1. The Cost of Fringe Tickets
2. Playwrights Code of Ethics
3. DC Playwrights
4. The 2012-13 DC Theater Season: An Analysis
5. Playwrights Wish List
6. Jobs for Playwrights
7. The State of (New) Play in DC, Part I
8. How the Universe Works
9. New Play Debate
10. How to Reinvigorate Theater in America

As I’ve been considering the the top ten, I’ve noted that while not everything on it is in some way controversial — the list of DC playwrights, for example, is really just a list — a great deal of it did spark some earnest conversation. Most of the time, I have to confess, I felt successful in doing that: my hope is to get people talking. Other times, however, I feel as if I’ve courted controversy a bit too closely, and it hasn’t been easy. I’m still never really sure what sort of balance to strike.

I don’t expect to have all the answers, of course. I’ve been blogging (here and elsewhere) for more than a decade now, and I feel like I still have a great deal to experiment with and learn from. But I will keep trying to “convene conversations,” as Ari Roth (I think) said in reference to this blog. And I thank you all for your time, attention, participation, and earnest engagement. You mean the world to me.

I cannot seem to let go of the fact that after almost two and a half centuries, the publication of print editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica will cease. I’m old enough to have actually used volumes of that esteemed reference work many times throughout my educational history. I thought it was cool; intimidating, but cool. The definitive sum total of human knowledge, all in one place? Of course, now I understand how foolhardy a notion it was that one body of elitist individuals could possibly achieve such a goal, but at the time? Man!

It’s worth noting that while the print publication of “the Britannica,” as many of us (pretentiously) called it, is going to cease, the online edition continues to be available, though it has long since been lapped by Wikipedia. I love Wikipedia. Actually, I love the idea of it (not sold on the reality all the time): that the curating and cultivation and maintenance of the great storehouse of human knowledge might be democratized. Yes, there’s still a role to be played by scholars and experts, but that role is balanced by the swarming and multitudinous perspectives of the vox populi. It floats my boat big time.

I also think the move from Britannica to Wikipedia might be emblematic of a broader national shift that’s about to begin, if it hasn’t already: from singular institutions controlling and “owning” culture to collectively-created, decentralized cultural centers that might resemble what we have on the surface, but that will operate at a deeper level in very different ways. If that’s true — and my gut tells me it is, but I don’t know — then I have to ask: what would theater look like in a post-Britannica, Wikipedia world?

For example, what does the role of an artistic director become? When she doesn’t get to actually choose a season, for example (again, I’m speculating here) — when her job is simply to create and sustain a platform for others’ creativity — what does she do? What is a theater, furthermore, if it doesn’t have a fixed season? I mean, that’s how I think of the Britannica: a fixed “season” of knowledge that only gets updated every so often. Wikipedia changes every minute, by contrast: what would that rate of development mean for a theater? Each show developing on its own time-table, “launching” whenever it’s ready? Maybe.

The truth is, I don’t think we know precisely what changes will be coming. I don’t think the good folks at Britannica knew what was coming when Wikipedia first appeared on the scene, either. I bet they didn’t feel the least bit threatened, but the truth is that their raison d’etre was shortly going to be radically revolutionized. This is the same thing that happened to the people who sold classified ads when Craigslist came along, incidentally. They were dead before they knew who their competitors were.

So… is a similar transformation about to affect the lives of the folks who run our largest and most stable theatrical institutions? Are they all going to be doing something completely different in a decade or so? If so, do they even suspect it? Do they know where the change might be coming from, even? Do you?

I have one or two ideas, but I can’t quite articulate them yet: I’d rather hear from others. So… what do you think?

The submission model is broken. Let’s admit it. Let’s stop pretending it’s not. And let’s devote our energy to something more useful.

Please note the word “interim” in the above paragraph. As of the drafting of this initial analysis, only 20 of the region’s 80+ theaters have announced their seasons: a statistically significant (I believe) sample, but by no means a fully accurate one. Of particular importance: given that larger theaters tend to be more likely to announce their seasons earlier in the year — as well as the fact that some smaller companies do not announce any seasons at all — this analysis is a bit skewed toward bigger institutions, though it does include a very diverse cross-section. In any event, this analysis will be updated periodically to reflect new data as it becomes available — and eventually to provide, in retrospect, an accurate rear-view breakdown of the season.

