Not long ago I submitted a play to a development program that was offering playwrights  an in-depth development opportunity. I won’t name names, because I know and have worked with several of the people who run the program, but the rather annoying way in which I learned that my play hadn’t been selected has prompted me to share a few thoughts.
Before I continue, however, I feel as if I have to offer a few platitudes. Namely: I know this is a tough business, and I’m quite accustomed to the attendant disappointment. I try to learn from the rejections I receive—which, I should add, are frequently very positive—and also to avoid taking them too personally, because it’s very rarely an assessment of the quality of my work; there are just too many good scripts for too few opportunities. So none of this is sour grapes.
Having said that, here’s how I learned that my play hadn’t been selected: one of the other playwrights I was competing against, a friend of mine, announced his good news on Facebook. I heard, in other words, through a status update.
In another instance, I learned that a play I’d written hadn’t been selected for a similar development program by seeing, again on Facebook, that the development organization was promoting the four plays it did select… and in this case, the people running the program are friends of mine: people I’ve collaborated with before. They had told me at intermittent times during their evaluation process that they were still considering my work—not according to their announced schedule, which they completely missed, but when we happened to be chatting… on Facebook.
This, needless to say, isn’t good enough.
The process of submitting work should be, I believe, formal: a playwright shares a play, it gets considered the same way all the submissions are considered, and then that playwright is notified about the results. Notification, too, should be formal: first the winner(s) are contacted, but they’re asked to keep the good news quiet; then the losers are notified, in whatever way is appropriate; then the theater makes a public announcement; then the selected playwrights can crow all they like.
Social media, however, invites a less formal variety of communication… but it’s just not appropriate. I caution the theaters who are engaging in social networks—which they should all be doing—to do so with respect. We’ll all be happier for it.
I concur. As an actor in college, it always infuriated me when my colleagues would announce the cast before I had a chance to see the cast list. Part of the anticipation is scanning that cast list to see your name listed (or not, as the case maybe), and that magic is lost when you find out you weren’t cast because someone crowed about it on Facebook.
This is the unfortunate consequence of living in an age where information travels at ridiculous speeds. Still, I imagine that it is far harder to learn of a rejection through someone else other than the person who you submitted work to.
That’s precisely the problem. A submission and its attendant response should be considered a represetation of the theater’s/organization’s brand. If they don’t communicate well (and respectfully) on that front, how are they expected to communicate as creative partners?
As someone who offers roles to actors for a theatre company, I know exactly what you’re talking about. I recently offered a role to a person, who immediately posted it on Facebook, and then I got an extremely long email literally 10 minutes later from someone who was complaining that neither of his friends got cast in the part. I have learned a lesson about asking people to keep the news secret until given the OK by us.
I’ve been on the rejection end of a Facebook status myself, and I’ve also mishandled the rejection/casting process from the producer side (though never by posting a hiring online first). I like to think that we’re all learning in this, but it definitely requires a conscious effort when our online lives so closely mix with our professional and personal lives. There’s a particularly steep learning curve in the theatre world, which has never held the same strict codes of behavior as the corporate world, for example. You would NEVER think to post the candidate who wins an office job before notifying the candidates who were passed over, but in the theatre we often don’t tell people they didn’t get a job at all. How many actors have thought “oh, I guess I wasn’t cast” because they didn’t hear anything? Maybe if we took on some of the practices of the corporate world (just a few, mind you), these things would never happen.
I don’t think this problem of social media and rejection is only within theater and playwrighting realms. The strange thing to me is that with the simplicity and ease of email, you’d think editors, agents, and programs could be more professional and 21st century in their procedures. I don’t mind a form rejection – like the little slips of paper I’ve often received in the snail mail – so how hard is it to create a list/group of all entrants or applicants and then send the form reject when the time comes, thus avoiding the problem that the writers find out about their rejection status from someone else’s FB status? I embrace the process of submission and rejection – but I am bewildered by the many times I have never even received the former after my submission (and I’m not talking about queries here, but where people have actually asked to read my work, or, worse yet, had me pay them for it, as in a book contest). Really, I am bewildered and agree with your comment that both ends of the spectrum – writers and the receiving end – need to be formal and professional.
Good point. Honestly, I think there’s more than a little we can learn from the corporate world (and vice versa, mind you). But in this instance, what would seem to be required would be a good dose of common sense and a healthy dollop of courtesy.
I agree — technology should be streamlining these processes, as I’ve written about a good bit on 2AM Theatre (see http://www.2amtheatre.com/2010/06/30/theater-and-disruptive-technology/) — it’s really not that hard.
There are some instances where theaters say up front that they won’t be replying to people making submissions — they’ll just be announcing the winners on such-and-such a date. (This wasn’t the case in either of the examples I gave in my post.) While I think that’s a horribly lame cop-out, forewarned is forearmed, and that’s at least a clear promise… which is really all anyone’s asking for. How hard is it to make a promise and live up to it? Harder, sadly, that it seems.
That’s definitely an important step. You should ask for silence until the appropriate time. But people receiving the good news should also be savvy enough to ASK whether it’s okay to make an announcement, or to defer doing so until the way is obviously clear. We should all be able to act like adults without being reminded to do so. Or am I asking for too much?