 You're not ready, you're not ready. Yes. That was the right answer. I didn't see it. That's right. I was like, I'm going to get my card and I'm going to have all of these. We don't have any more. I'm just keeping it clear for the people. Here. Should we ask him to come down for the 11. 10.30 to 11.30. I believe it's 10.30 to 11.30. I believe so. Yes. That was not right. What conference? I appreciate it so much. I think since we don't have a moderator up, I'm just going to say you should talk about it. So we did decide that three of us got together yesterday and decided that we would just model conversation about this subject and then eventually at some point we'll just start to include all with us in that conversation because really that's what being out in the digital world is. It's being part of a conversation. Facebook, Twitter, other social media. It's like a party that's happening all the time that you have access to by opening your own digital door and you can go hang out and network with people and then leave when you want and not worry about fetting anyone. So it's kind of amazing. It's all about the conversations you have and the connections you make with people. And if they're earnest and honest and genuine, you benefit from that by, you know, if they're making a community. And if they're networky and marketing-y and shallow, you know, they are. So we decided that we would start by talking about things like change a little bit. Again, show of hands has absolutely no knowledge of what it is and we'll know where it started. I don't know how I missed it. It sounds like everyone knows. I only learned about it five days ago. I signed up for it four days ago. From the kill ones, right? No. It's just something someone said on Facebook. I was like, oh, I guess I might as well do that. Ten bucks, sure. That I don't know about it is the unbelievable influx load of emails that are nine-tenths junk. And so I feel like I don't, I'm curious how, like I don't always even see what's online. Yeah, so we haven't emailed, we haven't done any email marketing about it at all. It's mostly been going to a lot of conferences and meeting with people. So the short version, the shortest possible version I can do, it's a, the new play exchange is the first international database of new scripts. It is funded, or fact, it was developed by the National New Play Network. I'm the project director of the New Play Exchange for NNPM in partnership with Chicago Dramatists, LNDA, Playwrights Foundation, and the Playwright Center, funded by Doris Duke, Andrew Mellon, and the NEA. And the idea is that it is a new platform for connecting Playwrights and producers. It's a replacement for, or an upgrade for, submissions. So this is, submissions is the way we have to funnel 25,000 new plays a year into 2,500 production slots. And it's awful for everyone, it's bad technology, nobody likes it, I'm in the end. So we're replacing it with this neutral bucket into which Playwrights can put their work, and producers can go buy them to find work. So that's as simple as it is, a Playwright creates a profile, uploads a play, adds metadata to that play, the cast size, the genre, the subred matter keywords, et cetera, synoptists, links to score, music files, and then theaters can use all those search terms and search criteria to find new work for their seasons. You can, people can write recommendations of each other's work, which are positive, endorsements of the work. Theaters can record their coverage privately about a peak of play, they can sort of make notes about the script. And we are about to launch in about a month and a half an Opportunities Module, which basically allows a theater to go on and say, I'm looking for three plays about climate change by women from Kentucky for my new play reading series, and the new play exchange will find all of the Playwrights who are women in Kentucky who have plays about climate change and let them know about the Opportunity. They can then tag their plays for that Opportunity so that the system will eliminate all the noise in the submission process and turn it into something sort of a rebel story. So that's the new play exchange, that's what it is, and I'm a little biased. I spent half a decade making it happen and really traveled the world, not the world, but the United States anyway, talking to playwrights and artist directors and literary managers and agents and publishers to make it happen. But I really believe it's the big thing. It's going to be the new way that playwrights and producers connect and the more that you all can have and maintain presence there, the more effective you're going to be at having your work at the ready. Right now your plays live on your hard drive or even your agent's hard drive and when people do a search, they can't search onto your hard drive unless they're the NSA, right? So putting it into the place where they're searching changes that entire equation. And remember, there's still 25,000 new plays a year written in the United States and 2,500 produced. So 90% of plays ever written don't get produced. This is a lack of understanding we all have. The success ratio looks like one production in a decade. Right? If you're ahead of that, you win. You win big if you're like 3, 4, 5 produced new work in a decade. So it's about putting your play there and making it possible, entering yourself into the conversation but it's not going to be a panacea. Putting yourself there is not going to get you produced, right? It's going to make sure that you have as much of a scene to the digital table as everyone else. And that's the thing about the new play scene is it's a neutral platform. In favor of anyone, everyone's plays come up in the search results equally and that ultimately what will then win out is the quality of the work and the brightness of the work for the people who are