Finally, before the numbers, a note about process. The data was compiled on a spreadsheet shared via Google docs. The primary contributors to the data were Gwydion Suilebhan and Gregg Henry, though the spreadsheet was also reviewed by several other members of the DC-Area Playwrights Group. Any errors that might be discovered, however, are my own responsibility.

Gender

• The first significant finding of the data: of the plays currently announced for the upcoming season, 70% were written by men, 22% were written by women, and 9% were devised by ensembles.
• In addition, there are five theaters producing no plays written by women: the Bay Theatre, Ford’s Theatre, Rep Stage, Round House, and the Shakespeare Theatre.
• Theaters with notably more balanced seasons include Arena Stage, Theater J, and Woolly Mammoth — though all three slightly favor plays written by men.
• The only theater with a genuinely balanced season consisting of more than three plays: Forum Theatre.
• Several smaller companies with one-, two-, or three-play seasons are also achieving gender balance as well.

Race

• Of the plays that have been announced to date for the upcoming season, 17% were written by playwrights of color.
• Theaters producing no plays by playwrights of color include: the Bay Theatre, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare Theatre, and Signature Theatre.
• The only theaters with notably more balanced seasons: Forum Theatre and Woolly Mammoth, both of which are at 50%.
• Of note: several theaters that are likely to exceed that percentage — Gala Hispanic, for example — have not yet announced their seasons.
• According to the 2010 Census, the population of Washington, DC is 38.5% white, 61.5% people of color. (I was unable to find a regional demographic breakdown.)

Geography

• Of the plays that have been announced to date for the upcoming season, 15% were written by DC-area residents or devised by DC-based ensembles.
• Theaters (with four-play or larger seasons) exceeding that percentage include Forum Theatre, Round House, Synetic, Theater J, and Woolly Mammoth.
• A few smaller companies with one-, two-, and three-play seasons have exceeded that percentage as well.
• Theaters producing no plays written by DC-area playwrights include Arena Stage, Bay Theatre, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, Ford’s Theatre, Rep Stage, Shakespeare Theatre, Signature Theatre, and Studio Theater.

Concluding Note

There are many different stories that can and (I hope) will be told about this analysis. I will be telling my own in the coming weeks (inspired by Polly Carl’s brilliant HowlRound essay), but only after others have had time to weigh in and a bit more data’s been gathered. In advance of that future blog post, though, I wanted to single out Theater J and Woolly Mammoth for a bit of praise, given that they’ve scored relatively highly in two of the above three analyses, and to level a heaping dose of kudos on Forum Theatre and its artistic director Michael Dove for having set the bar admirably high for 2012-13 and beyond. The community as a whole has a long way to go; if one season can be taken as any indication, however, Forum Theatre has already arrived.

I have the following creative projects in progress:

1. I’m writing a two-minute monologue for the My America project at Center Stage.
2. I’ve joined the amazing Dog & Pony ensemble for its next devised production.
3. I’m revising a full-length play for a significant (yet-to-be-announced) production in DC that opens this August.
4. I’m revising HOT & COLD for a second reading at Theater J this fall.
5. I’m developing a theater-for-one/audio play with banished? productions (potentially for this coming fall).
6. I’m in post-production on the first of a series of experimental films I’m making with Gabriel Walsh. (Continuing the series we started as part of the (Re)Acts project at Forum Theatre.
7. I’m heading to the Great Plains Theatre Conference to work on/workshop another full-length play for a week.

As if that all weren’t enough, I’m also producing or helping to produce several related events:

1. A playwright-actor Speed Dating event with the DC-Area Playwrights Group.
2. Two playwrights slams at the Page-to-Stage Festival, also with the DC-Area Playwrights Group.
3. A to-be-determined Dramatists Guild event at the Page-to-Stage Festival.

