Submitting your play to a new-works festival: some hopefully helpful hints (How do you begin your play?)

It was going to be a marathon reading day, but then I realized that nobody had cleaned our kitchen since the last time I cleaned our kitchen and some liquid of an ungodly color was congealing at the bottom of our refrigerator. So three hours of cleaning later, my morning had disappeared into early afternoon. And then we had a bug party to go to. What, you may ask, is a bug party? It is a party where bugs are on the menu. Yes, bugs. One of Rachel’s colleagues at school has been experimenting with cooking with bugs, and a number of dishes were served. I must say, I prefer the meal-worms over the crickets.

So what was going to be 10 hours of reading turned into 4. Still, I noticed an odd pattern with three of the plays I read today. I think I have been noticing this over the last year or so, but it was the first time I started to wonder how it came to develop. Three of plays I read today begin with a lengthy monologue explaining what is about to occur. It is like an introduction. It is like an excuse. It is like a reluctance to dive right in. A hesitation. And it is very weird to me.

This is not to say that plays cannot start this way. Equus. Three Days of Rain. M. Butterfly. They open with a speech from a guide. But for them it makes sense. This devise is used well. When I wrote my first review for our college paper (seconds before I became the Arts Editor because nobody else wanted to do it), our adviser told me that I had a “clearing-my-throat” problem: the first two paragraphs sounded good, but they were useless. I was clearing my throat. It seems like many of these emerging playwrights are doing the same.

So, don’t not start your play with a monologue, but know why you are doing it. Know why you are delaying the active dialogue, or why you aren’t opening with an image. Know why you’re breaking the fourth wall because doing so lost its novelty long ago.

Exercise:

Step 1: Write an opening monologue to a play and the first scene that follows it.

Step 2: Take out the opening monologue and begin the play with what was the second scene. Write a new scene two which incorporates all of the necessary information from the opening monologue into a dialogue.

Hulk Smash: Needlessly inflammatory response emails.

Oh me, oh my. What a Monday it has been. My Artistic Director apparently did a radio interview recently, causing an influx of submissions. Unfortunately, our submission policy is rather strict because we do not have a literary manager, so the majority of my responses were simply, “Thank you for your interest. Send it through your agent.”

Sometimes this response is not kindly received. I understand the frustrations of the vicious need-a-production-to-get-an-agent / need-an-agent-to-get-a production cycle, but, playwrights, keep your rage in check!

The following is an email thread from today that was so rude that I just had to circulate it around the office. We had a good baffled laugh. Playwrights don’t usually blacklist themselves so blatantly. I realize that it was not necessarily meant for my eyes: the use of third person seems to suggest that this particular playwright was attempting to vent to a friend or colleague. So the lesson here–in this age of email communication–always be sure to distinguish between the “forward” command and the “return” command!

From:
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2008 4:23 AM
To: Dan Rubin
Subject:

To whom it may concern,
I would be grateful if you could advise me of your submission policies regarding
our new musical. . .

From: drubin@act-sf.org
To:
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:59:22 -0800
Subject: RE:

Dear Mr.

Writers are urged to refer to A.C.T.’s production history for the types of plays A.C.T. produces, which emphasize powerful ideas expressed in muscular language. A.C.T. values theatricality, complexity, and richness and the immediate, visceral, and intellectual contact among writers, performers, and audiences that exists only in the theater.
A.C.T does not accept unsolicited scripts for consideration. Any writer with representation should submit his or her play through a literary agent. Submissions will also be accepted if accompanied by a letter of recommendation by a theater professional (i.e., an artistic director or literary manager at a professional theater), preferably one who is familiar with our organization.
This information can also be found on our website: http://www.act-sf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_opps_scripts

Sincerely,
Dan Rubin

From:
To: Dan Rubin <drubin@act-sf.org>
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:51:11 -0800
Subject:

Looking at their past prductions I can see what he means by
muscular language.

Cat on a hot tin roof
Christmas Carol (mm…..Scrooge the ultimate Charles Atlas)
Sweeney Todd
High Society (for fuck sake)
Travels with my Aunt (double for fuck sake)

All just oozing with muscular fuck-all

From: drubin@act-sf.org
To
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:14:09 -0800
Subject: RE:

Dear Mr. —

I wish you the best of luck finding a theater that shares your aesthetic opinion. Clearly, we are not it.