looking for work. They want a five-character farce about Mount Rushmore. I'll find all 35 of those. And they'll just judge based on, you know, quality. They won't be excluding people who have the right networks and the right principles. So step number one is go put your plays up there and talk about them and then share your links in social media, tell your friends. You know, we have players now recommending each other's work which is I think terrific empowerment. You absolutely should do that. And really don't ask people to recommend your plays. Just start recommending other people's plays. Create a movement. And the more people who are doing that they are finding reciprocation and they're creating a culture starting to scale society to turn. More and more people are recommending each other's plays just out of the kindness of their heart and when they do you come back. That was the first thing we wanted to say but there's more to this session. I might have a story that makes a good transition. Awesome. Help me out. The people who use NPX are expecting to see playwrights on the NPX as an important part of your digital presence and they recently had a play that was a top 10 finisher that we're new in and I had a chat with a guy who runs that who said he had previously read the play on NPX so I don't know if that helped like when it came across as here's like our last 50 and he had already read it but he didn't like that. So I mean that's a way that it's a really way that I got a production but it helped raise my level of awareness. I think that's great. I mean it's proof that people are reading them and that maybe that had a hand in it. So people want to know artist directors want to know because there's the doubts playwrights have. Yeah I'll use that but artist directors are they using it? Well we have about 2,580 users about 1,350 of them are playwrights. Right? So do the math. We have 53% women as I said in the last session and we have a range of theaters so yeah a lot of our theater members are Chicago storefront theaters and small theaters with niche audiences like sci-fi theaters but the Lincoln Center has a profile of the new play exchange, right? Big organizations as well. So the Kill Royce as you know put all their plays onto the new play exchange. The O'Neill finalists are there we're working with the Latina Theater Commons at HowlRound to make sure that all of the plays they're up as well. So it's great work and you want to be in there with the great work and the writers understand that all the great work is there and this is where to go for great work. It's like not a crazy equation. So but what about Twitter? Yeah. You say something about Twitter. I was never on Twitter. I was on Facebook and 3 years ago I was somewhat urgent behest of playing I got on Twitter and I have made connections there. My whole thing is that I think you have to have a digital presence everywhere and I think if you don't have a website there has to be somewhere that people go to look for you. So it was after that meeting where he told me that I got a website and I checked the statistics every once in a while and at this point I think I'm getting like a hundred hits a day on my website. I don't know what people are looking at I don't know why they're looking but at the same time I've noticed more momentum in my own career and contacts, requests for plays, productions so I can't connect the dots. I don't know how that's happening but I think you have to have the whole thing be active on Facebook, be active on Twitter, have a website if you don't have one because if people go looking for you and they can't find you they'll just go for somebody else. And going back to NPX, the guy that I spoke to from Woodward Newman also said that when he goes looking for plays he wants to see the whole play on the NPX. He's like if I get 10 pages I'm on moving on. That's a personal decision and I know there's been debate about whether you should put up 10 pages for the entire play but that's one for, and my thought is you know, God I send my plays out to so many places what's one more where it's available. Yeah there are I would say 80% of the people who are on the new play exchange have their full script and the reasons that are cited for people who don't are, well the work is published so under my inner publisher is revenue by putting up a full script. I have two plays up there that are published and I just have a sample and a link to my publisher's website and then there's piracy fears that people have. Someone's going to download my play and produce it without telling me. Maybe that's only a lot of work for someone to go through and I'm not saying it hasn't happened I'm certainly in traveling the country heard from a lot of people you know, one horror story or another and I feel like it's happening before the new play exchange existed and I don't think it's going to start happening in your frequency just because a script is more available somehow and you play it out there anyway you play it out there anyway they're in email they're all over the place and it's like if you're afraid of a bad consequence you are also shutting out the possible good consequence so I tell people just don't be afraid and then there are people who don't put up the full script an agent wants to tightly control the experience of who gets to see the play and well talk to your agent and maybe give it to your agent to be a little looser about the new play exchange some agents have worked with us and have been thrilled about it and other people are going to find my work it saved them they can point one down on the play it's on the new play exchange they don't have to and it's wider exposure for their clients my own agent is fine with it my own agent is in Abrams and he convened a meeting of 40 agents to try and tell them hey this is not a bad thing don't