I used to keep a list documenting all the plays I’d mailed to theatres (following Dramatists Guild Resource Directory submission guidelines, of course), my follow-up efforts and the responses I received. I stopped keeping the list when the NO RESPONSE column was three times as long as the REJECTION column. I stopped mailing plays shortly thereafter.
Today, I’m starting a new list: literary managers that care. And I’ve found four sparkling candidates right here in Los Angeles to put at the top.
I besiege you: don’t inundate them with submissions. Wait a few months, or maybe just take solace that they’re out there waiting for you to send that one super-special play.
Aaron Henne and Brett Webster are Co-Literary Managers at The Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena, which does not accept unsolicited manuscripts but does accept queries only from SoCal playwrights (see bostoncourt.com for guidelines). Both are playwrights themselves, but neither have been produced at the Boston Court.
“I would love to have my work done throughout LA, the world,” Webster says, “but having said that, there is the literary manager side of me that is excited about finding other playwrights. I probably read twelve – 20 plays a month.” Henne chimes in. “We’re all out there in the wilderness writing and submitting. Just keep in mind that on the other end of those submissions is a living/breathing person who – more likely than not – wants to appreciate your play.”
Wait! Whoa! What?!?!
It’s true. Talk to Jen Kays, Literary Director at Circle X for the last four years. Kays is not a playwright. “I am an actor who loves stories,” she says. “Battle Hymn, our last production, was a play that I read and fell in love with and championed. I made a love connection between Jim Leonard, a local playwright, and the director John Langs. They did a workshop together. That was an exciting production for me, because the play wasn’t finished, so the playwright was part of the process and was there for all the rehearsals and tech. We’re fulfilling his imagination. As a lit person, that’s my dream.”
Unfortunately, Circle X no longer accepts unsolicited scripts, because it is a volunteer company. They accept plays from agents, and Kays keeps her ear to the ground. She attends readings, accepts invitations from playwrights via Facebook, and she reads blogs. “Playwrights are the best advocates of playwrights. Playwrights have blogs, and I read them. It’s a national community.” Henne and Webster read blogs, too. Including Frankswildlunch.blogspot.com by LA-based playwright Kyle T. Wilson.
Now Laura Flanagan (also an actor, not a playwright) has only been Literary Manager at The Open Fist for six months, but she’s read a lot of plays in her career. “In New York, I was on one of the reading committees for New Dramatists. As part of that process, you read about 500 plays. So you get to know a lot of writers out there.” When the Fist decided to produce its first New Works Festival this season, Flanagan called on New Dramatists for recommendations.
Surprisingly, Open Fist does not have a submission policy. “We only get two or three submissions per month, because we’re not known for new work. We have a committee of three or four readers.”
So let’s cut to the chase: what exactly are these literary managers looking for?
“First of all, good writing. The level of the writing needs to feel like there’s something special about it,” says Flanagan. “I have to feel like I’m reading something from someone’s heart. You can feel the force of the need behind the writing.”
“It’s all whether or not the story moves us,” says Kays.
“Things that jump out at us here are plays that are uniquely theatrical. Plays that use language. We like plays that are big on ideas and don’t necessarily live in a realistic landscape,” Webster says.
“Most of our work often plays with time and space,” Henne adds. “Once a season, we usually do a reimagined classic or an adaptation of a classic.” “Uniquely theatrical” is an expression that pops us often in our conversations.
So what are their turn-offs? “Dumb things like spelling mistakes. If I open the script, and the grammar’s wrong, it’s gone,” say Flanagan. “Another turn-off is if I can immediately feel the influence. ‘Ahhh, another This Is Our Youth.”
“When people don’t put character pages in their indexes, it drives me crazy,” says Kays.
“I do get frustrated when something is obviously not in the world of what we do,” Henne offers.
But then Kays counters, “Sometimes when I read a play, I think ‘is that even possible?’ But then I give it to Tim Wright (Circle X artistic director) and the company, and they go crazy for it.”
Flanagan ends our conversation – and this article – with the perfect summation. “I’m always impressed with someone who has a clear vision of the play itself. Not that it has a message, but that it has a clear vision of what it’s doing onstage. Even if it’s three teenagers in a room. That can be fabulous if the language is rich enough and the need behind it is compelling enough.”
One Comment
As the former literary manager and dramaturg at InterAct Theater Company (and, in the interest of full disclosure, a playwright whose work has been published in Smith and Krause anthologies — encountered this post on the S&K website, though it may have also been re-posted on other sites) I want to suggest that even assuming literary manages spend all of their time on direct playwright consideration — that is reading scripts and writing letters of solicitation or rejection, at an average small theater that does 3 or 4 plays a season (where it would be unlikely that more than one or two plays a season would be new plays) more than 98% of the work considered will be rejected. Some of that work will be good work that simply does not fit the mission or needs of the theater. I suspect that if you were able to poll the small percentage of submitting playwrights who end up in relationships with a specific theater they would virtually all say that they encountered literary managers who cared, some of whom they may even have had “love fests” with. But the question is, what should the literary manager do with his time if his or her responsibility to his job is to read perhaps 150 or more plays a year? In my tenure at InterAct it was my goal to write a personal letter in response to every query and submission, but despite my best intentions, it did not always happen in a timely fashion or sometimes at all. It didn’t happen because the higher priority was having and maintaining relationships with playwrights whose work we were going to pursue . Other things also took precedence. Reading took precedence. Talking to my AD to advocate for the new plays I wanted to see our theater produce took precedence. Writing letters to playwrights we were rejecting but whose future work we wanted to see took precedence. These things take time away from other things. These are simply the facts of life in the economy of understaffed small and even larger theaters. As hard as it might be for a playwright to see no response as no, it may very likely be that. But the fact of no response does not mean the LM doesn’t care. In fact, the LM probably cares a lot, is probably doing her or his job by building relationships with the playwrights to whom the company has said yes. As someone who has been on both sides of the literary manager table, as sending playwright and as receiving LM, I would suggest that playwrights do two things if they do not hear about a play in a timely (six months to a year) fashion. First, write an email or note to the LM and ask if the play is still in consideration. If there is no response to this, move on. As much as we would all like to have our work done by every theater we send it to, that is not going to happen. But I am relatively assured by both my experience as a playwright and my experience as a literary manager, that if a company wants to do a playwright’s work, that company’s literary manager will find the playwright, and work to enter into a productive relationship. In other words, will respond professionally and with “care.” Finally, the fact that a playwright has had positive “caring” responses from some literary managers does not mean that the ones he or she has not heard from do not care. That conclusion would be spurious and unfair, and would ignore the realities of the new play producing world.
Larry Loebell, Playwright and Dramaturg
Former Literary Manager, InterAct Theater Company, Philadelphia, PA