Sincerely,
Dan Rubin

From:
To: Dan Rubin <drubin@act-sf.org>
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:21:11 -0800
Subject:

I think we can count this one as a miss.
Anyway it’s in San Francisco!!!

Needless to say, we are not planning on working with this gentleman, whether he sends his musical through an agent or not.

Submitting your play to a new-works festival: some hopefully helpful hints (PART 2)

Rachel was tickled when I came to bed last night exclaiming, “How hard is it to make a good movie! Honestly!” She was amused because the movie that had sent me on this mini-tirade had been Hellboy II: The Golden Army. “You’re surprised?”

She had a point. And I had not gone in with high expectations, not having been terribly impressed with the first Hellboy movie, which really had very little to do with the comic book series. Really the only reason this movie was in my Netflix queue was because Guillermo Del Toro directed it and Pan’s Labyrinth blew my mind. That, and it was a superhero movie. I felt a certain obligation.

To balance my disappointment, I watched Unbreakable tonight for the first time in 8 years. It may just be the finest superhero movie out there (I say this having swooned over The Dark Knight), and watching the commentary with Will Eisner and Frank Miller made me understand why. Unbreakable does what all good comic series do: it asks us to examine why we ourselves are special, and what our potential role is in this world.

It also finally gave me a response to Syndrome’s argument in The Incredibles that “When everybody is special, nobody will be.” The problem with this asserstion–other than being delivered by a villainous psychopath with an enormous head–is that it assumes that powers are interchangeable and thus negate-able. I can fly. Oh you can fly too? Oh then I am not all that special am I? But this equation breaks down when you can fly, but I can run really fast. Even when accounting for the law of relativity, we are still special.

I am thinking more about superheroes this weekend than I normally am (which is saying something) because I have started tackling my pile o’ scripts to review for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and I cannot get Spiderman’s “With great power comes great responsibility saying out of my head,” and I HATE that saying.

Focusing on the great responsibility aspect of that phrase, reading plays for a new-works festival is so much more stressful than reading scripts for A.C.T. namely because A.C.T.’s requirements are much more limiting. For example, production costs play a very small factor when reading for a workshop because the process does not end with production. The fact that a script calls for a sailboat and a desert onstage is not a deterrent because we’ll be lucky if all the music stands are functioning.

Readers also have to put much more value on the potential of a script (of which we have read 20 pages) and a playwright (whom we know only from the cover letter and the resume, and occasionally their reputation). And if you thought that judging artistic merit was a subjective exercise, just wait until you judge potentially meritorious art. It makes you question if Cassandra believes herself when she is telling herself the truth.

So it’s rough, especially since anyone who is reading for a new-works festival is doing so because they are devoted to encouraging new writers to start and more established writers to keep going. We don’t want to say no to anybody.

But, hopefully helpful hints! 1) Take your cover letter and resume as seriously as you do your play. When we are only reading the first 20 pages, how you sell the remainder of the play is important. My favorite synopses are about a paragraph and give me enough to know where a play is going without spoiling the details. You can ruin the surprise, but don’t spoil the details. Thin line, I know. Do NOT compare your play to other plays in your cover letter. “I am submitting this play because I believe it is the next Equus.” No, I didn’t get this exact claim, but I sure did get one similar. Other plays cannot help you now. I read a play last month and  convinced myself it could be the next Proof, but let the reader come to that conclusion. And do not breeze over the question, “What will you do with this workshop if you are invited to participate?” This question is HUGE in terms of communicating who you are as a playwright to the readers. If you don’t know what you are doing, then why should I make an investment in you? Are you just submitting to every festival out there willy-nilly, or have you done some homework?

2) Rejection sucks, but put it in its place. I’ve got a small pile of rejection letters for plays theaters didn’t want, so I know that pain, but don’t let that pain discourage you from writing. Don’t even let that pain discourage you from resubmitting for next season’s festival. Just because 2 readers did not like the first 20 pages of 1 of your scripts does not mean that it’s a bad script or that you’re not a good fit for a particular festival. It means that two readers did not like the first 20 pages of your script. And it sucks that this subjective judgment has denied you this chance, but there’s no way around it. Keep submitting, and eventually readers who understand you and believe in your aesthetic are going to push your scripts through to the full-read round.