be afraid 30 of those 40 were mostly great so there's some culture shift happening there too but generally my age seems to be the medium play it's older than me what is this internet thing I don't know if I want to put my work out there and play it's younger than me this whole thing should have existed ten years ago why did you build this new play exchange when I was a teen so that it was already ready and I'm right in the middle trying to make everyone so yeah is there other just talk about putting on a website my space to me I was just reading through this I had written a children's book and I called an old friend who was in PR and said I'm always marketing plays but don't really have time to do this kind of marketing and she said if you have this budget then you should start a website so I hadn't even really planned to do that so I started the website what is that budget I had like a couple thousand to spend but now with Wix I think you can do a website much much cheaper I'm really not very computer literate when it comes to the back end stuff I don't know how to do any of that mine was free I did a website and it's free and I have a separate email address connected to my website so I know who found me through the website and I get three emails a week and I wouldn't know how to find me you have to be able to be found and I think there has to be an easy way to connect with you and some people will find you through Facebook or Twitter but the more ways and the easier it is to find you the better we live in an era where having a website is tantamount to having a resume you almost can't not anymore and it is with Wordpress you can buy a Wordpress theme that's fancy for $40 or $50 you can build your own Wordpress website in an afternoon you can build a Wix you really could Wix is another one Square Space is another one there are platforms out there too you just have to say I'm going to make an extra product this morning I'm reserving my Saturday and I'm buying Saturday night you can be watching a movie and checking your website to see what it looks like that's what it was I looked at all those other platforms and I wanted a page for each play where I could put a description of the play put pictures of productions, put reviews put everything I wanted and production history and we believe you can have an unlimited number so I have 15 pages WEEVLY and it was so easy I'm really not savvy with Wix Wix sites but I do think that's really really important and if you can attach a blog to it that's one more way to get people to your site a little blog becomes a beast you have to feed well if you leave a link to your Facebook and Twitter on there as well it's one more way for people to find you all over the place so even if you don't get emails from people they might be looking checking you out or friending you or whatever it doesn't work, you have your Facebook presence your Twitter presence, your website your MPX profile and you link to them all and people go find you in different places wherever they happen to be I also started a Don Hope Playwright Facebook page because I didn't want my personal account to be constantly slamming people with pictures from productions but you know, maybe some people want to see those so I have a Don Hope Playwright page and my personal page and then when it's something big then I will share it to my personal page but that way it doesn't look like my personal page can have my personal life stuff and some playwright stuff but it's not constantly all that stuff I keep it reserved there and you know, I simply maybe have the people who are on that and I feel like those are the people that say we're doing dueling So I have a couple of questions and also something I mean in response to what you asked about it is apparently very important to Google yourself or to have friends Google you as well and click through to your site because that actually tells Google to raise you there are other big builders that are people with playwrights that I've encountered yet but they're other big builders and so occasionally I'll sort of spread the word close friends and then I actually can see the impact of that it tells Google to do a thing on your behalf which it doesn't even know the trick to that is just once you build your website set it as your own home page so that every time you open your browser there first and then work from that place because then you're doing nothing and it works really fast you can add it as a Chrome and Tab and then just open it up even as a second tab but my other question was did you look at all when you're building MPX did you look at Congee did you look at Indie Theater now which is a different kind of thing I'm just wondering because those are sites that you tend to be familiar with and I'm also on MPX by the way I know and if I could probably email because I'm secretly the tax support it was me all the time not so cheap I used I used a student name on tax support so that if I get emails from friends I don't want them to know it's me I kind of killed that right now sorry you don't know which student yeah so there are actually lots of competing I really hate that word platform is out there now Indie Theater now is a publishing platform Sam French is about to release they have released a similar thing to Indie Theater now for Playwright Direct just sort of Etsy for Playwrights there is real most so there is Congee but actually Congee went dormant and I believe it's about to come back with a radically different product what they have was very similar to the NUCLE exchange where they scale rolled it all away and I would describe at least what I understand of what they're going to do as a kind of LinkedIn for artists or LinkedIn for writers and I can't say much more about it than that but the new kid on the block which is really terrific is Tree Press which is based in