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 when, in fact, they always do. Audiences love comedies! Comedies sell! As a theater journalist and playwright, I’ve heard artistic directors say for years that they love programming comedies. I’ve heard for-profit producers say they love comedy, even farce. Over the past several years (even pre-pandemic), they’d go so far as to say, “We need comedies.”

So why don’t we see more of them? Three reasons:

1) Theaters are unsure how to find new ones, which means constantly drawing from the same well.
And so Neil Simon (Norm Foster if you’re in Canada) is still the go-to, along with some standards like NOISES OFF and SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR, and some newer entries like GOD OF CARNAGE and 39 STEPS. Of course there are exceptions, but if you look at community theater rosters, you’re unlikely to find them. In some regions, high schools do original work and Don Zolidis, the reigning king of original plays for schools, leans heavily on comedy because kids love it. And it sells. Kids can try new comedies because there isn’t any inherent financial risk, which brings us to:

2) Most theaters are not interested in or not in a position to develop new comedies.
I was thrilled when B Street Theatre in Sacramento, presumably because they recognize that their audiences love comedy and because they are a National New Play Network member that advocates for new work, introduced a comedy contest for playwrights. Comedy contests of any kind are rare—the Reva Shiner comedy-only contest has been folded the Woodward Newman, the Neil Simon seems to have disappeared after being called out for its egregious $150 entry fee (and I can verify that they also went trolling for fee-less entries, though this practice isn’t limited to this opportunity), and the McLaren is on hiatus—so to have a professional theater like B Street specifically seek comedies and help develop them is crucial to introducing more into the mainstream. I’d love to see more theaters do this, because

3) Most of the big contests/prizes don’t embrace comedy.
Ask playwrights to name the most important opportunity they can get into and they’ll likely say the O’Neill—to the point where the $35 entry fee is the only one they pay—and yet, if you look at the list of plays that make it into the O’Neill, the chosen finalists are rarely, if ever, straight-up comedies. I can offer that of my three most decorated plays—Primus/Blackburn nominated, O’Neill/Princess Grace finalist, Kilroys List—only one has seen two small productions. The other two have received a total of 32 readings between them: that is a disconnect.

Yes, every playwright will tell you there is humor in their plays—a play can barely survive now without it—but the full-out comedy has a tough time competing with issue-forward plays. (I mean, comedies don’t win Oscars either so it seems there is a bias toward the serious, despite it being harder to make people laugh than cry, imo.) There is definitely room for the rare plays like say, Jonathan Spector’s EUREKA DAY or Jennifer Blackmer’s PREDICTOR and Mike Lew’s TEENAGE DICK can both make you laugh out loud and think. I’d even go so far as to say that those plays are a playwright’s best bet to bridging this disconnect because the comedy is almost like a bonus because the “issues” stand on their own, even if the laughs don’t come. If the big development opportunities and contests don’t trend toward comedy, the comedy doesn’t get amplified, which leaves playwrights to their own devices to market it—and that’s hard because

4) Theaters want to know the comedy works.
If they know it works, they are more likely to program it (see #1). I’ve seen artistic directors at the National New Play Network showcase enthusiastically rush playwrights whose presentations made them laugh. I’ve seen how many theaters want to program THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG, now that it’s been vetted on Broadway (had the pandemic not hit, GRAND HORIZONS—a rare Broadway non-musical comedy—would likely have been all over season schedules). I’ve seen theater after theater do Tom Dudzick’s OVER THE TAVERN and its sequels not only because Tom is a master marketer but also because once it’s on the circuit, it stays on the circuit. But if theaters aren’t running readings, etc. themselves (see #2), the only way to know if it works is to see it somewhere else and for too many theater operators, that means New York. (And of three examples I gave earlier, only one is being produced all over the country and it’s surely due, at least in large part, to it having a conspicuous NYC premiere.)

5) Musicals are often heavy on laughs and are less risky than non-musical comedies.
Comedies are often dependent on the talent that’s plugged into them and if you’ve ever seen a bad production of THE ODD COUPLE or GOD OF CARNAGE, you know what I mean. Most theaters are risk-averse and if it’s a choice between programming a comedy without the right talent or programming a musical where, if the comedy falls short, at least the music will please audiences, guess which is the better bet? Also, musicals often have that Broadway vetting (see #4) that theaters like and that most comedies lack.

I hope, as Ken suggests, that the current desire for comedies now will encourage theaters to take greater chances and promoters/agents/producers to put comedies out in the universe because if they catch on, there’s definitely more money to be made right? There are so many smart new ones to choose from, like the aforementioned EUREKA DAY and PREDICTOR. If my own experience means anything, my six-year-old comedy CHRISTMAS 2.0  got more attention during the pandemic than ever before, including a presentation from Passage Theatre and publication. My new comedy, FINDING NEIL PATRICK HARRIS—written during the pandemic precisely because I felt comedy was needed—is currently in workshop at Zoetic Stage’s Finstrom Festival of New Work. I was told it was chosen by a diverse panel of judges precisely because it was a funny, not overly heavy play and maybe that speaks to what Ken is saying.

If there were ever a time to turn the tide, this is it. But the question remains: if comedy is what people want, how do we start bridge that gap to create more paths for comedies and theaters who want to produce them to connect? 

(Click on the home page to read about my plays!)

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–Read my plays and recommendations on the New Play Exchange!

–Playwrights, remember to explore the Real Inspiration For Playwrights Project, a 52-post series of wonderful advice from Literary Managers and Artistic Directors on getting your plays produced. Click RIPP at the upper right.

–To read #PLONY (Playwrights Living Outside New York) interviews, click here or #PLONY in the category listing at upper right.

–To read the #365gratefulplaywright series, click here or the category listing at upper right.

–For more #AHAinTheater posts, click here or the category listing at upper right.

(Click on the home page to read about my plays!)

–Please follow me on Twitter @donnahoke or like me on Facebook at Donna Hoke, Playwright.

–Read my plays and recommendations on the New Play Exchange!

–Playwrights, remember to explore the Real Inspiration For Playwrights Project, a 52-post series of wonderful advice from Literary Managers and Artistic Directors on getting your plays produced. Click RIPP at the upper right.

–To read #PLONY (Playwrights Living Outside New York) interviews, click here or #PLONY in the category listing at upper right.

–To read the #365gratefulplaywright series, click here or the category listing at upper right.

–For more #AHAinTheater posts, click here or the category listing at upper right.