Our small community theater usually presents five full productions a year. I usually direct three or four of them. I used to direct all of them but my Board of Directors is getting concerned about a succession plan in case something happens to me, (I don’t think 72 is THAT old!) so I have slowly been getting others to produce and direct our shows. As I said above, it takes me about five months to do a play so doing four or five in a year keeps me pretty busy.
Over the last fifteen years that I have been running our theater, we have pretty much settled on what kind of play to do in what season: In February, we do a comedy or a farce (people want to have fun during the long winter months), in April, we have our festival of locally written plays, in July something simple (because we are already well into rehearsals for our September play), in September we do something off beat; something that may not have broad appeal to our audiences (“Brilliant Traces”, the two Arthur plays, “Torso” and now “Love Song”). We usually have another play in November or December that can be any genre – often Holiday oriented or family fare. “Tracers” is an exception which we did in November.
See? I told you I would get back to “Love Song”.
But I need another digression first: How do I come up with the plays we present?
It’s hard. There are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of plays out there that have had several productions and listed are in the catalogs published by the royalty houses. Samuel French and Dramatists Play Service are the two “biggies” although there are dozens of smaller houses. Many of the smaller houses specialize in the type of plays they list: Religious plays, plays for younger actors and so on. If you want an idea of how many plays and playwrights there our there go to www.doollee.com. As complete as that list is, I know a handful of produced playwrights who are not listed.
I have family in Florida and get to see them every two or three years. I usually spend half time visiting them and half my time going to the theater. I have a string of theaters that I visit. I also get to Seattle two or three times a year to watch plays. I usually find something to follow up on. Sometimes it is just finding a playwright whose work I think has merit even if I don’t like the specific play I saw.
There are many theaters that do the kinds of plays that appeal to me. I keep an eye on them looking for plays that I haven’t heard about. We’ve all done “Noises Off” and “Arsenic And Old Lace” and “The Odd Couple”. I’m looking for something I’ve never heard about. A recent example was the new play “When Bullfrogs Sing Opera” by Carl Williams. I was visiting family and drove up to Ocala Civic Theater because I know they do good work. I saw the play and was intrigued. It is a sophisticated comedy with a serious undertone (mindless or stupid comedies of farces usually play better to our audiences but they aren’t a lot of fun to direct.)
When I come up with a play that might interest me, I go on-line and read the reviews of other productions (preferably at larger theaters where the reviews tend to be more unbiased). If I’m still interested, I purchase a review copy of the script. About one out of every thirty scripts I read appeals to me after reading. Occasionally, the play appeals to me but I realize that I’m not the person to direct it. In that case I pass it on to a director whom I think will do it justice.
Remember the play “Tracers” I mentioned? It’s a gut wrenching play about Viet Nam written by a group of Vets who had been there. They managed to catch the good, the bad, and the horror of being there. The problem is that the play required nine young men able to play soldiers. I am old enough to have had friends who fought and died there but there aren’t a lot of 20 year old guys that fit that mold any more. I passed the play on to a woman who is very active in veterans affairs to look at it. She loved it. It took her a few years to get enough young guys interested in the play. She went so far as to post audition notices in the men’s rooms at our local bars (there comes a time in every man’s life when you just have to stand still so you might as well read what’s on the wall in fromt of you). Anyway she came up with a cast, trained them to be soldiers, as a group they studied the Viet Nam war and the political and social environment of the time. The result was wonderful. The play opened on Veterans Day weekend and was a smash hit: The old timers came to remember what it was like “In Country” and the young people came to see their friends.
The same with another popular play “Almost, Maine”. “Almost, Maine” consists of 8 short plays that take place in the imaginary town of Almost, Maine. It barely made my “maybe” list but I passed it on to a director I thought would like it. Shortly after that a very small theater did the play in a nearby community. Four of us, who would be involved with the production if we did it, made a road trip to see it. It didn’t impress any of us but the potential director saw great potential in it and we went forward with the play. Another big hit. Also another play that had a lot of young actors it it.
Another source of plays comes form our local playwrights. Our theater sponsors an annual festival of locally written plays. Each year we select seven short (ten minute) plays (out of 15 to 20 submissions) and fully produce them. By the time we present the plays we have almost 50 people involved: 7 or more writers, 7 directors, 14 to 20 actors, 5 on the stage crew, 2 or 3 in the tech booth and associated house managers, ticket takers and on and on. By the time 50 sets of friends and family come to see it, it’s always a big hit. Next month we will have the world premier reading of a full length play by one of our local playwrights.
The wild card in finding plays to do come from unsolicited plays. I regularly get query e-mails from playwrights offering their most recent work. If the query contains enough information on cast size and ages and the subject of the play, I might ask for a full copy of the script. I read about 50 plays a year from this source. I have developed a pretty ruthless way to sort the wheat from the chaff with these plays: I print out the first 25 pages and carry them with me to read when I have a moment. If I’m still interested after the first 25 pages, I print out the next 25 and so on, until I give up on the play or get to the end of it. I probably get all the way to the end of the play in 10% of the plays I read. If they have had a prior production we might do one of them every couple of years.
Over the years I have come to know (on-line) several playwrights who I think have great potential. They regularly send me work and I comment on it for them.
Now a wrinkle: It takes lot of extra time to get a play from a new playwright ready for the stage – more time than we can spend. “Torso” was in rehearsal and rewrites for two YEARS before it opened in Seattle. We have just begun a program of public readings of new unproduced plays. When I hear them read out loud I get a much better feel about the potential of the play. It helps me generate comments that I can share with the playwright to improve the play. When I am excited by a play, I will ask a couple of actors to read it to me so I can hear it. That’s how I knew that “Love Song” was a real winner.
It’s still a struggle to keep enough good plays in the hopper. Sometimes I don’t know what play I’m going to do next and other times I have plays lined out far into the future. Sometimes a play just jumps out at me and I have to drop everything to do that play. That’s a really exciting time in my life. That’s what happened with “Love Song”. (See I haven’t forgotten about “Love Song”; I’m just working up to it.)
I have a staged reading of Jeffery Hatcher’s wonderful play “Three Viewings” that opens tomorrow so I’ll be busy for the next few days. It’ll give you some time to catch up on your reading. By-the-way, Jeffery Hatcher has written my favorite book on play writing: The Art And Craft of Play Writing. If you think you might like to write a play, get it!!! I’ve bought a half dozen copies. I loan them to people and forget who I gave them to.
See you in a couple of days.
Doug B
