 Happy after lunch session, I hope you can all stay awake if I'm entertaining enough for that. My name is Amber Bradshaw, I'm from Atlanta, Georgia. And just before I get into it, can everyone hear me okay? Is this good while you're working? Yes? Okay, thank you. So I'm from Atlanta, Georgia. I am the managing artistic director of Working Title Playwrights, which is a play incubator company in Atlanta. We do only new works, only process. We do not produce full production. So everything we do is going to be mostly playwrights that have produced, maybe have had productions, but this play in particular is not produced. So very early on in the process. And the moderation that we'll be discussing today is really based entirely on that. Although we have experienced really positive responses to this moderation structure with audiences that are not familiar with it. So I encourage you to be open about what you believe you could take from this depending on what you are using it for. I think it's very flexible. I tried to make it so because we are constantly updating it. So a little bit about Working Title Playwrights and what we do. We have about 105 member playwrights. We have an acting ensemble of 93. Our actors, we have several barter members, so our actors are also playwrights. They're very much a part of the feedback that we do. They're very much a part of the room. I would actually say that in addition to my other lists of basic successful moderation tools is engaging the actors if they consent to do so really completes the room in a lovely way. It gives the actors agency they don't often experience. So I encourage that. So in addition to Working Title being this new play development process it's given me a ground for practicing this structure and revising it and revising it again and getting a lot of feedback on it. And that's actually what I'm here today with you guys for is that this is an incredible room of intelligent dramaters and I hope that I can also learn from you guys and that you have something to offer me today. I know you do. So this isn't just a resource for you. It's also very much a resource for me. So thank you for attending. So what we're going to do today is we're going to go over together a handout that I have passed out which are our guidelines that we've created. It's a four page document. It's quite in depth. And I want to now take this opportunity to segue into introducing my associate development artist Rebecca Suella who is also here from Atlanta. And she's been a big part and a contributor to this document as well as the Working Title playwrights community, my board members and it's absolutely not something I could have done alone. So I have to acknowledge them. After we go over this guidelines and information for moderators we will do a selection from a 14 page selection from a playwright from Atlanta. Her name is Emily McClain. She just had an Ethel Wilson Live workshop with us. We'll be reading from her play Copper Angel and we'll be doing a feedback moderation session. I'll be moderating that one. And then the second selection is a little bit shorter. It's 11 pages. It's going to be a play called News from the Front by Theron Darson Patterson who is also a member and a dear friend who I've been working with a long time. Both of these selections I chose because they're quite different and I'm looking forward to the response to each of them and how that will play out in the room. And after we read through that script Rebecca will moderate that section and you guys will get a chance to see using these guidelines we've just gone over from two different moderator perspectives two different personalities because the really important part about moderation at least for me what I have learned is that flexibility is absolutely the most important part of being a moderator. You have to be able to make quick choices. You have to be brave enough to make those choices and you have to be open enough to know when to and not to engage depending on what's going on. So we'll talk a little bit more about that. So let me jump in. So we are at a website and I'll just let you guys know in case you'd like to look us up and see what we do. www.workingtitleplaywrights.com Pretty in-depth and please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or interested in resources and as far as these guidelines go if you are interested in using these guidelines or you would like to amend them somehow just cite us and let me know. I'm going to pass out a paper document to you if you'd like a digital copy please feel free to reach me and I would be happy to talk with you about that and discuss how you might want to use it. My email address is managing at www.workingtitleplaywrights.com So moderation is mostly improv. I could be lying if I said it was anything else. And the reason that it is improv is because we don't know who's going to walk into the audience that night. We don't know what mood they're going to be in. We don't know what part of the play they just saw or the script selection they just saw may have affected them. We don't know their back story. So there's really very little opportunity for a moderator to be in full control of anything and I would take away the idea that the moderator is in control. The moderator is really facilitating the energy in the room and making sure it moves and stays positive and stays constructive. So a lot of