My post inviting theaters to commission me to adapt O Pioneers! has me thinking: what if every production in America was of a commissioned play?
What if every play was written with the expectation of production… for a given audience… in collaboration with all the resources a theater could bring to bear to make it sing?
What would the drawbacks be?
I can imagine some playwrights being concerned that they’d never get to write the plays they want to write… but what if you didn’t accept any commissions you weren’t interested in?
Would playwriting feel like work made-for-hire… or would it feel like work made with others?
Would it feel to playwrights like losing  independence… or like gaining collaborators and community?
Let’s assume for the moment that it wouldn’t be ALL productions, but rather MOST productions that came from commissions… wouldn’t that be better than what we have now?
Imagine that I could wave a wand and make, say, 80% of all productions everywhere in the country world premieres of commissioned work, leaving 15% for second/third productions and 5% for chestnuts and Shakespeare—wouldn’t that mean there’d be more production opportunities for us, and more of us able to live outside of New York/Chicago/LA, and more diverse voices in America?
How is that not good? (At least in some ways.)
I’m not asking, to be clear, whether it would be good for audiences… though I genuinely think it would be.
I’m also not asking, mind you, whether it would be good for other theater practitioners… though I hope it would be at least a mixed blessing.
I’m just asking why we wouldn’t want that—and I’d like to know your answer.
at first, I read this and thought, “oh God, I’d LOVE this.” then I stopped and thought, “WOULD I love this?” I’m still undecided.
I have some concerns about deadlines. sometimes plays take their damn time getting ready, so you could end up either not meeting deadline, or having a play produced that still needs a lot of work. I’m a big, big supporter of putting plays up before they’re perfect, because it seems the best way to REALLY find out what does/doesn’t work, and if you wait for perfection then nothing ever goes up. but if only 15% of productions are reserved for 2nd and 3rd productions, then you get a world premiere of a not-quite-there-yet play, and then much less chance of being able to put it up again once it’s better.
also, if it’s all commissions, then it’s all politics. it’s all politics anyway, but who’s going to get most of these commissions, or the highest-paying ones? Albee. Mamet. people with reputations. people whose name alone will supposedly sell tickets, since the play itself might not, since it doesn’t exist yet.
if a full 80% of the country were commissioning plays, obviously more than just the biggest bigwigs will get commissions simply because there aren’t enough of them to go around, but the problem remains: no one is going to commission a playwright they haven’t heard of. you have to already have been produced to get produced. again, this is already the case somewhat, but your equation leaves no room for someone to get a first production in any other way besides commission, and therefore acquire a reputation by which they might seem like a desirable person TO commission.
also, great writers can write bad plays. so if you commission the play and it’s bad, you have to do it because you commissioned it. again, this already happens, but it would happen more.
on the other hand… it would show America’s playwrights, “we value you. we want to hire you. we have faith in you. we’re going to give you an opportunity to do what you love and then produce you.”
it would put a lot more playwrights to work.
it would allow more new work to be seen.
it would allow us to know from the start that we’re getting paid for our work, rather than doing the work for free and praying someone pays us for it after the fact.
these are all great things.
so, I’m torn. but curious to hear what other people have to say.
I love this response.
Deadlines: you know, the best commission I ever had was from a theater that let me choose my own deadline, the idea being that if I chose it, I’d be more likely to be able to hit it… and I did, without any pressure. I know that wouldn’t work for some people, but it sure helped me.
As for putting up plays that aren’t perfect, well… who’s to say that as part of the development process with the theater, you wouldn’t do a sort of workshop production first, followed by a full-on production? Plus, if you had development resources — regular readings, in front of audiences, and time to workshop and work with dramaturgs — then a first draft would be better than most first drafts are.
I don’t actually think that only Mamet and Albee (and Kushner and Ruhl, etc.) would get all the world’s commissions. How many plays can one playwright write in a year, after all? Let’s assume that number is, on average, two. (That’s high for me.) With 10,000 playwrights in America, that’s 20,000 new plays a year. How many productions of plays are there are year? In DC, I bet we have 400 or so. Are there 25,000 total across the country? That would get us to 80%, if 20,000 of the 25,000 were new productions. That’d leave 4,000 for second productions and 1,000 for Shakespeare. (1,000 seems like enough — at least for me — for Shakespeare.)
Oh, I know my math is off — it’s all guess work — but you see where I’m going.
Your math, however, that prevents anyone who’s never been produced from getting produced, I would solve thusly: let all college productions be new playwrights’ work. Then we’d have sort of a minor leagues.
Well, I guess that wouldn’t work, either. So perhaps you’ve identified a flaw. Sigh… nothing is perfect.
Like you, though, I want to know what others have to say…