That’s a pretty full workload, right? I mean… on top of having a (half-time) job, being married, having a child, maintaining this blog, and so on. I should say no to anything else right? But what if a project I’ve been excited about for some time finally makes itself manifest? What do I do then? Because… that’s what just happened. And I’m really, really, really at a loss. I don’t honestly know what I’d be able to give up from the list above. I think the honest answer is: nothing.

I guess I’ll just have to find a way to make it work. And find other things to decline, when I can. (I recently gave up one of my blogging gigs — more on that soon — and turned down TWO others.) And of course… remember to consider myself lucky, too, to be involved in so many terrific things. I could have worse problems.

1. From whose perspective is the story told, a man’s or a woman’s?
2. Who directed the first production/workshop of the play?
3. How many male and female cast members does each play call for?

I thought at the time that it might be useful to revisit the analysis year after year and see whether I’ve made any progress… so, here we are.

My answer to the first question last year was that of the 12 full-length plays I’d completed, five were written from a male character’s perspective and two from a female character’s; the other five were ensemble pieces. I’m glad to be able to say that the one full-length I’ve completed in the past twelve months has shifted this balance in the right direction. The split is now 5-3-5, which is still two plays away from parity. Check back with me in 2014 and I might be all the way there! But if not… I’ll have this annual post to hold me accountable.

The second question was the source of my greatest success last time around: I was already at parity. And guess what? This year, I got one notch beyond parity! The workshop of my new full-length play, HOT & COLD, was directed by the estimable and talented Eleanor Holdridge, with whom I expect to work over and over again.

The third question was the one that stumped me last year: 32 roles for men, 27 for women. Given that I wrote three of each this past year, the numbers are now 35 to 30: a slightly better percentage (from 54.2% men down to 53.8%), but still a ways to go.

I wish I had something profound to say about all of this; I just don’t. I wish I could affect more than my small corner of the theatrical world; I don’t think I can, at least not appreciably. We still live in an era in which a prominent theater in DC can program a season of six plays written by men, all slated to be directed by men, including GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, a play that features nothing but roles for men. That kind of thing gets me down. It hurts us all, and we ought to be able to do better. It’s a shame that we don’t. (More soon on this subject: I’m working on an analysis of the entire DC theater ecosystem.)

Except… I think we can, and that belief keeps me going. So… playwrights — especially you men — have you taken a similar look at your own creative work? If not, why not? Why not do it right now? It’s only three questions, and things aren’t going to change until WE change them. Go on, run the numbers. If you’re feeling bold, post them in the comments. No, post them even if you aren’t feeling bold. In fact, let’s ALL make this an annual check-in. Every year, around the end of April/beginning of May, we’ll see how we’re doing, and vow to make progress, year after year, in whatever ways we can. Because we *can* do this! We have to do this! Are you with me?

You know that thing you do where you give us writing prompts? You tell playwrights they have to use a certain line, or a certain character name, or a certain prop, or all three of those things, or (as I recently experienced) a list of about a dozen completely different things? On top of having a demanding deadline? And often not knowing who’ll be available to play the roles you write?

That hurts. Please stop that. Thank you.

Let me elaborate.

I see you when you give out these prompts. You often have a barely-concealed giggle on your faces, like you take no small joy in making playwrights sing for their supper. You have many nice qualities; this is not your best quality.

When you don’t have that look, you often have a slightly different look, which resembles an apologetic grin: “Sorry to have to do this, but this is what everybody does, so… I have to do it, too.” But please, let me tell you: it doesn’t have to be like this.

Ask yourself what those prompts are for. Typically, they’re to ensure that we don’t give you something we already wrote when we’re supposed to be writing something new. But seriously: isn’t the honor system enough? Can’t you just, you know… trust us? The people you’ve decided to take on as creative collaborators? Who you’re already trusting to do good work for you? Call me crazy, but it just might work.

Some argue prompts like the ones I’ve described are meant to be inspiring… but (sorry) that’s just not how they work. If they were meant to be inspiring, you’d offer them to us as gifts: to be accepted or not, incorporated into our work or not, as we see fit. In my most recent experience with this sort of project, that’s how they were presented to me. Well, some of them were, and some weren’t… but I decided to be cavalier and treat them all as if they were gifts, and in the end, though I rejected most of them, the ones I did keep became the foundation of the work I created. That worked much more effectively than anything similar I’ve ever experienced before.

