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MY 2023 WRITER’S YEAR IN REVIEW

  What a strange year…   2023 was the year I decided to double down on the screenplay momentum I started in 2022 and see if my back catalog of plays would do any work for me. As we all know, it’s been tough for the trenches playwrights to get in the mix—tougher than usual, […]

2022 YEAR IN REVIEW: EXPANDING MY HORIZONS

  Three facts conspire to make this a strange year—both the best I’ve had as a playwright and also the worst. First, I made almost my lowest number of submissions since I started keeping records back in 2011. Just 188. That’s about a third of what I was making in the peak submission years when […]

THE BIG PUBLISHING QUESTION

Hopefully it’s clear now that the question isn’t “How do I get published?” but “When should I try to get published?”

PLAYWRIGHTS, OWN YOUR HOMETOWN! (Getting traction in your own backyard)

  I know many of you who read this blog or have been to one of my submission seminars know about the Playwright Binge, an email group intended to provide support for the arduous but necessary process of marketing our work. The group has grown so large that the recent sharing of an opportunity prompted […]

STOP ASKING FOR UNPRODUCED TEN-MINUTE PLAYS!

  Six years ago, I wrote a blog post called YOU WANT OUR UNPRODUCED TEN-MINUTE PLAYS WHY? It’s worthwhile background reading, but if you don’t feel like clicking on the link to read, here’s the TL; DR: theaters didn’t have great reasons for wanting world premieres of ten-minute plays. In the end, the answers to […]

WHY IS IT SO HARD TO GET ATTENTION  FOR COMEDIES? FIVE REASONS

I guess it’s time to post about something I’ve been saying for a while: if you write comedies, it’s tough to find homes for them. Yesterday, my colleague, Ken Levine, posted on his blog  that post-pandemic, theaters need to program lots of comedies. I agree, but this suggests that theaters have previously not wanted comedies […]

Three playwright questions as theater reignites

  I just purchased a plane ticket with some of the airline credit I’ve had since I chose not to travel to a writers’ retreat in March 2020. And it’s to attend a live production of my play, TEACH, in New York City. LIVE. SONS & LOVERS will be in Columbus, OH. LIVE. In August, […]

2020: A PLAYWRIGHT’S YEAR IN REVIEW

When it came to results, because of Zoom, this year was actually better than last in terms of readings, and Naatak theater gave FLOWERS IN THE DESERT a stellar virtual production, featuring a married couple who fully staged it from their garage and directed by Harish Agastya; it was so beautiful, I made my husband watch it!

10 LIES PLAYWRIGHTS ARE TOLD (AND WHY WE SHOULDN’T BELIEVE THEM)

. Much mythology surrounds the vagaries of this business and the paths to success. Some myths we’re told by others; just as many we tell ourselves. Overwhelmingly, they seem to be protective devices to explain away slow years—or even slow careers. Often they become ways to deny how much constant effort it can take—particularly for […]

PLAY SUBMISSION OPPS ARE DECREASING–NOW WHAT?

. Coming up on October 1, I have made a full 100 submissions fewer than last year and even of those I’ve made, a whole slew of them were isolated cold queries about specific plays for specific reasons, i.e. not responses to general calls for plays. Without those targeted queries, I’m guessing I’m at about […]