Dramatic Saturation

In a given year, how many books do you buy? Ten? Maybe twenty? Yet, there are thousands of books from which to choose. So, how do you select your ten or twenty? Are they the “best” books, whatever that means? Probably not. They may be good or you expect they will be, otherwise you wouldn’t bother buying them. But, there are many books you don’t choose that are as good or better on purely objective grounds. So, the factors that cause you and the rest of us to select particular books are more peculiar and perhaps quite personal.

We may be fascinated by a subject. We may like the author. Or maybe the book has been recommended by a friend. The point is that, when buying a book, we don’t execute a structured decision-making process in which the thousands of options from which we can choose are quantitatively assessed, scored, and compared on the basis of some external standard of quality. It's a more personal and subjective process in which high quality may be a necessary condition for a book to be chosen, but it's far from a sufficient one.

The same is true of artistic directors choosing the five or six plays that make up their theatres' seasons. For playwrights who hope their plays will be among the chosen, this means that critical determining factors are probably unknowable, unpredictable, and nearly random. We can make sure the plays we submit conform to a theatre’s mission statement and vaguely resemble other plays the theatre has produced. We can also make sure that our plays’ casting and staging requirements are within the theatre’s wherewithal. But, even after taking those steps, there remain thousands of other scripts that meet these minimal requirements. And, if one of them happens to be set in 18th century Wales, a subject in which the artistic director has a fascination, and ours does not, we’re screwed.

The point is that, however good we make our plays and however much we try to align their characteristics with the presumed tastes and interests of the theatres to which we submit, there will always remain a huge margin for whimsy, serendipity, and randomness over which we have no control. In other words, quality can get only get us so close and, after that, having a play chosen for production is largely a game of chance.

The most frequently recommended strategy to improve our odds in this game of chance is to supplement our writing of good plays with efforts to ingratiate ourselves to those who have influence over what is produced. We’re told to donate or, better yet, volunteer our services to a targeted theatre. Take tickets, build sets, usher, do . . . well . . . anything to make ourselves known and liked. Although, I wonder if it wouldn’t work just as well or better to get the theatre’s artistic director drunk and snap some compromising pictures.

The problem with this strategy is that, aside from being distasteful and having NOTHING to do with writing good plays, it can be impractical. We may live in places that are distant from theatres. We may have lives outside of theatre – families, jobs, and other responsibilities – that consume the time we do not spend writing plays. And, if the scolds say to us, “Then, you just don’t care enough or want it badly enough”, I have to reply that those who try to substitute martyrdom for talent and cronyism for quality are present in every profession and rarely are they or the professions better for it.

Fortunately, there is another strategy that holds promise by embracing the randomness of play selection. Simple mathematics tells us that, when a situation is fraught with randomness, the best response is to improve the odds by multiplying one's chances. If only one play in a hundred submissions is chosen, then I have a better chance if I've made five of those submissions than if I've made only one.

To test this theory, I am now 82 days into a program of maximizing the number of chances for my plays to be chosen. I have been and will continue to submit plays at a rate of one –a-day for an entire year . . . at least 365 submissions in all to professional theatres, specifically the most prominent of those that don’t throw up the wall of “agent only” submission policies.

This does not mean that I'm being any less vigilant about matching my plays -- there are five that I'm promoting -- to theaters' specific needs and interests. In fact, because in most cases my submissions are being made to people who've never heard of me, I'm more careful than ever to make sure my submissions conform to stated requirements and that I call out the specific reasons why the play I'm submitting should resonate with the theatre's audience and help fulfill the company's artistic and commercial goals.

Whether my approach will work remains to be seen, but the initial results are encouraging. In the first eleven weeks, two LORT theaters have requested full scripts of my plays and the literary manager of a New Play Network theatre has forwarded one of my plays to the theatre’s artistic director with a recommendation for production. The artistic directors of three other Equity theaters have asked me to send full scripts. Six theatres have rejected my submissions outright. The rest have either not been heard from or have merely sent acknowledgements of my submissions.

Of course, there is not yet a single commitment to produce. But, given that such decisions are typically made over the course of months, that’s not surprising since I’m less than three months into the endeavor.

I acknowledge that my strategy is radical, but it has the virtue of being viable for just about any playwright who believes he has written one or more worthy plays. In fact, it’s remarkable how efficient I’ve become in packaging submissions. Whether I'm making a simple inquiry or mailing a full script, rarely does it take more than fifteen to forty-five minutes to identify a theatre that should be receptive, assemble the materials either electronically or as hard copy, and send. Fifteen to forty-five minutes is not an inconsequential amount of time and it takes away from writing. However, at a total three and a half hours a week, my bet is that it represents, for me, the best possible combination of efficiency and productivity. In any case, I’ll find out.