 Andy Arthur, she is the executive director of the South Florida Theatre League. She's a playwright, and she's the southern rep. Is that the title? South? She's Florida. Florida is specific. I'm not, because there's land as the front next to the door. But Florida in general. For the drama to skil. For the drama to skil. I'll turn it over to you, Andy. All right. And then this panel is on production and self-production. We have a really interesting panel. I'm going to introduce them all, but I also want them to talk a little bit about their sort of stake in what this process is. Because I think if it's coming from that, it's a lot more exciting because I don't have their experiences. Roland is the membership director of the drama skil. And he does what they call self-production boot camp for drama skil members to sort of get the idea of let's go out and produce on ourselves and use on the self-production side as a playwright who's produced so forth. Joan is, Joan Stein is a commercial producer. She produced the standing on ceremony. And it's going to be at City right. That's right. City theater. It's going to be at the Broward Center for Performing Arts. It's got around standing on ceremony. It's about gay marriage plays. And it's really exciting. I'm looking forward to seeing that next week. Christian Parker is the artistic director of the Elantic Theater Company. Oh, this is bad. We're going to have paper in front of you. You can read the bios. You can read the bios. But coming from that sort of non-profit theater side, it's one that's like the reproduction on that end of the spectrum. And then Rachel is also with the drama skil. She's with the drama skil fund, which hands off grant money. So we've got grants. And I just sort of want you all to sort of speak from that sort of like, I'm not just going to do a better reproduction than I am. Sort of where you feel you are and what your role as a producer is in the process to start off with. Well, maybe I'll talk about the self-production sort of thing that's been happening with the guild over the past four or five years. Slowly over time, more and more members of the drama skil have been curious, interested, less and less shy to say that maybe they might want to produce their own work. And so in response, we've created things, different kinds of offerings. We've done panels on producing and we've done this self-production boot camp, which is basically just a day long kind of get your feet wet in what the nuts and bolts are of producing. But I would say that the number, the first thing that I always say to people when they're taking the boot camp is, you, the most important thing that you can do for yourself before you start any of this is to accept that one thing is true. There is one thing that is true about you and your work and it is never going to change. And that is that because you wrote it, there is never going to be another person on the planet who is as passionate or as emotionally connected to that baby as you are. Because you accept that as just being the reality, then you can begin to free yourself up to be able to gather a team together to help work on nurturing this baby and bringing it to life. But if you fight against that, if you don't accept that that's the reality, you can cause yourself a lot of unnecessary party. I've been a producer for 30 years. I've worked in nonprofit theater. Most of my career has been in the commercial theater, independent producer, and writing theaters. And I love the writers. I always give it up for the writers. So my relationship, and I have been lucky enough to have worked with spectacular writers over the years producing James Pine's first play, early plays by Jack Hedley, Pete Gurney, plays by Warren Wright, Warren Light, Paul Rudnick. Most important thing to me in a relationship with a playwright is listening to one another. I've also worked in television where the writer's role is different from the writer's role in theater. And in television and in film, the writer's role has taken, has changed, has rewritten. The writer's voice is not as treasured as it is in the theater. So hearing each other, listening to each other, really being honest with one another is important. And for writers, I unfortunately don't have the talent to be a writer, but it's important that writers know that they have their own power. And that if somebody says to change that, that's not really enough of a reason to change something. However, if you can find the right partners in your work, either in prop theater or commercial theater or with an agent or with a manager or an actor who is amazing, you can get into a dialogue and really listen and be willing to hear and answer the hard questions. Well, what's really supposed to happen here? Well, I'm confused. I don't understand that. I think it is the beginning of a fantastic relationship that can really enrich your playwright's experience and ultimately lead to more of what the playwright wants to do with it. I agree. I work, obviously, at The Atlantic Theater Company for quite a while, and I also work at the theater club, so slightly different. Well, more than slightly different from The Atlantic Theater, but the same as mainstream speaker. But I also teach at Columbia in the graduate theater program. And the first thing, one of the main things that I communicate to all my students, and I don't know if they're working in a job at Georgia, but I also teach playwrights and I teach directors and theater management and managers and players services. The first thing that I say to them, or one of the first things that I often say to them, is nobody made you do this. So remember that. All the time. Every day, several times a day. Because the