discussion we've had in the last few days has been well how do we moderate effectively mostly by being extremely transparent about the mission of the feedback and why we're all here. So that's how I started. You guys are all here to help me with this. Thank you so much. I'm here to be your resource. Everybody understands where they are and where they belong in the room and that makes people feel comfortable. It gives them an opportunity to say, okay, I know why I'm here and now I can be useful in this situation instead of nervous about speaking. So it actually really helps people get into a comfort zone. So I will say though no matter how much I moderate, I'm always updating my technique. I am always trying to see how I can be better and more generous as a moderator and a lot of that involves releasing power. A lot of it involves releasing power. One of those things is I don't necessarily get to be a part of the conversation. I know it's kind of sad. As dramaturgs, we all have opinions and we're really smart. We like to share them. But in this case, it's not about your opinion. It's really about engaging the response of the audience and allowing that to be something that the playwright can take as an active form of feedback. So there's a lot happening in the audience where people feel like the same thing is being commented on or maybe there are links in comments. That is a useful thing to potentially refrain or clarify so that the playwright has that as an observation. But as a moderator, you really kind of need to be someone outside of the conversation. Otherwise it becomes the amber show. And it's really important in power shifting that I can say, you know what? This isn't my show. This is the show. This is for the playwright. And if it's for community engagement, well then that's what it's for. It's not a showcase for the moderator. It is a place for the moderator to give what they have and to make this energy better. So the feedback is only useful if we're listening. So the goal of a successful moderation needs to be to give playwrights an environment that allows them to be brave and to listen actively. So this is a good segue into our next section. What are the basic tools for successful moderation? So I've gone through why are we here? I've gone through flexibility, transparency, and then opportunities to connect is also why we're here, right? So giving people an opportunity in the moderation structure to have chances to talk to one another. So can you break and encourage the audience to meet one another? Can you break during the comeback from the break and let everyone introduce themselves and say a little bit about what they do? This is a huge opportunity and as much as we can give artists the chance to connect with one another, we should. The environment of the moderation, what's the space like? Is it well-lit? Can people hear? Is the parking free? Is it a central location? These are all really important things. Is the temperature stable? Is there an air conditioning in the room? All of these things matter and should be taken into account when we're moderating. So this idea of sort of the feng shui of the space, it's very important. So, and then I wanted to throw a question out for you guys because my next, the next thing is after environment is equity and inclusion and brave space and I wanted to see if anybody in the audience would be interested in defining brave space. Anybody need takers? Because I can do it if there's no takers. Okay, great. So brave space is different than safe space. The idea is that if you're in a safe space, potentially you can feel like you don't need to speak because it makes you feel safer and you don't say something because it would be safer. And this idea that potentially a safe space might be coddling people that are unwilling to consider another option. And when I define brave space, I just want to say it's a very loose term. Everybody's going to define it slightly differently. But in fact, both of those. But brave space is really more about creating an environment that allows people to be open and to take risks and to say the things that are courageous and challenging. And so when we do that, we are being brave and it's brave space. So that's a lot of what we're trying to do with working title is give people that chance to say the hard things and say them in a way that can be heard by the playwright and by everyone in the space. So one of the things about moderation that is always hard is something that Rebecca and I call don't feed the trolls. So this is really all about how to stop, correct, or somehow re-wrap the damaging train, the derailer, the disruptor. And I would like to first say that disruption is not necessarily a bad thing in a feedback session. But the nature in which you are disrupting and the intent of the disruption is where the concern comes from, right? Is the disruption coming from a personal opinion that is actually voiced in a way that is not useful to the playwright and maybe the criticism is not constructive, it is in fact damaging. So let me give you an example. Somebody says, well, I didn't like why that character did that and I thought that was not possible or not plausible, right? Well, that's not very useful, right? There's a lot of questions you can ask. My question would be, why did that character do that? And that's it, that's the feedback to that, right? And that's useful, the player