development. Those play development centers have their finger on the sort of the pulse of what's happening in the American theater, even some of the smaller ones do, and a lot of organizations have respect for what those companies are doing. And if you can get, you know, you know, if you can get your play read, you know, at one of the Lark's bare bones series, if you can get your play in at the Playwright Center, if you can get into the core writer program at the Playwright Center, if you can, you know, go out to the Seven Devils Conference, those are invaluable opportunities to meet other theater artists, to make connections in the field. You should be applying those play development opportunities. You should be applying to all of them all the time, because those are places where they do read every submission, right? You know, the truth of these big institutions is they don't and they never will, I'm not saying they never will, they never will next week anyway, so don't focus there, right? So, but what those other places do, and they're worth your time and your energy, and you know, here's the other thing I say and I can only say this from my own experience and whether I should admit this and be proud of it or not, but when people come see me, I always remember them. When people email me, you know, go to a city where you want to work, whether that's D.C. or Chicago or Minneapolis or San Francisco, and meet all the people who are doing the kind of work that interests you, because I mean, I've met a ton of people who used to come through Minneapolis or came through Chicago, and I remember them and I'm still in touch with a lot of them and I hear from them and we still connect, you know? And then the other, the final thing I would just say is, in the meantime, while you're doing all that work and getting your rejections and putting on your thick skin, find a way to be active in this field and this will be my 22nd commercial for the New Play Institute, you know, which is an article to be on HowlRound. Write something for our blog. You know, be in the conversation because the conversation is vibrant and you're a part of the conversation and if you continue to kind of judge, if you always judge yourself over what theater's accepted and rejected you, the world will feel really small for you in the American theater, you know? So that was a super long, my answers are so long, I'm going to be like 17 hours, so I'm sorry if my answers are so long. Other questions? So, say that you do get lucky enough to have a production and that production goes very well and it spawns another production in the storefront theater in another location, it spawns another production in the storefront theater in another location and you're getting positive feedback for that but it's all at that level. What's the possibility of stepping up to the next level and how do you get somebody to be, how do you get to that next level? Yeah, I mean that's the, you know, that is the million, I'm sure I would have a bigger job if I knew the answer. I do have some million other questions. A couple of things, so one is first of all is to look around where you've had success. So look at those storefront theaters, is there anything to leverage there? Is there an artistic director who does know an agent? You know, because you have to ask for favors in this business, I mean, I have to say the agent, the reason I wanted to talk about this, I feel like the agent conundrum is big and you know I've gotten some people agents over the years but for as long as I've been in this business and as many recommendations I've made, I would say that's not time well spent for even me. You know what I mean? Like it's just not, it's not how it works, you know? And so, but what I would say is you want to call in every favor you have. You know, you've got to figure out how to, that's what this business, that's part of the knowledge sharing that we're, you know, we have to start, we have, if there's anything, you have to have generosity in this business and you have to ask for it and you have to give it, you know? So one is, is there anybody in there who you feel like can help you get to the next level because there's a conversation happening that you've got to figure out what that conversation is? The other thing I would say about a play like that that's successful is if that play is really successful and it hasn't had like a, you know, an equity production, I'm going to call it equity and not professional because I think it's professional. But it has an equity production. You know, a lot of times you can take that play and get it in a play development workshop. So if you have something kind of polished that you know is pretty good, you know, okay this is, you know, maybe we should just shut the TV off for a minute and go workshop it even if you don't feel like it needs to be workshopped like that. You've got to, partly you've got to play the game and if I was going to say to play the game is get into that play development center with that good piece of work if it hasn't had that professional production because the truth is even in the storefront scene, you know, the only way a storefront playwright, you know, really has a chance at anything more is it like, you know, Chris Jones gives it four stars at the Chicago Tribune and he goes and sees that storefront play. But otherwise, you know, you have a really good business storefront, you know, people really liked it. That won't necessarily take you somewhere but you've got to play all your connections, you know. So you kind of play all your connections and use that good play and apply for everything with it. You know, so that, look, you know, it's like the big break, you know. I don't know how it happens. It's partly luck and it's partly just utter perseverance in this business because I tell you, if you're not looking in the long haul in this business, like you should just run out of this room right now. You know what I mean? Because like this is not a short haul kind of business, so. Other? May I interject with a tweet question? Yes, a tweet question, yeah. So, at Maricela Torta, I call her the weekly howler. Yes, yes. She says, you mentioned the MFA career track. For those who can't do an MFA, do you think the online networking is becoming an alternate path? Well, you know, somebody was saying to me the other day, a person I only know through Twitter, although