theater is hard enough to make them on again. I think people act out of a sense of desperation very often. And through the moment, both of them were saying about knowing what you have and who you are and what your intellectual and emotional orientation is to your work. You need to position yourself to step out into the world with a sense of who you are and what you think the value of your work is and where it should go. I'm counseling students a lot about their careers and where they're going to get work, whether it's at the playwrights or anything else. And then the theater side of it drives all the time who want us to produce their work. And I think that the happiest artists that I know and even the young artists who are coming out of school and feeling very panicky about what's going to happen next, those that are most content are those that are doing their homework very, very actively about what the landscape is, where the opportunities might be, and being very rigorous about sort of self-critique about their homework and where it might best live, aligning themselves with specific theaters to submit their work to or specific individuals that they've met along the way or that they think might have a sympathetic ear or eye so that they don't just feel like they're kind of throwing their work up into the air and waiting for somebody to grab it. The fact that's not going to really work. And I think those people, none of them, they don't face frustration but they're able to orient themselves to a different proactive approach whether it amounts to ultimately self-producing or whether it amounts to a more clear-eyed relationship with potential producers because you can speak currently about what you're doing and why it aligns with what at least you perceive that organization or that commercial producer has already taken an interest in before. That's a very good place to start the conversation. I love a cover letter that reads like, you know, I've been coming to see, like, The Atlantic for years and I saw this and this and this and my work I think that's into your sort of general, the general parameters of your production history in this way. Would you be willing to take a look at really, in the same way that writing a cover letter to any organization no matter what field you're in, they must include some knowledge of what that place does. I think artists don't forget that that's important with theaters. I think so, I think that's what my students are going to take charge of there and their careers in that way. That's where it starts. What about a cover letter that's more of a compliment to me? Well, what else? That's what I just said. I mean, actually, if I have to fly or anything, we'll not get you anywhere. But just to me. Just to you. Yeah, so am I. Do you want to work with someone who's just as excited about what you do? Both parties are just as excited about the same project. It's not just do my play, do my play, do my play, but do my play because we're both really excited about this specific type of theater. Well, and most people tend to, and even agents, rather than not just individual writers, we'll sort of approach you with saying, I wrote this, so you should do it. Well, that's what I'm going to go back to. I don't need you to do that. So show those self-knowledge about your work. Why should it align with our interests? That's not about sort of finding the secret backdoor to understanding the reasoning with our submission policy. I think it's pretty believable. We don't have any rigid set of expectations about what a play must or must not be. But at the same time, it helps, you know, help sort of move something out of the kitchen or helps me take a more specific interest to the individual person if they seem to have some sense of themselves and us at the same time. Do you have that point where you look at a writer like, this play isn't necessarily good, but because we know that you like this play but it's not good for us, but they can look at you guys further on down the line and you know that. There's plenty of plays that I think have a lot of merit. They're interesting that I don't think they align with us particularly well for whatever reasons that either might align with us in a different way or so I will covertly leave it out somewhere even if we pass on the play to the writer. I do not direct writer's expectations along the area, but I might kind of keep it on the back burner without, you know, making that better about it. Or I might just, you know, offer a suggestion about where that writer might find a better alignment and I'm the director of the Drama to Skills Fund as Andy mentioned and in terms of producing I teach the boot camp with Rollins at the Gill, but in a former life I produced through my own company in the festival circuit in New York so the Fringe and New York musical theater festival working with writers sort of at the first stage of production to really get their show up and then I also worked on the Broadway side with producer Amanda Lipitz to develop pieces for Broadway and television and I think one of the most important things for me in self-production for writers is something that we talked about in the boot camp is not being afraid to ask for help and looking at a bunch of different sources of that help, you know, former colleagues, friends, I think we have a past lover's they can fill in on who might be able to help you with marketing or fundraising there's a bunch of different areas involved in actually mounting a show and really reaching out to a network to get that help to do that and I think for writers you know, it's such a solitary thing writing, right, and it requires that you be introspective and that is in a way at