who knows the question and can go back to it and answer it for themselves. So really being aware and teaching your audience by doing and how to do that constructive criticism. So in some cases, Rebecca and I will both reframe statements. If we feel like they're somewhat unclear, we will say, did you mean to say or are you saying that reframe a statement in a way that is useful to the playwright? And sometimes that's using Stanislavski method, sometimes that's just pulling out whatever you want. Sometimes it's to create a specificity where there's sort of a macro statement because specificity is really important for rewrites and we need to be specific when we talk about plays and talk about the things that resonated with us, right? So a few of the examples of this, and I'll go through these quickly, are the derailer, the classic derailer who always has nothing positive to say. If you can get the derailer to give positive statements, then you have one, right? And it's doable and we've done it at working title, but it is a constant process of learning because what you don't want to do is argue with them. You do not want to argue with them. That is not helpful and it will make the situation worse, right? So if somebody says something and you're like, wow, okay, that's not useful. How do we work with that? Thank you so much and move on. I do an actual physical shift and I always stand when I moderate because sometimes sitting makes people feel like everyone's on equal footing and it can be that way. He did a beautiful job moderating yesterday and he sat and he stood, right? So I think that's an option as well, but generally if you want to be leading the audience, physicality can be useful, okay? Other people that are sort of classic in moderation derailer, I love everything. Everything was great. You guys are awesome, okay? Yes, we know those people. That's a good thing. Thank you so much. And then there's the chatterbox, you know, people that raise their hands too often and they may be brilliant, but they take up a lot of space and I actually asked Lucas Garcia, what would you do in this situation? He said I would acknowledge that I appreciate their feedback and that we're going to find space for other people who have not spoken in the room, right? So there's a very kind and generous way to actually hold people's hands through this because it is work that is hard to do and it's really important to be compassionate to your audience and to the people that are there sharing because they're there to make things better and they're there to contribute and that is extremely valuable. So the salty dog, the person who's interrupting you to remind you you forgot something or maybe you said the wrong thing and they wanted to correct you or they say something that like has nothing to do with what is going on in yourself. Okay, well thank you and we'll just keep moving and all those situations are a matter of really kind of affects the room, the way you respond to that. If you say oh well I don't agree with that let's say the moderator decides to challenge and say I don't agree with that then you're going to get a back and forth that I do not recommend to me, okay? Because also then the moderator becomes part of the discussion and that is a place where power gets really confusing. So again transparency and understanding where we all belong in the room is very valuable here. So I want to take this time to pass out the handout that I have on these golden rules. So as they pass them out I'll get started. So these guidelines have been something that I've been developing for quite a long time and have in the past year really clarified, revised and felt pretty strong about with a lot of Rebecca's help and feedback on this. So we start out with thank you for joining us as a moderator, okay? Remember that you are in charge and your energy leads the road, be empowered, be efficient, be upbeat. And this is key for moderating. If you're like, so you guys this is great, it's nice to see you tonight. Thank you. No, we need to be like, I'm going to just give a shout out to Michael on hot topics because that is exactly exactly the kind of moderating that I hope to see. It should be fun, you guys, it should be really fun. So I'm sorry to say I have a limited amount of documents but if you would like a copy, please let me know, I'd be happy to email you one. And maybe people could share the document as well. Okay, so if you're a moderator and you feel like you're not sure if that performative style that I'm discussing is going to work for you, I encourage you to maybe just take like a, maybe take a beginning acting class or have fun with some actor friends for a day and just have them coach you and say, okay, well here, stand like this and move your shoulders and what does that look like? How are you to train yourself in this space? Because that's really important to the power dynamic that we're discussing here. So let's go over the golden rules because the golden rules are here are actually, I'm not used to microphones, you guys. So okay, so the golden rules as it says here the goal for them is to create professional supportive and a creative environment for girls. These are the principles we found key in maintaining this atmosphere. So as hopefully we can see from here these are the golden rules and they are always displayed at our primary feedback events. So not some of the