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Donna Hoke offers page-by-page script analysis and career coaching for a reasonable fee. If interested, please inquire at donna@donnahoke.com.

Theater doing important work: the Grief Dialogues

    Elizabeth Coplan has collected and compiled short grief plays, and the interest in them has gone beyond her wildest imaginings.   Please follow me on Twitter @donnahoke or like me on Facebook at Donna Hoke, Playwright. Playwrights, remember to explore the Real Inspiration For Playwrights Project, a 52-post series of wonderful advice from Literary […]

PLAYWRIGHTS AND THE STATE OF PERPETUAL HOPE

  If you clicked on this title, you know what I’m talking about. It’s the thing that makes us obsessively check our email because, at any moment, an acceptance could arrive—and what if we don’t see it immediately? The thing that makes us cough up fees—maybe even against our better judgment—because that opportunity could lead to […]

DIY PLAY FESTIVALS: LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP!!

  Imagine seeing this in the guidelines of a playwrights’ opportunity:   *If your play is selected, you are responsible for a $100 participation fee. You are also responsible for finding a director, casting the show, supplying sets, figuring out tech and lighting, running rehearsals, and, in all truth, filling seats. Just so you know, […]

TEN REASONS YOU SHOULD BE WRITING TEN-MINUTE PLAYS

  Every so often, on Official Playwrights of Facebook, a debate erupts about the merits of the ten-minute play. Naysayers contend that there’s no such thing as a ten-minute “play”; it’s an exercise, it’s not real writing, it’s a sketch, and so on. Proponents counter that a good (and they do acknowledge that, as with […]

How my play, SAFE, got a “safe” first production that guaranteed its future success

Safe had been a long time coming. I first wrote it in 2012, put it through the Emanuel Fried New Play Workshop, where it had peer review and a staged reading, got some private dramaturgy for it, and started sending it out. I was fortunate that it was a semi-finalist for nuVoices at Actors Theatre […]

SLIPPERY SLOPE: NO ROYALTIES FOR FULL-LENGTH PLAYS #playwrightrespect

      I fear the writing on the wall.   Before I was ever a playwright, I was a freelance writer. It’s a flexible career that has allowed me to live where I want, raise kids while I work from home—and one I never thought would be outmoded. I write primarily for smaller publications, […]

TRADE A PLAY TUESDAY (#TAPT) TURNS TWO! (Read and share these awesome birthday testimonials!)

  (If you don’t know what TRADE A PLAY TUESDAY is, please click here to read the guidelines and learn how to participate.)   This week, TRADE A PLAY TUESDAY (TAPT) celebrates its two-year anniversary. Except for a handful of Tuesdays, it has run every single week, and, every single week without fail, playwrights have shown up to trade […]

“THERE IS NO SUBMISSION FEE. LIKEWISE THERE IS NO PAY OR PRIZE MONEY.”

  There is no submission fee. Likewise, there is no pay or no prize money.   Have you seen this, this new disclaimer on play submission opportunities? Stated boldly as though there is actually some sort of correlation between not charging a fee and not paying royalties? As if this is so logical that if […]

2015 YEAR IN REVIEW BY NUMBERS

    Last year, I reviewed my records and did a thorough analysis of the submissions I made and how they paid off: 2014 Submission Recap: You Can’t Argue With Numbers. I could do the same thing again this year, but the point would be the same: you have to submit your work—frequently. So, instead I […]

#365GRATEFULPLAYWRIGHT: THE FINAL INSTALLMENT/DECEMBER PART TWO

THIS IS IT! THE END!   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 […]