odds with going out into the world and putting out your hand and saying look at this, this is worthy you know what I mean, so for writers it's just a real challenge I think to get yourself into that place because it's such a different emotional place to be, you know, to say this is really a wonderful fit for you as opposed to how can I make this thing better you know so I think that um my fucking you know our business is led by so much emotion, so much passion that it's really that we're all vulnerable to this roller coaster and just like in any business wherever you fit in the food chain I think it's important to empower yourself and become knowledgeable and know what your business is about know what the trends are across the country um the national landscape of fear has changed dramatically in the past few decades where obviously not-for-profit theaters have taken such a major position now in nurturing writers and presenting new work and all sorts of partnerships and collaborations are going on now between commercial productions and not-for-profit productions and um so you can't afford just to get stuck in your own head in your own place of I'm writing this play and I need to get this play done I need to get behind you really put yourself out of the world so that when somebody says to you well it may not be right here instead of becoming anxious or defensive or worried about it you have the wherewithal to say it might fit and you have the knowledge when they say well there's are you aware of the the rep theater where get pale happens to originate a lot of work so yeah I deal with that there are all sorts of business reports Thomas Codd I'm from the Lincoln Center it's great the conference I love this and I think it's every day yeah every day and it's so informative about the business or the creative and global problems or struggles or solutions and sitting by yourself in you know in your part of a conversation part of the world I just cannot impress upon everybody enough how important it is to be knowledgeable not just about what you do about what everybody else does in your community and don't you think it's also about going to theater I mean I'm amazed how many times I get phone calls from people obsessed with their play and then I start asking them about wherever they live and the theaters in their neck of the woods and they never go and see any theater how can you be writing theater curious to go see theater I mean I also think there's a degree of honesty and again this applies to pretty much everyone in the business absolutely sees the need to get ahead in somewhere I suppose but but especially for writers there's an honesty about why you want to have your play produced and for whom I think we tend to generalize about well of course you wrote it so you want to see it produced but that's not as simple as that who did you write it with an audience in mind is there a particular demographic in the world that you feel like you will speak to is there a particular demographic that you are unfamiliar with that you think it might resonate with but you don't know is there a size theater that you feel like it belongs in is there a certain amount of money that you feel you should be paid in order to have that show on is your singular dream Broadway or nothing what are what are the parameters around which you feel that a production of that play could allow you to feel success with that production it might be in a basement somewhere with a bunch of your friends which you self-produced for the effects of nothing and how does it happily satisfy you or no reviews and then you move on to the next thing that might be but if that's not and you end up choosing that that's a highway to an happiness so what are the parameters around which you could be happy with the production because otherwise you're you're going to have a harder time having a transparent conversation with potential collaborators or potential producers or angels who are going to help pay for it you know I'm very traditionally trained so I am always wanting to know what is this play about and it's not about you know two guys walking to a bar I almost don't care about the plot I really want a writer to be able to articulate to me the thematic bones of a play or musical and to be able to say clearly passionately so that I become engaged maybe it's a subject matter that I'm not interested in and that's fine because then there'll be another producer who is interested but the most interesting thing for me is what a writer says this play is about and he really speaks to that in a way that I understand why he or she had to write that play why that was important and then you build your community of characters and your your arcs and your plots and you know all of these structural components of a play but essentially if you can't tell me what it's about I am not going to be engaged I also think that goes to who how you choose who are going to do that because you might have the luxury of not getting too much feedback hopefully the director but if not if you're actually trying to work within an institutional model and you're not writing for a company as you go you're not doing devised work or whatever you're going to have people who are interested in your work who want to give you feedback most of which are not necessarily going to have particularly a student insight into your work or might not be doing communicators there's lots of people out there in a position to give feedback who don't do it very well but how you choose to how you how you attune yourself to hear in what resonates with you will someone be defined by how well you can define things like what's it about and I think at the end of the day producers whether