the UK and if you're watching Tree Press, hi they do a very similar thing to what we do their focus is largely on plays for young audiences and they go they sort of combine what we do and what Playwright Direct and my French platform is going to do because they also license plays and what happens in the children's their world in the UK is there are multiple authors and multiple contributors and so licensing that because a lot of in the UK means you have to go to each person individually so they bundle that all and make it easy to license plays but they also have kind of kind of the search tools we have they don't have the social layer we have so the NUCLE exchange you can also watch a Playwright so that you like if you are as I am a big Steve Yachty fan when Steve Yachty uploads the NUCLE exchange check it out so you get to learn about it as soon as anyone else you can also watch anyone in the NUCLE exchange anytime they write a recommendation you get notified oh my gosh and the author has written a new recommendation and I trust your taste in what you are doing so you can sort of crowd source your literary management I love being able to watch I love being able to see what plays other people are part of commenting on other people it doesn't have anything to do with you it's fun we can just write a review of Lauren Garnerson's new play I'm going to go check that it's creating this kind of sense for us all that your desk is not always easy to come by right so to answer your question yes we've looked at them all in some cases there are potential ongoing partnership conversations because we're very we're the only one in that entire universe of options that is a nonprofit all those others are trying to make money on it yeah and we're not ours costs money but the idea was if you give a little bit of money to get in then you're contributing to the ongoing success of the thing and if we let it you have it free you wouldn't value it so we wanted to make set the bar as low as we could so that anyone could get in I can't actually believe that I have a question but I have a question because I was a beta user so I've been involved for so long I don't actually know the answer to this link on my website to my npx page can people see it anybody or do they have to pay the $10 to they can absolutely see it but they can't download the file but they can see your profile page and know that it's there and if they want the plays we need to actually create an npx logo that people can put on there they have it well, yeah, we have the logo so you just took the logo this way we should just sort of make that easier sure, I was talking about at the board meeting they're going to make it available to members like the logo is a part of the set and all of the yeah so that's why the Kill Wars worked because every play, if you go to thekillwars.org and look at the list every play is linked to its new play exchange profile and you can see them until you so yeah, so we're trying to find ways to partner and extend, I mean there's four other secret conversations but close your eyes with other potential partners because we don't want there's a reason there was five organizations coming together and it began being a leader in the field wanting to catalyze cross-disciplinary connections and we are not building this four play, this is a room full of playwrights so I'm talking about it in a very playwright-centric way but we wanted to build the tool for the good of the entire new play sector for theaters and literary managers who by the way they can record their private thoughts about a playwright you know for a literary manager they get a job at Willie Nemeth and they're the literary manager there and they do all this work to provide coverage about plays and then when they move on to the next job all that coverage is gone and stays with Willie Nemeth they're intellectual property they're thinking about plays stays with the organization in the new play exchange it's always theirs it's always their property I actually have a question which is you painted some of the stuff that's coming down the line for producers and I know I've talked to on Twitter about some of the stuff that's coming down because it's such an interesting different experience because I have both accounts and I know you said eventually they will be able to merge by the fall sorry I'm very excited about the different exchange but just like the submission opportunities and sort of like what stuff I know that's sort of like the second round of things and I know this is a room full of playwrights but sometimes if you hear about how the literary managers and the producers are looking for your work and what they need so the option is module is the big one that's coming we're also going to let theaters create saved searches in the way that you do that it's sort of a combination of saved searches and Google Alerts for like a kayak fare alert so you set your criteria I always want to know about sci-fi plays I keep going to sci-fi but okay sci-fi plays are women because I have a women's enter sci-fi theater company so you can save that search and just with a click of a button instantly see all the plays to meet the criteria but the ambience will now email you or will soon email you when a new play is added that meets that criteria so that you don't even have to go there but you know you'll get you'll have to go there to see the play but you'll get an email for new plays meeting your criteria I haven't added emails for instance director trying to fill slots the plays are not going to come to you right instead of having to go look for them but not just any plays and it's not the playwright deciding to pitch you in their plays it's this neutral computer that is doing the work for you to filter out the things you don't want to see sending you just the plays you do want to see so that's