Outrageous Fortune II

Okay, I'll say something quick.

August Schulenberg notes this:

...the study is specifically looking at playwrights who are "successful", a term defined loosely in the book, but understood to mean playwrights who are regularly being produced at a regional and Off-Broadway level. The survey focuses on a sample of those playwrights, and the theatres that are able to financially produce at that level.

Matt Freeman notes:

One thing that struck me in particular was the expression of frustration that there aren't companies that coalesce around a playwright anymore. I don't see that, personally. Maybe that's true on the scale of regional theaters 'filling slots'...but on the Off-Off scale, I see it all the time.

I have been working with a single theater company (more or less) in New York City since about 2004. Just over six years of productions. Do we produce on the scale of Manhattan Theater Club? No. Have I gotten reviews and publications and all that other nice stuff? Yes. Do I still work, and work hard, in an unrelated field to make ends meet? Yes, yes I do. Still, when I read chapters about the nomadic lives of playwrights now, I felt a bit happy to know that's not my position.

So if playwrights like me who work Off-Off-Broadway are:

1) Not that much less financially stable than the "successful" playwrights

2) Supported more by companies willing to champion our works (I write plays and have my own company, Freeman notes his own relationship with a good company)

Then the term "successful" appears to be better worn by the off-off-Broadway folks than by the industry writers! Here I was thinking that I had chosen passion over money, but it sounds like all I did was choose to be happier.

Scott Walters Talks Diversity

One of those posts that stands out amongst the crowd, from Scott Walters.

Isaac Butler's response was:

It has a very simple but very very radical idea at its core, one that's simple enough that I've gotten it but radical enough that I still don't know how I think about it and am trying to fight me knee-jerk urge to reject it and instead actually sit with it.

My initial reaction was negative, although I've been going back and forth about why exactly. I think that when Scott is talking about "giving up some control," I think he's underestimating the amount of control that is being given up. It's a philosophical difference, at the end of the day -- as an artistic director myself, I can't imagine myself putting up a show that I couldn't defend as being the show I had chosen to put up. Will randomly selected shows be good? Maybe. Often not. Scott may be right that regional theaters don't always have the best track record in selecting plays. But at least when they are wrong about plays they select, they are responsible.

I guess the question that has to be asked is this: if you put on a play that is diverse, but is not well accepted by your audiences--it's just another forgettable show--have you accomplished something? Because if the answer is yes, then by all means, use the lottery. But I don't think so.

It is always hard to find the right show. But I don't think you need to trade artistic integrity for diversity.