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, I’m headed to Aspen to see ESMERANDA’S GIFT (Or How To Make A Crossword Puzzle And Solve Your Life) at Theatre Aspen. LIVE. With an audience. I still haven’t wrapped my mind around this.

On one hand, it feels completely normal, buying plane tickets, traveling to see productions. On the other, I’m aware of how much has changed and how much may never return to the normal we knew. This means different things to different people and there is a range of devastation that I acknowledge even as I focus on playwriting in this post. I’m aware that this crisis is not over and may not be over for a long time. If writing and/or your playwriting career or theater has been the furthest thing from your mind the past sixteen months, I respect a decision to not continue reading about what is comparatively trivial.

As a writer primarily for stage, it’s been hard not to think about what comes with “reopening,” whatever that ends up looking like. As a non-name playwright who doesn’t have a contact list full of directors and/or theaters asking to specifically see my work–and who spends considerable time marketing–there’s been a lot to reflect on during this theatrical pause. The only goal I’ve ever had is just to work. And reflecting on how to help that continue to happen led to changes in both perspective and product, primarily around the questions of:
1) What’s the current demand for new work?
2) What am I writing?
3) How am I marketing it?

So many theaters have previous seasons they’ve paid rights on that they still need to present. I have two plays in this situation that won’t be onstage until 2022. That means for most theaters, new work won’t be considered until at least the 2022-23 season and, even when it is, there will be a backlog from both playwrights the theaters regularly work with as well as commissions—an increasingly popular model for new work (that’s another blog post), but particularly during this time when playwright earnings were down.

I also have a backlog created since March 2020. Because I was no longer traveling an average of once a month, even though I felt like I was wasting a lot of time—days went by where I couldn’t point to a single productive thing I’d done save beat the next level on an app—I still had more of it. In an average year, I write two plays. This year, I wrote four, plus a screenplay, a monologue, a ten-minute radio play, converted two full-lengths to radio plays and a ten-minute play to screenplay for filming this summer, and started outlining a sitcom pilot with my son.

Of the to-do projects in my long list, I chose those I thought might be marketable in the climate to come. FINDING NEIL PATRICK HARRIS is a comedy I’d stopped and started multiple times so, because I felt comedy was what we all need, I started it on my blog, as a way to get the work out there at a time when no work was anywhere and to force myself to write three pages a week at a time when I didn’t want to even want to write three words. It’s since been given several readings and this month embarks on a 29-hour workshop with Zoetic Stage’s Finstrom Festival. I’m still hearing that theaters want comedy, so if you’ve got one that needs finishing…

I also chose to finally finish the solo show I started three years ago, because I thought that with Zoom and COVID protocols, solo shows might be in demand, so it was time. I’d put this show off because I knew that creating it would be a challenge, but finishing it was so satisfying! That’s ESMERANDA’S GIFT, the Aspen show, as part of a festival of outside solo shows, i.e. SAFE.

And before anybody says, “I don’t want to write to the market,” I’ll counter by saying these were plays I wanted to write anyway; now just seemed to be the right time to finish them and put them into the world. You’ll be happy to know I shelved the pandemic play I’d been writing because who would ever believe I started it four years ago and the fourth play I wrote is THE LAZARUS CLUB, something I started in 2017 and have been “dying” to finish.

Though it was hard to know how to navigate submission, I submitted the four plays to any appropriate opportunities, and they’ve all gotten readings and/or workshops (including the Aspen workshop)—ANNE OF GREEN GABLES (the youth market, I’m told, is also full of opportunity) is in the YouthPLAYS queue headed toward publication—which shows that the wheels were still turning behind the scenes. It just wasn’t always easy to know which ones, which made it all the more important to grab opportunity when it arose. And will continue to be.

Thanks to Zoom, I was kept busy with productions/readings of eleven different full-length plays, as well as some shorts. It was sometimes exhilarating, sometimes exhausting, but I was grateful for the opportunities to further my plays and keep my name in the mix. What’s really important is that it underscored the need to remain active in all aspects of marketing because these requests were roughly divided equally among submission results, previous relationships, and NPX.

NPX became critically important during the pandemic because 1) actively submitting was risky when you didn’t know who was on the other end or what they were going through 2) nobody was producing anyway. That means theaters that were putting work together were going to NPX to find it and, because publishers were scrambling to figure out how to manage streaming rights, theaters were eager to work directly with playwrights. This was a boon for both playwrights and the New Play Exchange, and something that won’t diminish as we transition back to live theater. My TEACH production next month, in fact, came through NPX. If I haven’t said it enough: get thee an NPX profile!

Like many playwrights, I experimented with other forms, namely radio and screen. While my screenplay—I cut my teeth on a classic Hallmark-style holiday romance—likely will never go anywhere, learning to write one was a long-time bucket list item that I finally addressed. And doing it led me down rabbit holes that I’m still in. I find I love the screen genre and, having now devoured hundreds of hours of ScriptNotes, I feel kinship with screenwriters, the tribe on the other side my island. My future definitely includes more screenwriting, as that industry has changed in ways that are more welcoming to writers than ever before. I know it’s still an uphill slog—but isn’t playwriting, too?—but it’s exciting to play in a different sandbox and it’s given me a new inspiration.

I also changed agents during the pandemic, which seems appropriate given my new thoughts and perspectives. Even before the pandemic, it had been harder to get a new play noticed. There are just so many of us and so much good work. I’d already been thinking about ways to diversify, to find ways to make connections for my work maybe even before it was written, to consider the plays from my project list that are very much “me” plays but that might find a home today’s new play world. I’m still figuring it out but the past sixteen months have showed me three things:
1) There is opportunity everywhere.
2) Plays aren’t the only things to write.
3) I can’t stop writing.

I’d love to hear what you discovered about your writing, your process, your career, during the past sixteen months.

(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.

(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.