the big one that we're doing we're making it easier for playwrights to also upgrade and include purchase the sort of reader package which is like lets you do all that robust searching and filtering we're adding links to the published versions of the plays we're adding an awards history section to the playwright to the play profile and it's probably a dozen other small things but it's a big one I have a question for the playwright with a new play that you're working on and you are trying to get that first reading that developmental thing is the new play exchange a good place to put that or should we still go the traditional route of sending it to theaters that you develop and so forth yes and do them both yeah there's a place that tells what draft it is right to me it doesn't actually say what draft it is unless you say this is the first draft this is the third draft but you cannot upload a new draft and then your description of the play you can say you can say yes three sentence description of the play this play I'm looking for this place of development I'm looking for that that field is pretty open-ended so you can take it in one of the things we have found is that no matter how many options we offer for playwrights we all want more because we want to see the world the external world reflect our own internal realities because that's what we do for a living no matter how much flexibility I build into the thing it's never an opportunity flexibility that's already there can be in different ways yeah I think it's partly that and it's also partly why it's important to be in the digital space your presence in the digital world you were saying this in a different way earlier today it's you starting the conversation about your work with the new play exchange you get to describe it in the way you want you get to use the search terms that you think should lead people to your work you get to talk about your cast in the way you want you get to talk about your synopsis gone are the days where you get some esoteric submission packet requirements we want you to take your name off of all the page 78 in your script and we want you to append within PDF with your life statement and a picture of your child have a blood sample and a copy staying on page 43 just like poop jumping through your sample must be exactly 38 and a half pages no longer none of that all we ask before is a sample you decide is that 10 pages is that 12 pages is that 2 scenes is that half the play and artistic directors likewise have to take whatever you give them so it's your terms and this is more broadly true about social media this is you becoming an interlocutor for your own work you are your own best advocate you get to speak up for yourself and putting your reviews on Facebook is just another version of that it's another version of saying I'd like to start the conversation about my place with how good people think I am can we talk there can we start there and I think there's something that you shared earlier and this about all the things about how Facebook's algorithm works and Google's algorithm works it's based on reciprocity recommending other people's plays sharing your friends' great views that is baked into the social network idea because it works that's how it happens share that nice review I got that's so sweet that I am more as a human being inclined to then pay attention and do something nice for Deb when I see her with good news but it actually is mathematically built into the algorithm that by commenting on your good news or sharing your good news I will see more of Deb and Deb will see more of me and also your 2,000 friends will see we'll see who don't know Deb at all we'll see oh I don't know who Deborah Zobelofner is but now I do because she apparently is so and so who Ben does it isn't just it's both a human response but it is also just in the math of how Google and Facebook and all of them interact in that the more you do that for others the more you show up I have something a little bit tangential to say just while we're talking so once you've had your first couple productions then you're generally not invited to the theater because they can't pay for it really and you know small theaters which is where most of my work takes place they can't pay to bring you out and they don't think about having a conversation with you it's like the play is published or it's been done so with social media I've always get in touch with theaters that are doing plays that I want to be done more so if anybody plays or no I want it to be done more it's an old play but it's one of my favorites and so I can get in touch with them and I can say it's not a new play I don't need to do any interviews or I'm very willing and available to be interviewed so I would never, nobody would ever think of contacting a playwright I had three interviews this week for a 15 year old play because I reached out and I said I'm available and then all that's online and I post on my site all these interviews and people are going oh I haven't heard about that play I mean I really think you have to be I think I'm sort of I don't want to get in your way I want to be helpful to this theater by being a little invisible and now I realize if I reach out to the artistic director and I say how can I help promote the play they're very excited to have you help promote the play you're not a problem you're a presence so that was a learning curve for me too and it's amazing I had seven interviews this week for old plays and so just reach out and then just putting yourself in their shoes and realizing especially if it's some place that's not a major urban center right so all the theater doesn't think you want to be but I want to be I'll add on to that that when I've been unable to travel to a production I've asked if I can Skype in between to a rehearsal and to at least one performance