readings but most of our events, these are here. So at all times the audience can see the rules that they are being engaged in. If they forget what those are they can look at them and I've actually found this to be incredibly helpful for making the audience feel brave and clarify what it is that we are asking them for in the mission of this feedback. So here's how I introduce these. All right, so raise your hand to speak and I will call on you. Snap if you agree and we will see how many people in the room agree without repeating comments. It's very much more efficient. Be constructive, be courteous. The people that have submitted scripts tonight are courageous sensitive artists and in order for them to hear you we must be constructive. All right, so avoid using the words like and dislike. Like and dislike is extremely valuable but in this space what we want is your response and a lot of that is because your likes and dislikes may not actually be active and useful feedback for this playwright but the things that resonate for you and the things that distract you are extremely useful to the playwright. In addition to that occasionally I remind the audience that it is a very diverse group of people and not every play is written for everyone. So this idea that we all need to like everything we hear is misleading. So we need to stay open, that's the idea. So avoid suggestions on how to rewrite the play. Well this is a classic one. We all know this one. I would say it's still a hard one for people to understand but that's the kind of thing where you just need to call it out. Actually that's a suggested narrative. I'm going to stop you there and suggest that perhaps you change that into a question. Can you make that into a question please? And then be respectful to your fellow artists. This is similar to number three but we would just like to run it home. It is very important because it's not just about the playwright. It's about everyone in the room. Every single person is listening to you and they can all be damaged or hurt by something that you might say. And so respect is absolutely imperative to this work. So next we talk about moderating the session and embodying and enforcing the principles of these goal rules. So this part is pretty important. We've covered some of it. Here's some good stuff. Okay so you're not a full participant and referee is a great word for it. So limiting the personal feedback and we did discuss that you can add personal feedback at the end of each section but just make sure it's at the end so that everybody has spoken their opinion before you have given yours. You don't want to influence the room. You're really trying to get an authentic response. So the second thing would be avoid reframing individual comments and this goes back to the idea of arguing with people that potentially derail. There can be a bit of a if you reframe an individual comment they potentially will say it again in a different way because they feel like it's not in their words and I think that's important that they do get to speak in their words. So if you are reframing make sure it's an overall statement of reframing unless it's damaging and you need to shift and not be in that moment, right? Let's see. So we talk about that in the back of each section. So then session schedule. So arrival prep and setup. So the moderators are asked to arrive at 6.45 so that they can kind of get ready. Every moderator has a production stage manager that helps them out with the room so they're not doing everything and they can really focus on casting and focusing on the playwrights and the scripts in front of them. And then the playwrights bring in the scripts and they remain not going to read the script as the moderator ahead of time but there is a form on each script that gives you breakdowns of cast to make it pretty easy for you and we will go through that once we get into the script selection. I'll hand out the form and you guys can look at the structure of that document. And then let's see. And then you distribute the scripts to the cast of actors that are there. You start the session, we usually start a little bit late when people are in the space so that there's not a lot of disruption. Make sure to welcome everyone, introduce yourself, and let everyone know exactly how the night is going to go. We will have four pieces. We'll read the first piece, take a moment to reflect and gather thoughts, then we will have a feedback session. After the second piece, we will take a 10 minute break. Then we will do introductions and plugs and then we'll go back to the last two pieces. We will have a little Monday night critique session is set up. And at the beginning of every single one, this is said. We have a lot of new people that come to these sessions so there's often somebody new in the space that needs to know what's about to happen. They've walked into a room of people they don't know. So putting them in a place of knowing means that they are much more comfortable in the space. So before each round of feedback, not each round, before the first round of feedback or right at the beginning, go over the golden rules, as I just did with you guys. And then in addition to the golden rules when we're doing new work moderation, it's really important to acknowledge that the playwright also has a responsibility to know that while we have all of this in place to protect and support you