I don’t like submission fees. I’m not a complete fee purist, but I don’t think they’re best practice. I don’t like playwrights funding opportunities. I don’t like paying into what is likely to be a losing proposition. However, after curating and categorizing plays for a recent college festival, I’m starting to understand what I […]

  Playwrights active online know the names Adam Szymkowicz and Aurin Squire. Not only are they both prolific, productive, and produced playwrights, they’re also the kind who give back. Adam writes the popular I Interview Playwrights blog, and Aurin contributes a monthly Get What You Want list of opportunities on his long-running Six Perfections blog. […]

  (Click here to read other posts in this series)   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 […]

  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 […]

  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).   Before we begin, let’s congratulate Sean Daniels on his new appointment as Artistic Director of Merrimack Repertory Theatre!   And now, as […]

    As I wind down the RIPP series in preparation for something different in the new year, I’m gathering together some of the shorter bits I have. Though shorter, I hope they are no less inspirational. In this group, the advice is all about how to, as one playwright friend says, reduce the clutter, […]

    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 […]

    As promised, another installment of RIPP. And, 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 ABIGAIL ROSE SOLOMON, FOUNDER, ROSALIND PRODUCTIONS   “I’m sort of a one-woman show; I […]

    Buffalo United Artists is currently in the process of reading submissions for BUA Takes 10: GLBT Short Stories, and we’re so overwhelmed by submissions that don’t follow guidelines that I’m feeling compelled to address the issue. Because it’s not an isolated incident. Submission after submission just ignore the guidelines that we thought were […]

   From DEE JAE COX, CO-FOUNDER/PRESIDENT/ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, LOS ANGELES WOMEN’S THEATRE PROJECT   ( 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.)   “I’m sure you know the statistics, only 20 percent of plays that do […]