and I've actually started quitting that contract because I want to be able to do that but I've also done top facts via Skype if I couldn't travel there and I've found that especially if you get a ten minute play I'm a huge advocate for saying ten minute plays are calling cards if you can Skype into a rehearsal and meet that director that goes a long way I've got a full length production because I've met the director and they get to see that you're not crazy and they're more likely to reach your full length play and that's huge though that they have to know you're not crazy and when they actually know you instead of just that one play I mean you Skype and FaceTime I mean use it so I can't tell you how many people have said nobody has ever asked me to do that and I actually Skype and watched my whole open night in Romania it was really cool so use that whenever you get the chance do we have a question way back when that we've ever got to I guess it's also slightly tangential but last year you spoke about the merits of social media I took no and I've been very active on Facebook but I'm still an awful twit so I was kind of curious how to use that platform it just doesn't I keep trying to connect with it it just, I don't know it just confuses me so it's it's just a new paradigm for communication and either people instantly get it or it's really hard to learn and I didn't use to say that about Twitter I used to say go, go, go, go, go, go it's amazing and the simple fact is I've gotten more productions in my work from being on Twitter more opportunities from being on Twitter than anything else but how does that work I'm excited by this but then I look at Twitter and they want to feed me Miley Cyrus and they can't pay back the mirrors I follow a lot of people who are people who inspire me and I participate and engage Twitter is a conversation much more than Facebook is it's not broadcast it is chit chat back and forth it's about leaning in talking about time meeting people in this virtual world and connecting with them and then I'm not talking about your plays I find that it's not about talking about your plays at all it's about talking about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or the anything and you build slowly over time these relationships with people I met Andy we became good friends on Twitter not before two years before we actually met in person it's much more about your personal voice it is it's literally if Dev and I were having a conversation with each other opposite sides of a cocktail party and everybody else it's like hey how are you doing and everybody can hear us it's like anybody can chime in anybody can become a part of that and if you think about it in that way all of a sudden it sort of drops all those walls down but also it becomes much more about you as a person and less of a platform I think Facebook is much better in terms of especially if you separate it out but Facebook is much better in terms of promoting yourself and other people's work and Twitter is much more sort of about literally it's 140 character your opinion about something and you can be really witty in 140 characters you really can't have a tremendous discourse but you can have more than you think you can in 140 characters much more and you can point toward tremendous discourse there's people who post links to articles and that sort of all they do but in the articles they do links to are great but it's really cocktail party is the great example it is a perpetual always on cocktail party and you walk in and say Steve! and he says put in and Deb says hey you guys! and all of a sudden we're in a conversation and it's just about that stuff and then someone will ask you a personal question about your play and an artist director who's there and you don't even know it overhears it and then you suddenly get a direct message or a Facebook message or some other way most that you didn't know was paying attention to the conversation I'm not sure I agree with your thoughts about criticism I mean at TCG last week a bunch of us from DC were stranded at the airport and a flight was cancelled so I mean we were all from different theaters and different and but Jojo Roof who's a Twitter well she's a real friend of mine but she's a thought friend she and I were standing next to each other and we were like Jojo was like you know who got a mini man and I'm like yeah we can do it all six of us can fit in this mini man we're driving, we're totally driving and so Jojo and I had to sell the other four people on the fall of driving six hours instead of waiting until 5.40am for another play so we went to the mini man and as we were waiting for the mini man people were to go through I just tweeted epic DC theater road trip about to happen Jojo Roof, me and I tweeted the other names of the people and this is going to be what can go wrong we were held into tornado warnings for a six hour drive we wouldn't get home until four in the morning I think it was like two or three tweets well the Washington Post was looking and they wrote an article about our road trip it was within 24 hours there was an article in the Post because I issued two tweets about it so that's an instant result so you've got to commit to it you can't you have to slowly over time cultivate your feed I've got to win over my I don't follow any more than a thousand people I keep my number at a thousand because I feel like you can't which is still a lot and I have like 3,000 followers in exchange but I don't try to make that number bigger it goes like two, three, four today when I first started on Twitter I looked at people like how do people get that many followers and my son said they're just going to collect dust that's true I think over time I mean I don't really actively recruit followers and I have about a thousand now without really trying to do anything I mean I