in your work, we want to remind you that no room is perfect and no feedback is going to be useful. It's up to you to filter and process what you hear tonight, use what works and take nothing personally. So there's also a part of this that says I challenged the playwright to come prepared and to learn for themselves what those self-care needs are in order for them to be able to listen. And they can also provide questions. So if they have pointed questions, we will ask those questions. So that's a really important factor. So, on we go to selections and moments of silence. So we talk a little bit about how to cast. We cast four to six actors for four different scripts. A little bit challenging. We're not always going to have it exactly right. If things need to be clarified, the moderator needs to say let me explain that this character this and so on. If ages are important, all of these things are important to hearing a script and giving feedback. If you don't know how old someone's supposed to be, that can be a really important factor. So consider the specific needs of the script as well. So I won't go through these specific raise your hand all that stuff. Let's see. So moderator questions are very based in Liz Lerman technique, but they're not really Liz Lerman. They're really just the ways that I found it most useful to to moderate. So the questions that we specifically use and have actually recently updated to pull out like and dislike are what stuck out to you, what resonated with you, what made you feel connected. The second section is what distracted you, confused you, or took you out? Where do you need more clarity? The third is what questions might you have of the playwright? The playwright will not answer these questions. This is really important. The playwright does not need to answer any questions and does not need to have that labor. Most of the time our playwrights are anonymous. So they're sitting in the room and everyone knows they're there, but they don't necessarily know who wrote the script. And this gives them an opportunity to not have as much pressure on them. And in addition to not asking them to do that, answering those questions as a labor, it's also really important to note that the questions are about what the audience has yet to know and that is very useful feedback for the playwright. If the audience has that question and the playwright already thought it was answered, then I would hope the playwright would potentially consider that maybe it is not already answered, right? And that's the goal of the questions. It is not to get answers. I get laughs every time I say that, but I could not be more truthful about the importance of that. And then go through the questions that the playwright has provided as long as you haven't already covered them. This is important that if this is something pointed for them, prioritize it. So when we're answering the questions we do have a lot of time of 35 minutes for each script and when I first started with working title in 2016, we had more playwrights on the docket each night, and I found that it just wasn't enough time to get through the feedback in a way that I thought was useful. So I cut it from 5 to 4 and I've had a really positive response. So I think the value of enough time is also really, really important. If somebody brings in a script that is 20 pages long their feedback session is going to be 5 minutes. So I ask that the script selections are 18 minutes or less. And people don't always adhere to this, but I would have to say that generally I think every feedback needs at least 10 to 15 minutes. I think it's really hard to get everything accomplished in less time than that. And then as far as the feedback time goes, that's another place to be flexible. If you're ahead of schedule let somebody have 40 minutes if you really feel like that's valuable to them. Being open to the idea of shifting and not being too put in any box is again the flexibility factor. Let's see. The plugs and introductions we discuss and then ending the evening, thank everyone for attending and then pay your actors and let everybody stay for a little while and chat. That's the time when the audience gets to tell the actor how great they were or the play rate how awesome that was or give feedback that was maybe there was a time for so those are really valuable moments in a moderation session. And then at the end of this we again reiterate that the role of the moderator is cultivating energy positive and useful development experience. So I can't say enough that that's really the key to this. So I've gone through my guidelines and I think I'd like to open it up if anybody has any questions. I wanted to make sure there were plenty of opportunities for people to ask questions as we continue through this. Yes, absolutely. So the play rate is never present with you for the conversation. Is that correct? Oh, they're always present. But I'm sorry, on stage with you. Only when we do not for Monday night critique sessions, when we do our other programs, like our reading programs, they are but they're usually with actors and dramaturgs and directors. And do you ever allow the play rate to ask the audience a question? Yes. And does that go over well? It's sometimes I think that that's a great question because I think it depends on the play rate. I think that if you have the experience with the play rate, which ideally if you've