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• storytelling, transmedia

  Spoiled Rotten

  08.02.12 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  As I write this blog post, I have a play in rehearsal that features a few eminently spoil-able plot points.  It’s hard to explain without, you know, spoiling anything for people, but we can’t even use certain characters’ names in program or in publicizing the show. It’s been a fun challenge, but not without a [...]

• conversation starter, playwrights

  The Robert Frost of Playwrights

  12.05.11 | Permalink | 20 Comments

  I am a tremendous admirer of the verses of Robert Frost. I’ve been studying his work for as long as I’ve been studying poetry, which is (at happens) more than a couple of decades now, and it continues to yield new discoveries for me. He was a prosodic genius—a fact that I fear goes largely [...]

• conversation starter, funding and support, ideas, playwrights, rabble rousing, theatrical ecosystem

  New Ways to Commission New Plays

  07.11.11 | Permalink | 6 Comments

  I’ve been thinking lately about why, how, and by whom new plays are commissioned. I’ve been fortunate enough to have earned a few commissions myself, and it won’t surprise anyone to learn that in all of those instances, the commissions have come from theater companies. The companies in question needed plays to produce; they thought [...]

• advocacy, arts service organizations, community, conferences, conversation starter, dramaturgy, ideas, livestreams, playwrights, rabble rousing, social media, the process, theatrical ecosystem

  Dramatists Guild Conference Live

  06.10.11 | Permalink | Comment?

  I’m live-blogging the first-ever Dramatists Guild conference. Please feel free to log on and either lurk or join the conversation. If there are opportunities for questions, and you submit any, I’ll try to sneak them in. I may also be tweeting from time to time if you’d rather follow along that way, too. You can [...]

• advocacy, conversation starter, ideas, playwrights, rabble rousing, theatrical ecosystem

  Get (Half) a Job

  02.24.11 | Permalink | 7 Comments

  I don’t like to talk too much about the employment situation I’ve enjoyed for the last nine or so years, because I’m not inclined to brag… but the truth is, for a playwright—for any sort of artist, really—I’ve got it good: very good. Of late, though, I’ve begun to think it’s time I talked more [...]

• new plays, playwrights, presenting, video, watch this

  2AMT: Bootlegged and Live-Streamed

  01.17.11 | Permalink | Comment?

  Tomorrow night, two different things are going to be done to one of my plays that have never been done before, and I’m really excited about both of them. Thing one is this: my play is going to be bootlegged. No, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be secretly recorded on a cassette tape (remember [...]

• development, funding and support

  Asking for Money from Artists

  01.06.11 | Permalink | 48 Comments

  Toward the end of last year, I began to get a series of emails from theater companies and arts organizations I’ve worked with in the past asking me to consider making donations in support of their efforts. This has become a late-December custom for me; I’m sure you experience the same thing. In previous years, [...]

• conversation starter, theatrical ecosystem

  The Science of Cell Phones and Curtain Speeches

  12.15.10 | Permalink | 11 Comments

  There are times I wish I was a social scientist. Nothing answers a question as definitely, for me, as evidence-based reasoning. Unfortunately, when it comes to curtain speeches and their ability to actually convince audience members to silence their cell phones, we largely seem to be working from received wisdom instead. We give the same [...]

• conversation starter, funding and support, ideas, marketing, non-profit theatre

  Balancing the Pricing Equation

  10.04.10 | Permalink | 35 Comments

  My last 2AMT post – on civil discourse around the subject of pricing – generated a great deal of lively commentary.  While some of what was said flirted with the gray area between “passionate” and “heated” – the former I consider intense and devoted, the latter inflammatory and aggressive – there were a great many [...]

• audiences, conversation starter, ideas, marketing

  How to Talk About Pricing… with More Light Than Heat

  09.29.10 | Permalink | 41 Comments

  Why is it so difficult to discuss how we price tickets? I want to note right away that I’m not asking why we struggle to SET ticket prices; for very good thinking about pricing, I suggest you read through Trisha Mead’s posts on the subject. I’m asking why we struggle to TALK about setting ticket [...]

• conversation starter, playwrights, rabble rousing

  Blind Submissions

  09.07.10 | Permalink | 20 Comments

  I want to start by asking a simple question: what plays would get produced if artistic directors were only allowed to select from anonymously-submitted blind scripts? What if, in other words, artistic directors had to choose plays without knowing the names of the people who’d written them – or their genders, their ages, their races, [...]

• conversation starter

  The Maybe Lost Art of Curtain-Raisers

  08.20.10 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  David J. Loehr’s recent post about warming up an audience with a trailer has put me in mind of another way to extend the theatrical experience that I’ve been thinking about for some time. A few years ago, the Intentional Theatre Group commissioned me to write a short play for the Midtown International Theatre Festival.  [...]