So… give us actual prompts — material to inspire us — not constraints. Set us free, please, and trust us. We’ll make you beautiful things, I promise.

Thank you!

Enjoy!

You might be surprised to learn that a YouTube search for “wheels on the bus” yields more than 13,000 results. If I’d thought about it before I looked, I might have expected a few hundred videos, or maybe even as many as a thousand. The real number continues to surprise me, though less and less so as I’ve explored the catalog. I don’t know how many of them I’ve watched at my son’s request–more than 100, to be certain, but fewer than 300–but I have clicked through pages and pages of search results. They seem to go on forever.

Although it’s a generally dismal musical field, there are a few exemplars that I’ve come to think of as my favorites. The Pete the Cat version has a fairly accomplished ska thing going on that I dug the first dozen or so times I listened to it. (Porter quickly grew to despise it; I think it was too loud for him.) I liked this rock anthem-ish version for a while, but Porter only wanted to hear it three or four times before he was bored, and whenever I encouraged him to choose that version afterward, he saw right through me. (If you just watched that last version and are wondering why I’d prefer such a thing, please watch another 45 or so versions and then tell me it doesn’t crack your top ten.) This version, which Porter loves, has Roger Daltrey in it, and seeing the former front man for The Who act goofy was a head trip for a day or two… but then it started to bother me. And that’s about it.

The rest of the field is composed largely of utter strangeness (a disturbing hipster Mr. Rogers-esque version, a Weirdly Smiling Mommy version, a trippy shroomed-out version), clips from a variety of children’s television programs (Barney etc.), and ESL learning tools. The ESL versions are generally Porter’s favorites, likely because he’s still learning English himself. I can barely stand to watch them. They’re maddening.

Why have Porter and I fallen down this particular music video rabbit hole? (The first such trap, I am led to understand by veteran parents, of what will surely be many.) I think there was an afternoon several months ago during which we sang the song together, then a brief need to distract him for some reason, which led to the bright idea to play him a video on my Droid, which in turn meant I had to decide what to search for. Wheels on the bus, I thought. He’ll like that. He sure as hell did.

I’ve been thinking a great deal about his “bus video” (as he calls them) viewing habits. Typically, he’ll ask to “watch a bus” at the end of the day, when he’s tired; he’s not actually asking to watch a single video, mind you, but a half-hour’s worth. (We never let him watch nearly that long, save for one regrettably necessary two-and-a-half-hour stint in the ER that nearly burned out my phone.) He’ll go four or five days without thinking about it, then two or three days in a row of asking to see them, and he tends to want to watch the same five or six videos over and over again during that span. Then he abandons those and makes us look more deeply into the search results to find new content. It’s like he’s on a quest to watch them all, or to find the apotheosis of the subject, or make himself into some kind of “Wheels on the Bus” scholar. I don’t understand it.

Let me say that again: I do not understand it. Like most parents in similar situations, I find it wearying, but as an artist who generally does whatever he can to avoid watching the same stories over and over again, I find it deeply frustrating. What would compel him to demand this experience so many times? Why does he crave it so much? (And believe me, the tears he sheds when I put away the phone or the iPad or shut the laptop? Oy.) I’m sure there’s a child development expert who can explain it to me; I’m too busy balancing being a father and husband and wage-earner and playwright and blogger and a thousand other things besides to figure it out. I just wish it would stop!

But it won’t stop, and being a father means I have to accept that. Fatherhood demands many similar things, in fact: it makes me challenge my most dearly-held beliefs and compromise my most avid and familiar practices. There’s no getting around it: I don’t get to live as I wish any more. Those days are largely over. And you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way. Because the thought that I might be trapped in some kind of rut, that I believe things and do things simply because some combination of genetics and experience have programmed me to believe them and do them, disturbs me even more than a few hundred “Wheels on the Bus” videos. My son’s demands on me are, really, a great and enlightening gift, as difficult as they can be. And I’m genuinely grateful for them.

Thank you, Porter! Happy second birthday!

And don’t drive angry!