(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 […]

  Ready for a little rant? I’ve kind of had it with complaints about the purported one-and-done mentality of American theater. I’ve had it because it’s simply not true; more, there are no facts to support this presumption.   Before I get into my actual argument, I will concede up front that most contests do indeed […]

  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).   From CYNDY MARION, PRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, WHITE HORSE THEATER   “White Horse Theater Company is a very small not-for-profit off-off Broadway theater company […]

    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, […]

    A few weeks ago, in the midst of reading submissions, I started a mini-tweetfest of lines that should be eliminated from plays entirely. With a hashtag of #retirethisline, I sent out a bunch of tweets, and encouraged some others. Because Twitter is fast and furious and they were easy to miss, I thought […]

  In trying to choose a title for this blog post, I started out with something like “Why Women Need To Submit,” and realized just how awful that sounded. But in the context of play submissions—something I advocate fiercely—there is something worse: according to informal polls and at least one study, women submit fewer plays […]

  I make a lot of submissions. More than a few hundred a year, as anybody who knows me can attest. And submitting that much–no surprise–yields results in the form of readings, workshops, and productions, as I’ll recap at the end of next month. But before I do that, i.e. before I subject myself to […]

    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 […]