It's "Submission Season" in the American Theatre. It's that time of year where playwrights dust off a play they've been working on - or scramble to finish a draft of a play they want to submit to various play development opportunities. It's also the time of year that the Facebook Group "The Official Playwrights of Facebook" posts articles about how pointless it is to submit blindly to these contests.
For the past several years (too many to count), I have consistently submitted a play to such places as PlayPenn, the O'Neill, Sundance, Seven Devils, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Playwrights Week at the Lark, Ojai, etc. In all of that time I've been a finalist and semi-finalist to about four conferences. I used to live and die by these submission deadlines. For me and countless other playwrights who haven't hit it big (I use that term loosely) in the American Theatre, these submissions represent a fantasy of having a seat at the cool kids table.
I have a submission chart I keep to track where I've submitted. Nowadays, it's more to make sure I don't send duplicates to these contests. Most won't don't like it when you submit the same play more than once, even if you have rewritten it. The chart is in Excel and it's color coded and has columns for previous years. It's all very detailed with a notes section and all that jazz. I'm fortunate in that I've got personal connections to a lot of theatres around the country so I can send some things directly to literary managers. But I completely understand that there's a large population of playwrights who enter this lottery every year hoping that something will happen.
These articles that poo poo this submission process say that you can't get anywhere if you don't have an MFA from a fancy school. Well, I DO have an MFA from a top playwriting program and I'm still having a hard time. I also agree with that accessment - it makes the odds a lot more difficult without name recognition from a program. It's just another part of the vetting process. Right out of grad school, I got read at major off Broadway theatres just because I graduated from a certain program.
Among my playwriting colleagues here in LA, I've got a lot of people who take this time very seriously. Our Playwrights Union devotes their big event of the year, the Playwriting Challenge, to preparing for fall submissions. The challenge is to write a new play in a month. Then that play can be read in our First Peek festival in May or June and the playwright has time to work on the play in time for those submissions. My approach to this time of year is to get everything out and forget about it.
I believe my approach is met with a lot of skepticism or at least a good amount of side eye. I'm sure it's hard to believe that I submit stuff and then I don't think about it. Well, it makes my life for the next several months a lot more pleasant. I like getting recognized for my hard work, but I don't think that those programs are the only judges of what's good. Frankly, I don't think those taste makers have a far enough reach to get to everything that's good. In a perfect world, people would be seeing everything in their local market - including readings - and keeping accurate record of the most promising playwrights and plays. When I worked in TV development, that was kind of my job. People in the theatre - and in TV and film for that matter - don't get paid enough to do that. I didn't get paid enough to do that, but the promise of TV and film money was enough to motivate me. But the truth is that they're all only human and that there are only so many hours in the day.
If I'm not getting my validation from the Ivory Tower then where am I getting it from? I have two recent plays that I'm in love with. I have another play that's small enough and tame enough to have a lot of appeal. Then there's the play I wrote five years ago that I think's terrific, but didn't get much love other than some readings. I have a play I wrote a longer time ago that was a finalist at the O'Neill that has never seen the light of day. And I have a play that I wrote an even longer time ago than that that still is one of my favorite things I've written, mainly because no one else loves it. It's the play I send to people when they're looking for something to produce that's not already attached to a director or a theatre. That's a total of six plays that I like - out of countless others I've written. None of those have been produced yet. Things have come close, but nothing has come to fruition yet. But still I continue to write. Why? Doesn't all of that rejection say that I'm fooling myself?
I'm like a dog with a bone. I also write things that stretch my capabilities. I know I'm good. I know I challenge myself. That's the reason to write right there. For me, anyway. In all of those years of submitting to things, I started getting the opportunity to work with local LA theatres. I started getting the opportunity to hear my work read out loud and I got a great opportunity last year to develop a new play with a local theatre. The process was difficult - but I wrote twelve drafts of that play. Some friends said it was the best thing I had written. That it had to get produced or at least developed at one of these summer conferences. It got me a manager and a TV job. But no love from the theatre community - not one honorable mention. It happens to be an incredibly crafted, timely and poignant piece of work. But when I got all of this good will from my friends and colleagues about the play, telling me that this thing and that thing was going to happen, I got to work on the next thing.
I knew better than to let all of those well-meaning words of encouragement put me in a situation where I waited for my jackpot to arrive. I started working on the next thing while I was submitting this "slam dunk" of a play. By the way, that's it's own reward. For one's competitors (yes, we're colleagues and friends, but we all want the same opportunities and we can't ALL win every year) to give that much love is its own success. The respect of one's peers is a BIG DEAL. We had a big reading last September of the other play, I had 19 pages of something new about a month later. It was fresh and new and the head of my writers group at a theatre I really respected got excited. That was success. It got me to keep writing. I decided that I needed to finish this play and I needed support. So I volunteered to run a concurrent writing challenge along side the PU's New Play Challenge. Since this play was not "new" - by February, I was about 50 pages in - it didn't qualify for the existing writing challenge. I had about six other writers who also had plays to rewrite or finish. I finished that play in February. Heard it for the first time at the end of the month, sent it to the head of the writers group who wanted to read the full draft. He loved it. We got a workshop on the books at the theatre. But the bigger success was that the theatre made me a member based on that play. I now have an artistic home.
For me, that's bigger than winning a contest. And it's a direct result of me just continuing to write. Sometimes to meet the deadline of these submissions. But mostly because it's what I do and what I love and the more I do it, the better I get. But that whole time, I didn't just depend on that ONE thing or that ONE time of year. I spent time reading plays at theatres and "networking", I guess. I don't know if I'll ever get recognized by any of those big places. At this point, I don't care. It's not something I'm chasing. If I get recognized, then that's wonderful and helpful on a number of levels. I submit to keep my name out there. I submit because it's good to reinforce and to tell people who you are and what you believe in through your work and through the statements they make you write up.
I just finished two submissions yesterday. I would have done more, but none of the other places I'm submitting to have opened up their pipelines for the upcoming season. And that's fine. I even decided not to apply to a few places. The exercise of it is good for me. But then I submit and forget. I'm not defined by any of it. I have a friend who says that she wants the opportunity, not just the recognition. But for me, the opportunity exists whenever I seek it out. These are great deadlines, but they're not anything I hang my hopes on any more. Because as I've discovered this year, it all happens unexpectedly anyway. You have to have an expectation I guess to have that expectation subverted. I suppose. But I'd rather be focused on the work than what happens out side of my control. Doesn't mean I'm not driven or motivated or ambitious. The ambition is in the work.
My intention is to keep writing.
My intention is to do the next thing.
My intention is to leap.
I am grateful for deadlines.
I am grateful for artistic statements.
I am grateful for submissions.
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