THE TREND TOWARD WANTING (NEEDING?) UNPRODUCED TEN-MINUTE PLAYS: FACTS, FICTION, AND REASON   As with most blog posts I write that aren’t part of a regular series, this one came about because this topic has reached fever pitch among playwrights. Ten-minute play festivals are ubiquitous and have been for some time; in fact, on […]

  Rejection (or acceptance, or notification) season was winding down as it neared time to gear up for submission season, and I hadn’t written my usual post on how to cope with it. Maybe it’s because the rejections/passes/whathaveyou just seemed to come in dribs and drabs this year—it’s a rare week that I don’t get at least […]

    What is a #PLONY? Find out here, and also read an explanation as to why I’m writing a series of #PLONY Profiles.   When I first conceived this series, Eric Coble was one of the first #PLONY to come to mind, not only because he has actually had a play—THE VELOCITY OF AUTUMN—produced […]

  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 […]

  You really need to move to New York. You’ve heard that, right? I don’t live in New York City; is my playwriting career doomed? Sometimes, it seems that way—or at least seems as though others feel that way. Recently, on a panel of six playwrights, the five before me all introduced themselves, “I’m First […]

  A fellow Dramatist Guild rep posed this question to me, in view of the ugliness that followed my blog post about the egregious guidelines set forth by Words Players in Rochester, Minnesota. It gave me pause, because the hate heaped on this small theater company became extreme, and some saw us, the playwright community, […]

  AND IF SO, THEN HOW DO WE GET IT?   Wow, it’s been a whirlwind couple of days. I know I promised to launch my new blog series soon—and it’s still in the works and getting better, and I will—but this whole #playwrightrespect storm took me by surprise. I posted to Facebook about a […]

  Not long ago, I wrote an important blog post called Arrogance, Ignorance, and Playwright Respect , which got more views than anything else I’ve ever written (if you haven’t read it, I encourage you to, because it is such an important issue). Sadly, we playwrights know what an uphill battle it is to have the […]