worked with them in a reading hopefully you do, as what kind of question would they be asking and would it be useful to them? But generally it's I think it's useful to trust the play rate in that situation. I do think sometimes it's also a good idea to discuss the questions that the play rate might want to ask before you go into feedback. One, you don't want to put them on the spot, which could make them very, very uncomfortable. And two, you also it would probably be smart for you as a moderator to know what those questions are going to be, right? Just for your own knowledge. And if the play rate feels really compelled to answer an audience question, do you go ahead and let them or do you shut that down? No. Not a lot. That's the place where I draw the line. Yes. Thanks for this. One of the things that I often ask people to resist is making comparisons. And I wonder if you have experience around that as well. I certainly know what I did, but I wonder whether you've considered that as one of the golden rules or I've had experiences of positive or less positive way around comparative comments. That's a great question. I would say that we don't deal terribly with comparisons and I think that's because we're dealing with playwrights who probably hate those already. I think that would probably happen more with a theater audience of people that go to the theater and I've definitely seen it happen. It's not something we've had to directly address, but if it came up I would probably discourage it. And I think instead of comparisons like qualities of the work it's far more useful. This whole idea of well you're kind of like Tony Kushner but you're kind of like da da da and sort of a myth. It's not very useful, right? It's not active. I usually remind people that comparisons usually say more about the person making a comparison than about the piece that they're listening to. It usually gently encourages people to reconsider it because you know what I mean. But I think it's awesome. Thank you. I'm just curious to clarify, so I'm here to thank you for joining us as a moderator. So the moderators for these discussions are not people that have been working on the play or with the playwright. They're not people from within the institution. Actually a lot of the time they are. Rebecca and I moderate the majority of the work that we do with feedback. We do have a couple of other moderators that I've hired that I'm actually in the process of getting together another training session so that we can go over the guidelines as I've corrected them. But if we're doing a reading, the moderator has worked on the script. In the case of MNCS, which is sort of how we base to this, we're doing four different scripts each night. So it's a little bit of a different process. Thank you. Sure. Anybody else? I just have a quick question. Forgive me if you've already sent this, but you do feedback immediately after the piece is read or at the end of the evening? We actually and I just realized I missed this part. We do feedback and then we do a moment of silence with Insight Timer Bell and then we jump into feedback. So it's once you do a script it's about 20 minute script you do feedback then you do another script you do feedback then you take a break and do the same thing at the end. Thank you. Yes, I forgot to mention the Timer, the Insight Timer. We use Insight Timer as an app and I actually got this idea from the LM Data Conference in 2017 and I believe I got it from Mian Tao who is an amazing moderator and she talked about how after listening to a script it's really useful for people to just have a moment to collect their thoughts so we take just one minute and we ask the audience to just sit still and don't move and you'll have a minute and after that minute is up a bell goes off and we jump up and we do our feedback. We've got a lot of really positive responses to it and to be honest working in the south I wasn't sure if people were going to think it was some silly California stuff you know what I mean? No, people talk to it really really nicely and very much enjoy it and all kind of use it for different reasons. So yes, sorry about forgetting that. Any other questions? And you can ask a question if there's something in the document you want to clarify as well because I went sort of slew through some of that stuff. Alright, great. Okay, cool. So now what we're going to do is we are going to read some scripts. Okay, so the first script as I said is Copper Angel by Emily McLean. Emily just had it at the Wilson Lab so she just did a big workshop and Rebecca directed it and she's love the cleric. She really likes doing history plays so this is sort of a history play and the next play is more of a sort of mystical or magical realism style. So, but before we go into that actually I forgot to have one more thing you asked me to do. I want to make sure. So now that we're going into the part of the workshop where we read script selections and do feedback I'd like to thank Hal around for covering the first half of this workshop and being amazing thank you so much Hal around. Yes, let's give them a round of applause because it's such an incredible resource. So at this time we are going to stop recording because these scripts are new plays in process and because it's important that this feedback space be brave as I said before in order to do that we need to have freedom to speak without.