Gratitude journals and their more public cousins—gratitude Facebook posts—have become mindful ways to connect with what is good in our lives. I’ve never done one, but it occurred to me a while back that doing a 365 Grateful for playwriting might illuminate a year’s worth of reasons why we’re so loyal to this sometimes […]

  Last year in my 2013 submission recap, I simply reported how many theaters I’d submitted to, and how many I’d heard back from. I’m going to go about it a bit differently this year, and make some comparisons over the past three years, because I think—I hope—it will be telling.  (I’m a few days […]

    Occasionally, for one of my non-playwriting jobs, I have the good fortune to interview some wonderfully renowned playwrights.  Today, I thought I’d share them:   Stephen Adly Guirgis Suzan-Lori Parks A.R. Gurney David Henry Hwang I’ll be back next week with a new post for the Real Inspiration for Playwrights Project (RIPP). Until […]

    A few weeks ago, in the midst of reading submissions, I started a mini-tweetfest of lines that should be eliminated from plays entirely. With a hashtag of #retirethisline, I sent out a bunch of tweets, and encouraged some others. Because Twitter is fast and furious and they were easy to miss, I thought […]

    As always, if you don’t know what RIPP: Real Inspiration for Playwrights Project is about, please click here (the original idea) and here (the evolution of that idea) to get some context before reading).   FROM ROBYN FLATT, EXECUTIVE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, DALLAS CHILDREN’S THEATER   “It is a tough world out there for playwrights now that boards […]

  In trying to choose a title for this blog post, I started out with something like “Why Women Need To Submit,” and realized just how awful that sounded. But in the context of play submissions—something I advocate fiercely—there is something worse: according to informal polls and at least one study, women submit fewer plays […]

  I make a lot of submissions. More than a few hundred a year, as anybody who knows me can attest. And submitting that much–no surprise–yields results in the form of readings, workshops, and productions, as I’ll recap at the end of next month. But before I do that, i.e. before I subject myself to […]

  I know there are too many year-end blog posts out there to read, and while I don’t want to add to your personal digital slush pile, providing a year-end submission recap seems in keeping with the work I’m trying to do with RIPP: Real Inspiration for Playwrights Project. I promise to keep it short. […]

    Last night, I finished the first draft of my seventh full-length play. It’s had several working titles, including The Art of Sugar, Sweet Nothing, Boxes and Bows, and, now, Brilliant Works of Art; that last one best sums up the play. I don’t know if it will be the final title, but I’m […]

What a fabulous, fabulous, fabulous Curtain Up! celebration this year! The weather was balmy, and the streets were crowded with theatergoing revelers.  Honorary Curtain Up! chair A.R. Gurney was presented with a new star that will be part of the plaza of stars planned for the renovated theater district:     Here’s me talking about […]