This Playwright's To Do List

So, elsewhere on the web there have been assertions that playwrights are disconnected from their communities and the nuts and bolts of theater-making. This may be true in some cases, but not amongst the majority of playwrights that I know who work hard to develop and maintain collaborative relationships and embrace opportunities to make locale/company specific theater.

Thinking personally about what I'm up to...

~ Directing/Creating a play with young people at a local youth theater to teach them about all aspects of making theater through a specific project.

~ A commission with an Independent Theater I've collaborated with before.

~ Writing a play for a group of local teenagers to perform as their final senior project with a local youth theater.

~ A play about agricultural policy and the disappearing "middle" in America.

~ A play about delusions, theater and death.

~ A play about Emma Goldman, American Anarchist and Art-lover.

~ Participating in two writing groups and one theater-making group on a regular basis.

~ Teaching Artist work as it comes up.

~ reading scripts for an independent theater company, as a dramaturge for playwrights, and for myself to know what's going on out there on the page.

~ attending 4 - 10 performances a month.

~ a constant stream of applications, queries, updating and staying on the look out for opportunities for the plays already written to find their ways in the world.

And most recently wrote two site-specific plays for Independent Theater companies, attended rehearsals and collaborated with the actors and directors involved.

There are times I've been an actor, a director and a producer - as well as a light board op, sound op, stage manager, assistant stage manager, costume assistant, backstage crew, electrician, grant writer, publicist, etc. etc. But now the title of Playwright focuses my work for myself, and hopefully indicates to others that I create theater - on the page, in the room, and in front of an audience.