As you’re reading this report, it will be December, beginning of the holidays and winter gray skies will be covering Pittsburgh for the next three months. But right now, it’s a beautiful blue sky September day, heralding a sense of transition and promise of change that always comes with this time of year. For the incoming graduate playwriting students at Carnegie-Mellon University, the change comes in the form of Rob Handel, playwright/teacher/instigator, founder and managing director of 13P and now heading up Carnegie-Mellon’s Dramatic Writing program. What’s particularly exciting about Handel’s arrival is not only the new energy and direction he promises to bring to the program, but the interest he has in the community and what Pittsburgh playwrights can learn from his philosophy of writing and producing plays.
“I’m a playwright, but I was always more than just a playwright,” he begins, describing his background in fundraising and how he came to be managing director for 13P, “I like to make things happen.” 13P developed after a group of playwrights Handel knew from the O’Neill Theater Conference got together to complain as playwrights do (“we were whining”) about the lack of production opportunity in New York. Along with encouragement from his wife, poet and teacher Joy Katz, “to be more of a positive force in the world,” Handel and his group decided they wouldn’t “develop plays” instead, they’d “produce them.” (For more information on 13P see the Jul/Aug 2009 issue of The Dramatist or go to www.13P.com)
Handel demonstrates an alternative model: instead of an NEA grant for a reading series, how about a grant to do good cheap productions, so people would see they were good, helping many of these productions move to more visible and prestigious theatres. For playwrights who live in a city such as Pittsburgh where local theatres don’t widely produce their own playwrights, Handel’s idea is instructive. First bit of advice: hire a producer, second, hire a fundraiser, then allow the playwrights, while supporting each other by coming to each production, to otherwise just be playwrights.
Since the last of the thirteen playwrights will be produced in 2011, Handel was looking for the next opportunity to steer the course of American Theatre and “the best way to do that is to help guide future playwrights.” Handel wants to create more opportunities for playwrights to collaborate with other theatre artists while encouraging them to be more ambitious and daring in their writing. In his classes he focuses on formal issues like structure and “the mechanics of communication” rather than content. He also believes it’s important to teach students about the world they are in and where their plays belong in it. Are you writing plays for the regional theatre, or do you take a “rock n roll approach” to making theatre? Once you decide where you belong, then you need to learn how to make that happen.
Departing from the usual profile for people in this job, Handel is setting down some roots. He’s brought his family with him and bought a house in Point Breeze. Handel thinks it’s an exciting time for new writers and he wants his students to “get out of their garrets” and into the world. Pittsburgh playwrights can learn from him too.
Pittsburgh
As you’re reading this report, it will be December, beginning of the holidays and winter gray skies will be covering Pittsburgh for the next three months. But right now, it’s a beautiful blue sky September day, heralding a sense of transition and promise of change that always comes with this time of year. For the incoming graduate playwriting students at Carnegie-Mellon University, the change comes in the form of Rob Handel, playwright/teacher/instigator, founder and managing director of 13P and now heading up Carnegie-Mellon’s Dramatic Writing program. What’s particularly exciting about Handel’s arrival is not only the new energy and direction he promises to bring to the program, but the interest he has in the community and what Pittsburgh playwrights can learn from his philosophy of writing and producing plays.
“I’m a playwright, but I was always more than just a playwright,” he begins, describing his background in fundraising and how he came to be managing director for 13P, “I like to make things happen.” 13P developed after a group of playwrights Handel knew from the O’Neill Theater Conference got together to complain as playwrights do (“we were whining”) about the lack of production opportunity in New York. Along with encouragement from his wife, poet and teacher Joy Katz, “to be more of a positive force in the world,” Handel and his group decided they wouldn’t “develop plays” instead, they’d “produce them.” (For more information on 13P see the Jul/Aug 2009 issue of The Dramatist or go to www.13P.com)
Handel demonstrates an alternative model: instead of an NEA grant for a reading series, how about a grant to do good cheap productions, so people would see they were good, helping many of these productions move to more visible and prestigious theatres. For playwrights who live in a city such as Pittsburgh where local theatres don’t widely produce their own playwrights, Handel’s idea is instructive. First bit of advice: hire a producer, second, hire a fundraiser, then allow the playwrights, while supporting each other by coming to each production, to otherwise just be playwrights.
Since the last of the thirteen playwrights will be produced in 2011, Handel was looking for the next opportunity to steer the course of American Theatre and “the best way to do that is to help guide future playwrights.” Handel wants to create more opportunities for playwrights to collaborate with other theatre artists while encouraging them to be more ambitious and daring in their writing. In his classes he focuses on formal issues like structure and “the mechanics of communication” rather than content. He also believes it’s important to teach students about the world they are in and where their plays belong in it. Are you writing plays for the regional theatre, or do you take a “rock n roll approach” to making theatre? Once you decide where you belong, then you need to learn how to make that happen.
Departing from the usual profile for people in this job, Handel is setting down some roots. He’s brought his family with him and bought a house in Point Breeze. Handel thinks it’s an exciting time for new writers and he wants his students to “get out of their garrets” and into the world. Pittsburgh playwrights can learn from him too.
tryan@dramatistsguild.com