they be commercial producers or not-for-profit producers gravitate to and commit to work that speaks to them personally or sparks some intellectual interest amount regardless generally speaking of whatever drama-turgical problems might be in the way it's a rare case where you'll find a play where you say well we do want to produce this but we really need you to do X, Y, Z to clean it up before we'll say that basically if you love a play if you love it enough to really feel that strongly about it those other concerns tend to fall aside so there's a I would say that I would caution against sort of being strung along by organizations or sort of saying well if you do X then probably Y because that's usually coming from somebody within the organization who's trying to position the play for success and sometimes that might work but generally speaking that's a slow road to know as opposed to because when artistic directors really respond to something drama-turgical concerns go out the window generally and then once they've committed you have to start to have a conversation it's not to say that they never bother you again or that you never get to have your hand held to the fire in order to improve upon what you have but but doing all that work ahead of time to get to the yes is a really not so good idea so if you're starting to get those messages I think it's really important to leave out here what do you actually want from me is this a situation where you like this but the artistic director hasn't read it yet this is a situation where you want it to be something other than it is like how much do you really love this play and I think you have to have the confidence to walk away from that situation in order to have that conversation but it is incumbent anyway all that said on writer's I think to walk into those conversations with open eyes about where you are in your process of play and what it is about and if you're like me and you have great difficulty articulating what your play is about because I really struggle with that a lot I can tell you a great trick is when you gather your actor friends in your living room and you make lasagna for them and they read the play for the very first time and they get to the last page they close the script just ask them, actors know ask them, what do you think this play is about and take notes it's a great way to get a mirror on your own work sometimes when you're so in it it's very hard to be able to along those lines something I heard to answer Joan's question about is what the story of the play actually really think about what the play is about and separate that do a one sentence this is the story of the play and do a one sentence this is what the play is about I think it's very challenging I'm not being glib when I say you have to be able to articulate what it's about I think that it's completely possible to write a play with intelligence and talent and passion and get really stuck on being able to identify the bones of the theme of it that rises above the action it's usually part of the rewriting process there's a turning point when it crystalizes for you and then it's kind of dumb when you really understand what it is really about sometimes there can be really interesting conversations that leave from a writer talking about what is another way to phrase that same question as what's most interesting to you about what you bring where what are you most obsessed with in this piece and that might be you might go right to a perceived law in the play or you might go right to the reason you wrote the play and answer that question and what sort of strain of the story or what some storyline is the most important but that's a great test of what kind of collaboration you might have with a potential producer because of having the conversation about what they perceived what they gravitated to in the play if that differs from what you hoped it would be what you gravitated to in the play is an interesting stepping up to me that doesn't mean that you won't if you don't agree that doesn't mean you won't have an interesting collaboration you're actually really well matched to kind of find your way forward into something that's clear or you might just have an instant agreement about something you know, get the offer that day because that will inspire the confidence of the producer to say, oh, we see this the same way I get it, that person is really going for something here they might be able to deepen it or clarify but I can have the confidence to be bold or something like that Talk a little bit about knowing the audience specifically if you know the theater I know before we had the discussion of playwrights just sending stuff indiscriminately a little bit and how that how do you think, since playwrights are so we tend to be, and I speak as one we tend to be like, oh, this is how do you have people more outward thinking about who is the right, because I know right audience for their plays I know playwrights will say, oh, well, everyone should jump to the play and that's I don't know, I wrote it I wrote it for my play that's often a response to people like I wrote it for myself and I think the key is I really think it goes back to the question I was anyway, no one made you do this why did you want to write for this for why did you decide that the work that you put on the page should interact with the audience it's not about who are the people like it's white women aged 22 to 39 who are going to respond to my play because that's limiting anyway but who, where? in what cultural context what kind of venue do you have to go to the theater to see architecture how did you conceive how this would work in space how do you perceive that the style that you're