How do these drastic cuts affect South Florida playwrights?

They will directly affect the theatres that produce our work. In the past season and the upcoming season, many local playwrights will be or have been produced by local theatres, including Chris Demos-Brown at Florida Stage, Michelle Rosenfarb at New Theatre, and Terry Lawrence at The Women’s Theatre Project. Massive arts funding cuts will mean that theatres will have to reduce their budgets – and could mean that theatres take on less “unknown,” local playwrights. It also means less productions, smaller casts, and smaller shows.

Massive budget cuts also affect playwrights who aren’t getting their work produced currently by our local theatres. Other great opportunities for playwrights will diminish or disappear entirely. Broward County has a great grant program for individual artists. If you want to self-produce, you can write a min-grant for up to $5,000 for your project, if you are a Broward County resident. If the prospect of self-producing sounds too intimidating at first, Broward County Cultural Division offers a great program called Artist As Entrepreneur, teaching artists of all stripes, how to run their own arts business and become their own best advocate. This program is available to all South Florida residents, and when I participated, there were many people there from Palm Beach and Miami Dade Counties.

In Miami Dade County, one of the best programs for playwrights may disappear entirely. The Playwright Development Program (formerly Downstage Miami) is a grant based program that brings down a master playwright for three weekends of master classes over the course of a year. It’s a great program that focuses on the importance of new work, and was designed to create a base of successful Miami playwrights. Unfortunately, it is one of the many programs that would be completely cut if the Miami Dade County Commission decides to implement the $11 million arts cuts.

While the decisions will have been made for 2009-2010 by the time you’ve read this, consider the importance of local grant funding for your artistic opportunities when the call for action comes around again. Call and write your commissioners. Even though playwrights start the process alone, we’re in a symbiotic relationship with our communities.

aarthur@dramatistsguild.com

Summer is finally here.

In Miami, that signals two things – oppressive humidity that won’t let up until at least October and City Theatre’s Summer Shorts Festival.

Summer Shorts, billed as America’s Short Play Festival, is a festival of 24 short plays divided into three separate performances: the traditional “Signature Shorts,” the raunchy, late-night “Undershorts,” and “Shorts 4 Kids.” The 2009 Festival includes 11 world premieres, including plays from four South Florida based playwrights: Michael McKeever, Christopher Demos-Brown, Marco Ramirez and Andrew Rosendorf.

Marco Ramirez, who was previously the literary manager of City Theatre before starting graduate work at Julliard, says “It’s very true to the word “Festival.” It’s about the work – yes – but it’s also about a sense of community, and a sense of celebration, that you don’t find in a regular theatre doing a regular season of work.”

This year Guild playwrights can play a major role in that Festival atmosphere. Stuart Meltzer, the Artistic Director of City Theatre, has invited the Dramatist Guild back for another Town Hall Meeting on Saturday June 13 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. Gary Garrison will be coming down from the Guild offices in New York to lead a panel discussion of major artistic directors and the role new work plays in their artistic visions. After the Town Hall Meeting, Guild members are invited to a discounted performance of Signature Shorts and Undershorts. More details will be sent out to South Florida Membership as they are known.

As your local regional representative, I hope you take part not only in the Town Hall Meeting but by taking the time to see the shorts. Christopher Demos-Brown says, “City Theatre is probably the best short play venue in the country – I don’t know that many people in South Florida realize we have this great thing here.”

While the shorts have been chosen for this year, submissions are open for next year’s festival as well as for the National Minute Play Contest, which City Theatre co-sponsors with the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville. All short plays read by one theatre, will also be read and considered by the other. Meltzer is open to a variety of pieces: from the really “naughty” for Undershorts to the adorable for “Shorts 4 Kids.”

Marco Ramirez, who has had work in multiple festivals, offers advice, “No matter what you do, you know your stuff is going to get smashed up against other writers’ work, so I think there’s a general feeling like you really HAVE to push any creative muscles you’ve got to the limit. It’s not about any sense of competition between pieces; it’s just about making sure every piece has a distinct sense of form. It’s kind of like asking yourself “what’s the ten-minute play that no one else can/will write?” and then writing THAT play.”

While you do have to be extremely creative, in some ways, there are fewer limitations for plays in the Summer Shorts Festival. Each play pulls from the working troupe of six actors. Demos-Brown has a one-line, walk on role; an indulgence that he wouldn’t be able to get away with in a production of a full length play.

I hope you attend our Town Hall Meeting on June 13^th, and stick around for the Festival afterwards. It will be a great way to start exploring and creating your own ten minute plays to submit for next year’s festival.

aarthur@dramatistsguild.com

According to their website, Florida Stage is “the southeast’s largest theatre devoted to producing exclusively new and developing work.” Their 2008-2009 season includes four world premeries, including three plays workshopped at their 1st Stage New Play Festival: William Mastrosimone’s Dirty Business, Catherine Trieschmann’s The Bridegroom of Blowing Rock, and Steven Dietz’s Yankee Tavern.
I had the opportunity to briefly interview Artistic Associate Jonathan Wemette about what sort of work interests the theatre.

Q. Describe the type of play that fits Florida Stage.
Jonathan Wemette: It has to be new. We sometimes do second, third, even fourth productions, but our passion is for world premieres. We look for plays that have a topical relevance…We’re also interested in lighter fare to balance out the heavy drama, including musicals (bio-musicals are popular with our audience) and the occasional silly comedy. Then there are the nitty-gritty details about fitting the play into our space: we have a wonderfully intimate 258-seat house, so our casts can’t get much bigger than six or seven actors, and we rarely do anything that requires, say, aerial acrobatics.
Q. What sort of plays excite you?
Wemette: I have a deep appreciation for tight plots and for poetic language that comes out of a specific setting. Catherine Trieschmann’s The Bridegroom of Blowing Rock is a wonderful example. I also enjoy a healthy amount of quirk, especially if it reveals something deeper, like in Deborah Zoe Laufer’s End Days. I enjoy it when a play feels organic through and through, when it’s so alive that it can surprise me without cheating. The plays of Barton Bishop are endlessly surprising but totally consistent within their own worlds.

Q. Explain your role within the new play development process at Florida Stage
Wemette: My first role is as an advocate for scripts that I not only believe in, but believe are right for Florida Stage. When rehearsals begin, I also try to be a research resource for actors, helping them dig into the world of the play. When the play nears production, I take on another role as a channel between the production and the audience. I create materials for our lobby, program and website that enhance our audience’s experience of the play and gives them some sense of the play’s development process.

Q. What is the best way to submit materials to Florida Stage?
At the moment, we’re only accepting plays from playwrights with representation. Until recently, we had a policy of accepting unsolicited inquiries, but a change in our staff unfortunately made processing that many submissions nearly impossible. We eagerly welcome all submissions from agents, and we’re always on the lookout for plays through other channels – at reading festivals, from our colleagues at other theatres, etc.

aarthur@dramatistsguild.com