liked tweeted during the whole conversation in there my phone is probably heavy right now sorry I have a follow up to this thought process but those two have questions much longer than me so let them go can I approach from a slightly different angle I know Mark is representative of the theater over here are any other theater representatives here Mark do you utilize the new play exchange I'm on the new play exchange I'm a playwright and composer I don't know if you that's my gig I'm not running a theater aren't you Mark Ruthier Mark Ruthier is on the new play exchange nice to meet you you do look like a Summier or Mark Ruthier excuse me I hope that's a compliment anyway I just wanted to get an angle for my skill representative I will utilize the new play exchange I run the Lost Coast Theater Company we're a relatively new theater company about two years old in Miami I am on that all the time looking for plays I will admit that my plays to repile is much larger than my ability to get through it even just but it's mostly stuff oh that sounds really cool I love it we hear it over and over again from the theaters I tell you I regularly call it for new work so I find most when I talk to various artistic directors about new play exchange we know what to do with because there's still a lot of them are still operating under the international so they're still getting over the transom and people are still I think we're five months old we've just started we're a baby and the submissions as a practice is about five decades old or eight decades old so we have a long way to go before we change the way these things happen and what's different that nothing else has that I know of is the keywords so if you run a genome play that takes place in the Grand Canyon you put that in there and if there's somebody actually looking for that and there's enough people out there that somebody's looking for that they will find that one play are people looking that I've got to do something about the Grand Canyon yes or a theater or a science I want to have some science play in my programming I think there's a lesson here about being smart about your keywords because if you understand I'm writing a play about DNA research right you want to put DNA in there you want science as a keyword you want to start thinking about how an artistic director what might be put in as a keyword we do plays that are excuse me if you're most interested in sort of magical realism stuff that's something specifically I've looked up sci-fi plays so I'm wondering if I'm subconsciously giving you on that track I've looked up plays for strong people characters this is the thing I've looked up I've looked up fairy tales so styles styles for me is more than subject matter I've also sort of seen how other plays that I've liked have tagged their plays and I'm like oh that's an interesting tag click we get people to want to I mean we get really interesting tiny keyword searches because people will say I'm going to do a reading in celebration of this holiday or in celebration of this event in my state and I want to make sure I know all the plays about that subject you know I love the immediacy of what you guys are talking about and that breaking down the wall and I assume that you enjoy it other than you would just be stringing someone along in a conversation for two years hoping they'll want to do your play after they get to know it so it becomes its own thing it's totally enjoyable but for me I'm like oh my god I don't even know how do you find the time it sounds overwhelming it sounds like if you want to have a presence on twitter and here and there and you really want to how much time do you dedicate a day to this this question all the time I'm so curious as to how you two will answer it for me I'm always there it's in my pocket if I have 10 minutes I might get on twitter you know and just see what people have said to me in their response to them I might take 20 minutes in an evening while I'm waiting for the dishes to close to dry and get on it or I might watch the Tony Awards with a million of my friends getting on twitter while I'm watching the Tony's and you know commenting about what's going on it happens in a variety of different ways it happens in 4 minutes and that's enough time 4 minutes is enough time to have a 3 or 4 or 5 tweet exchange with somebody that feels like you've caught up with them like Steve is a great example I see him at conferences and I'm on Facebook if I see him there on twitter I can actually deepen my friendship with him in 5 weeks and say oh I just saw a review of your play it was terrific why don't you come into DC oh I'll be back in a month for this thing oh we should have coffee oh if we don't though because I'm going to be in Florida we just have a little civil exchange but that enriches our real friendship and I don't think you can underestimate the value of something like that I mean I just recently got a pass from something that I sent to the theater and you know got a personal note that said while we aren't interested in this we're keeping our eye on you and hope to be able to work with you in the future I don't think that would have happened it certainly wouldn't have happened because we wouldn't even know who I was so I don't think you can underestimate the value of those little exchanges in just making somebody feel like they're less than a name maybe I should track keyword searches by theaters because I'm super interested in trends not that you can see oh climate change I've been encouraged by climate change because then you're already behind it I'm actually curious about no we know there's so many things we would like to do but it's a little big brotherish what you're talking about do keyword searches go into the body of the script no they don't they just search the keywords that you tagged it with we have five minutes