writing in or the content that you're writing is going to be received you know how provocative is it I guess, or how in particular cultural context what's provocative in Miami might not be provocative or it might be more provocative than someone else so those are the kinds of questions that are related to the answer that I was sort of asking before which is it's not about who exactly it's about who and where and what kinds of theaters do you fantasize about who are the people that if you know what you're going for you might be able to project forward what social value do you think the work has or what aesthetic value it has to challenge people, some positions about how the theater can work at all I think those are the kinds of things why do you do that, why do you write it this far because it's only about you as an audience I would question why the theater is an interest to you and you can get creative with that too I worked with Brian Latimer and Kate Kerrigan who before Goodspeed did unauthorized autobiography of Samantha Brown but they ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund their new album and the Kickstarter supporters were 18 to 35 year old females primarily and so they ended up doing a tour called You Made This Tour where they went to different music venues where that demographic hung out in New York to really connect with their audience and share their work with them the luxury of being a composer lyricist so they could do that, it's a little more difficult with the play but they had a great connection with their audience that way and then connecting with their national audience via Facebook and Ustream and all of that so there's creative ways that you can connect before a national production as well more insight on educating yourself because I know that's something we've come to a lot which is in fact the theme of the audience which is being, I know we talked about there's some research on the internet that I know but just sort of ways that playwrights can be more involved as opposed to just sort of cutting off or I'm just going to hand you the script like how to make more ongoing conversation there are also festivals around the country and I think that they're really, really informative from Williamstown to Burt's Recruiter Festival to the O'Neill to Palo Alto as a wonderful playwriting festival the Opie Playwrights Conference New York Music Festival and I think this is where the new work is being developed and everything is purple-lating and it's fantastic to go and meet people and start not to put networking in a business sense but connecting in a professional sense in a creative sense so you start to build a community of people who you can turn to I have people who I go to all the time I have about five or six goers and when I have big business decisions coming up where I consult with people I don't sit by myself and say well now I have all this experience what shall I do I really depend on hearing from trusted colleagues and I think the same is true in educating yourself about community in which we live national community, international community what's important and who is interested in creating the kind of form that you are interested in you're not going to go to the American revival theater when you have a new hot political play because that's not going to fit and then you'll be rejected not because the play isn't good but because it's not the right place I'm working on a play now and I had a theater company in New York offer me a fantastic theater company but it's the wrong space for the show physically it's the wrong space for the show we can't accomplish what we need it's not that it's a huge play but it's not going to fit in the space and the reason I know that is because I've moved to city many shows there not because I've seen pictures I've experienced plays in there and I know the difference between a play that works there and a play that doesn't so I'm not going to waste this theater's time by saying well what would our deal be and how would that you know because I'm interested in a continuing relationship not in just a quick placement so and part of my job is taking care of the play and making sure that where it lands is the right space and since I've already made that mistake as I move forward I try to make new mistakes if not before I believe the same life but you know getting to what you said about sort of having a community of colleagues that you trust I mean I think Chris Durand was talking earlier about how in his early career it was about this collection of actors doing these shows on a small scale and there's something wonderful about if you have actors that you trust that you can come to again and again and again that's a great place to start it's a safe place to start because actors love to do new work and they love and if you have a kinship that can be a wonderful way to begin because it's hard to get out of your apartment and go into the world I see a question in the back since I've just looked up part of the title of this is self-producing which you have not touched on at all but you are hard to touch on it's hard to fit all this into a 50 minute panel and I apologize for that I've got a question for someone who's not in the panel there's a huge prejudice really against self-publishing in terms of novels or short stories so we have someone here from Samuel French and they for instance like to see a show have one or two productions in good theaters with a set of reviews before they would consider it I wonder if they have a prejudice against self-producing or what their standard would be I don't know I do know in general I do know that it's a little bit easier if you're going to do self-production there's