Though I’d known Rachel online, we first met in person in my hometown of Buffalo, NY, when came for the world premiere of her play, BURST at Alleyway Theatre. We spent a fun day in Niagara Falls on the Maid of the Mist and her show was nothing short of spectacular. I knew she was […]
Donna Hoke offers page-by-page script analysis and career coaching for a reasonable fee. If interested, please inquire at donna@donnahoke.com.
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, […]
Posted in Play Submissions, Playwrights, Productions, screenwriting, Theater | 6 Comments »
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 […]
Posted in Crossword puzzles, Play Submissions, Playwrights, Productions, screenwriting, Theater | 9 Comments »
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?”
Posted in Play Submissions, Playwrights, Productions | 6 Comments »
A NEW YEAR’S WISH FOR MY FELLOW PLAYWRIGHTS
I posted this a couple of years ago and I’m reposting (with a couple additions) because man, it’s hard to even write a bad play as I’m discovering today lol! Happy new year to all my colleagues, friends, page buddies, and fellow creators who continue to strive to make art even when *it’s […]
2021: MY YEAR IN REVIEW
If 2020 was a doozy, 2021 was doozier. In 2020, there was more sense of being in this together, waiting for the vaccine cavalry to deliver us. I know I didn’t predict how chaotic and divisive things would become, the continued uncertainty around theater, or the depression and fatigue plaguing so many of us, […]
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 […]
Posted in FINDING NEIL PATRICK HARRIS, Playwrights, Productions, Theater | 4 Comments »
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, […]
Posted in Play Submissions, Playwrights, Productions | 2 Comments »