met in person on Saturday was saying that, you know, she'd been sending plays and resumes and things to Bob Falls for like 300 years and now Bob Falls, you know, the artistic director of the Goodman is on Twitter. And so she's actually having conversations with Bob Falls and, you know, couldn't get near that without Twitter. So I would say the answer is in part yes to that. The thing I would say about the MFA and believe me, you know, as somebody who, I was part of a mentorship program through TCG where I was the mentor and they were paying the student loans of my mentee while I was putting my checks in the mail for my student loans that I was still paying and I seemed so wrong. I thought, well, should they pay my not first and then pay hers off? So I know how expensive that is. The thing I'd like to say about the MFA is, you know, the social media networking is terrific. What's great about the MFA, what's great about school, I'm kind of an MFA fan, not for the price of it, but for the opportunity to get better at what you do. I've never known anybody who didn't get better when they took the time in their MFA. It's like, you know, the MFA, if you can possibly do it, it's the great gift you give yourself. I just, it's like a total, for you to say for two or three years of your life I'm a writer, that will change you forever and I don't believe in it, you know, for the reasons that other people will say to do it. I believe in it for that because at your core, the way to survive this business and the way to sort of, you know, trudge through and, you know, hang in there when you don't have an agent is to believe that you're a writer. When you believe that, and there's something about that affirmation that I think it emboldens people in a way that's really useful. So, but if not that, I feel like that's a great question and using those networks critical. And I've definitely, I'm not going to know don't tweet this out, but I've been, you know, I've read plays and connected with writers that I wouldn't have because I, you know, because of social networking. So, for sure. Yes. I'm wondering if you have any particular advice for women because the statistics are stacked against female playwrights as we all know. Run like the lead. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. I have a really interesting experience. I've been working on, not working on really, I just have been around, Not done any work on it, I don't know why use that word, I've been around and helping produce a work shop of Lisa Cron's Fun Home. Which is you know, adaptation of a graphic novel about a young woman who, you know, father kills himself because, and it's gay, and then he kills himself within 4 weeks of her coming out as gay. And I, listing to that musical, on it. Sundance recently, I thought to myself, God, you know, all these years, I've been in the theater and I've never thought the American musical really spoke to me. And I thought, oh, this is like an American musical that speaks to me. Like, we're a weird business that way, like that I've been in the business as long and I haven't had a musical that's really related to my life in a way. It kind of took me by surprise because I just kind of watched the musical sometime and I thought, that's an interesting form. I wonder who that speaks to. I don't know. Do I actually know the answer to that? You know, so to say, you know, we have a long way to go in the theater about who makes work and who we make work for. And I feel like that evolution and revolution is kind of coming in this way that's super exciting to me. You know, I feel like it's kind of like, like nothing is really impossible now. And what I really love, I mean, I just feel like the 21st century for me, I just like, I'm so grateful to be a part of it because we actually have this kind of means for the, so we can control the means of production in a way that we never could before. We can have conversations. We can talk about these kind of issues in ways that embarrass people so badly that they actually have to produce women writers. So I mean, my feeling about that is, you know, I feel like, you know, I really feel like in terms of that question, it's like, you just have to write true to yourself. You know, like you can't really change who you are. You kind of have to write true to yourself. And then you have to be a part of the solution for the problem, you know. And I feel like for me, I'm a kind of glass half full person. So I look at like what's out there and what's possible. And I think we have a whole generation of, you know, young women who are coming up looking for stories. I think there's a whole world of like, you know, there's a whole world there of like, you know, young adult theater that's super exciting. There's a woman, Sarah Govins, who's a Chicago writer who has a play called FML, you know, How Carson McCuller Saved My Life and has written this, you know, lovely play about a young girl who comes out in, you know, in high school and Steppenwolf's going to produce it in January in their young adult series. So like, I feel like it's about like writing the stories that need to be told and trusting that there's going to be a place for them. And I think of people, there have been some really inspiring, I mean, really inspiring writers to be in that regard. You know, Lisa DeMore has been, you know, two of them just won the Steinberg Award that, you know, the panel I've served on for a while. And one is Melissa James Gibson as the others, Lisa DeMore. And Lisa's been telling like, you know, weird stories about women forever and ever. And they're so terrific. And finally, you know, she's a Pulitzer runner-up. So I feel like there's some kind of weird window there. And I just say walk through, you know, that door's going to open and you got to just walk through. So, but I, you know, can we solve gender problems? And I probably not, but, you know, but I think you just have to kind of own and feel confident, you know, we're ready. That era's got to be over, right? It just, like, I almost have to deny it as a problem. You know, at some level, you have to just go, I'm not even going to accept that as a problem. I'm just going to make the work that I believe in. So, yeah. Question, you mentioned the Seven Devils Conference. Are there any other key conferences that you think playwrights should really be at and really be present? Yeah, that's a