I was just going to say I'm absolutely bombarded with notices on Facebook I'm a talent agent that's my job so acting with models perceive me mercilessly and I don't have the time I'm trying to keep up with everything so I have a separate world where I have a playwright but that's my living on the other side so somehow or another I have to open up Facebook totally unrelated start a separate Facebook account and we playwright in your name and I'm just so grateful for this work channel thank you my question is back to and maybe Steve is a good person to ask about this as well too in uploading new plays to the Playwrights Exchange what do you find is the most common point at which to upload the play when it's brand new third draft after production I've just written a short play that's been picked up by festival and as I want to get more involved with the exchange I have no clue as to what the best timing is for uploading the answer is when you are ready for other people to see it simple as that so it's really unrelated with the whole concept of publishing which they want it's not publishing it's there and when you write a new draft you upload that new draft you just swap out the draft do you find that most people do the draft I mean early on or do they wait until they really feel comfortable with it maybe after reading I think you should put it up when you decide it's no longer about making sure it's okay and seeking approval it's about us, we have the power now, we can decide and you should put it up when you are ready for other people to see it and you can use the field you can use the field you can use the field to describe the play to talk about where it is in this process if you want to or what stage it's in if you feel like you need to do that but I think the difference is that when you put it up on the new play exchange anybody can read it I'm going to send this to five people that I trust it's like shouting it through a megaphone so it's whenever you feel like it's in that place if you're okay with people seeing your work that's a little more raw and possibly saying yeah, or this guy doesn't know what he's doing that might happen but you could have six productions and someone's going to say this isn't done yet and you might be saying that yourself that's fair you get a lot of action from the tremendous college market we're starting to get more yeah we haven't really built any specific tools for colleges but you have some guidelines for how colleges can use the new play exchange people teaching dramaturgy courses go have your dramaturgy students find and program a season using the new play exchange and make a case for why it would be a great season and then read it and write recommendations in the place great advantage of college productions is that you can often have you into the guest play which often exceeds the fee that you would get from your royalty just to tie it up though it's great as the new play exchange is in the topic of this whole thing is that you still have to do the marketing to get people to that you're not up for that all the other stuff supports that so that people when they look for you find the stuff if they're waiting for 1500 playwrights they still have to be looking for you do you ever repost your link to your profile in twitter or facebook a lot of people do and by practice if anyone tweets the new play exchange twitter with a link to their profile I retweet it just because I want to amplify the signal and encourage people to do that but you know what's the hardest you don't need to do it I think that for me if I saw that in a tweet it would be noise to me because I still wouldn't know who that person was which I think is the whole but on facebook same thing though I mean I have to be interested in the person to be interested in that place and I think that's what this all comes back to I wonder if maybe and I don't know what you think of the wisdom of this is rather than tweeting your own link necessarily the link as part of your description in your profile description it should be in the footer of all your emails right just by course it's right there with the other links you have to your upcoming productions or your website it should be in your facebook bio it should be in your twitter bio it should be in those places so that people who are interested in you because they like the way you talk about the Tampa Bay whatever the team is they'll find it but I agree that just sharing it absent context isn't particularly useful I mean it's different than sharing a review a review is a story about your story just sharing a link to your play is a little but if you ever go on the official playwrights of facebook group which is like 7000 playwrights it's a lot more and a lot more I'd spend more time than I would if I were the director of the new play but I have some questions you're there that's the yeah go there and join and just see I really don't spend a lot of time there but literally it was seen that someone I knew commented on a comment in that group discussion in my facebook feed is what we did and literally on Tuesday I uploaded plays I've been telling you that's what I'm going to do so no publicity is bad because I was like I don't even know what the people have this heated discussion about whether or not there's ever any payout what the return on the investment is this debate I was like well I don't even know what they're talking about so I looked over to it and I was like that's not a problem and I fell in the fall you might not pick it up I think when I used to spend some mail and I fell in it it's a stretch it's an option with mail but every time you set a play it was a conversation even if half the people were bragging on it I was like well I'll do that I heard it in this conversation because the conversation happened I'm so happy to see it we're at time so thanks