a lot of small theater companies that are cropped up down here because actors wanted to create being cast and they get reviewed I'll just say one simple thing a script in your drawer has less of a chance of somebody being interested in it than a script that's actually up on its feet where people can see it and experience it live and no matter how many times people say and I know we have this obsession for virgin scripts everybody wants it to be never having been touched or whatever I'd like to speak to that about self-producing in the 1980s when I was producing my first play table settings by James Alpine and quit my job as a press agent to wait on tables so that I could produce this play and I was a complete knucklehead really I didn't know anything except that I had this passion for it I was working in a restaurant in Lower Manhattan on the east side called Keysize and on St. Mark's plays there was a club called Club 57 and it was two young guys completely unknown goofballs named Mark Shaman and Scott Whitman who were producing their own work in this you know, underground club that we would leave work at the restaurant pay five bucks to get into and the first one was Living Dolls and they knew what they wanted to say and they did not wait for somebody to give them the permission to have their work produced and today Mark Shaman is not with me and sort of determining what they want to do recently Scott just went back to LaMama and produced a play and directed it at Jackie Curtis which is not at all commercial but thrilling so waiting for somebody else to say to you okay, you can do this it's not necessarily the game plan for everybody and if you have something that you want to do you can always do something for a lot of money you can do something for very little money but if you have the belief in it and you have the passion about it I really urge you to put it out there don't wait for anybody to say okay, we approve you've got it take your bottom horns and do it and I'm sorry I'm interrupting you but there's lots of playwrights who are named playwrights who self-produce and Sarah Wimble is one of them so it's not I don't think it's the same stigma that you get in self-publishing and also what is producing producing is gathering people together for a shared mission and don't kid yourself Tony Kushner is a producer of his own work he may not get a producer credit but he is a force of nature that gathers people in his work and Tony sorry, but that's true right I was just going to say I was under the impression that if you were seeking a producer the normal course of events is to have a reading have a play a showing of the play tape it and then show that tape to a producer is that? I'm sorry, commercial production is what you're asking about if I were seeking a producer for my play I was told that the normal progression is to first have a reading then have a performance tape the performance and show the producer the tape of the performance can you set me straight on that please I don't know if there is a normal what is the graph I should be looking at what I was saying you should know what theaters you think the play would align with best and why and approach those theaters with an intelligent cover letter and a script and that's it no, because any producing theater is going to create their own original production of new work they don't want to see an experience of watching a bad video tape in places we all know places look terrible I think so that would be like the opposite of what you should ever do sometimes there are people who are endorsing you or endorsing your work I think that's a good thing to include in a letter but most theaters also have play reading programs and if there is something really intriguing about your letter you might get somebody to write your play and if it's not ready for production then maybe it's ready for reading and it just starts the process and going back to relationships that we talked about before if you have the relationship with someone who can then present your script to a commercial producer or a theater that also gets you I think somebody else is going to introduce you or a theater whether or not a theater theater just a friend you know who has a vested interest in your work and if you know someone in a theater that will go further than you're sending him in an outline letter okay I think we need to wrap up unfortunately I'm sorry but can we take this one question from this young lady right there okay, Tatiana hi good morning very briefly somebody said something about device projects and that's something that I really want to work on so what what place is what research is that you recommend? not necessarily in Miami but in general where somebody else is going to device well that's where self producing is going to be really key actually because you can't, if you're generating a text with collaborators in the room you've got to want to put yourself in a position where you can do that it's a little hard to just sort of do it so I would find the director that you like now and then start to talk about how you would create something together there are device work that is created by a company with a director and a writer and designers in the room is certainly on the rise it is no longer just on the margins of the kind of work that's being produced recently and so if it's an interest of yours I mean I don't want to go to a lobby but I would look to the places that have it embracing it and find out what the sort of path to production was for those pieces it's usually much longer but I would start by finding yourself the director that you want to work with who would have a sense of how to do that thank you all so much and thank you