good question. What are the conferences? Gosh, they, I mean, you know, Playwright Center does a thing called playwrights, play labs. You know, of course, there's the O'Neill Conference. Of course, Lark has their reading series. Playpen has their reading series in Philadelphia. I mean, there's actually, the way I would answer this question is better than my memory, which is lame. What I would say is, you know, two things. One is on our new played blog, you know, we're putting up all of writer's opportunities. And then the Playwright Center for years and years has been tracking every, you know, I think you pay like, you know, 40 bucks a month or 50 bucks a month or something, but a year, another month, a year. But you get, like, every writer's opportunity that's ever, I always said the Playwright Center membership was one of the best things you could have if you were a playwright, because it's literally, like, every opportunity that's ever out there. And there's a ton of them. I mean, there's 10 minute play festivals. You know, what I, I always say, there's like a tool kit that I say, you know, to playwrights in particular, but theater artists in general. The first thing is you have to figure out how you're gonna feel like an artist every day. And so you just have to figure out what that means, you know, you have to get up every morning and go, how do I feel like an artist today? I have to do that today. There can't be a day that goes by that you don't feel like an artist. That is, like, number one, if you don't do that, you're, it's like cutting, you might as well just cut off your finger every morning. You know what I mean to like, don't do that. It's very painful. And so, so that's one, you know, that's one, and one way to do that is just to be like, I'm gonna get that submission out. I'm gonna get that play done. I'm gonna get that 10 minutes scene. You know, you gotta just do that, you know? And so I always say, become a playwright center member because it's such a, you know, and then you immediately become part of the community then and you're like, oh, you know, this is something, you know, I'm, and I always felt it was worth, you know, 50 bucks. And I think they're trying to even make it cheaper now, but it's worth that for the year because you're saying you're a writer, you know? And then the other is, what I always tell people is, you know, become your own arts administrator, you know, be your own grant writer, take those courses about grant writing, like learn how to write a grant. Like I'm telling you, playwrights do not know how to write grants. They think because they know how to write, they're grant writers. Those are actually different skills. And so, you know, yeah, see? Right? So you know, become your own arts administrator, like you gotta learn about budgets. You know, you really have to take on those things and now like, it's so easy to do that. I mean, I actually, I've been able to publish a journal. I don't know anything about, I mean, I could learn WordPress in a weekend. You know what I mean? Like these are things, you have control of the means of production. So, you know, so those are just some, some things I think are like basic, basic things. You know, you've gotta feel like an artist every day and you have to be responsible for your own arts administration. You know, because no institution, unless you're like Susan Lori Parks or Tony Kushner, no institution is really gonna do that for you, you know? And even for the best writers, you'd be surprised how much of their own stuff they still have to do, you know? The writers that you look up to and go, this is where I wanna be, are looking and going, how do I, I don't know how to do this still. I mean, it's a hard, it's a hard, you know, it's a hard choice. Other, do you have other questions before we, questions before we finish up? Let's see here. David Dyer wants to remind you that there's no such thing as don't tweet this out when you're live streaming. We gotta love David Dyer. Thank you, David. Mark Armstrong for, mentions other conferences such as Playpen, the Denver Center for a New Employee Summit, JW, PCS, such things. Yeah, just general people just loving you. Any other questions? We're right at about, let me take one more if you want to. I have a two-part, well, I guess a B to the NA. So how about like convenings? Because like the conferences are one thing and then development, you know, workshops are another, but then like places where you can just meet other playwrights, artistic directors, agents, so just like where the community just comes together. Yeah, it's a great question. I know there's a TCG conference. I know and it costs a lot of money and you gotta fly usually wherever it is and that kind of thing. So yeah, I mean that's such a good question. I feel like I don't know where the new, I'm not really sure, I mean I think those conversations tend to happen at those festivals. So like Humana's actually, Humana's probably a really good place to go because like all the literary managers are down there, the agents are all down there. I mean if you want to just hang in the scene, Humana's a really good festival and I think the other one is Denver New Place Summit is a really good festival. I find the work there is really terrific too and you can just again be kind of in that world and those are the gifts you should give yourself. If you can, if you can get yourself to those places, they're also slightly less expensive. I mean TCG has like a, maybe I don't know, $400 price tag for entry I think or something for $500. Those places I think Humana, it's more like the price of tickets so it's not quite as, maybe not quite as pricey upon entry but I think just looking at those kind of, you know whatever, oh Pacific Playwrights has a pretty good festival, that's another place where there are a lot of, you know, theater types hanging out, artistic directors and others. So and those are, you know, those are just good, they're energizing and you also, the other thing you have to do is see the work, you know, see what's out there. What are people looking at and feeling excited about because almost all those plays that come through those festivals went through a pretty rigorous selection process and there really were a lot of plays read and they, you know, they for some reason funneled to the top. So all right, well, I think that, are we done streaming, Vijay? Yep.