In mid-August of 2023, I’ve was incredibly fortunate to attend the La MaMa Umbria International Playwright Retreat. For ten days, 18 brilliant playwrights and I stayed in a breathtaking villa in Spoleto, Italy. Our guest instructor, Chay Yew, led us through various writing prompts, imagination exercises, and thought starters to help us craft our writing.
To say I was intimidated by this talented group of people is an understatement. I was terrified. I was sure my attendance in the program had to be a mistake. I am a middle-class, paycheck-to-paycheck girl from the southside of Chicago. People like me don’t “go to the beautiful Italian countryside” to “reset” and “find inspiration.”
Looking around the room at my fellow writers – artists you should be following because their writing will blow up one day – I was amazed by their questions about the state of the theatre industry and their uncertainty about the future of new play development.
Between the writer’s strike, the rise of A.I., and the pandemic’s decimation of many theatrical institutions, we all came in with a similar question for Chay and each other: How do we and our new plays survive?
We all shared career paths, trajectories, tips & tricks, connections, how-to’s, do’s & don’ts, failures and successes. We searched for a formula to crack the code on the evolving new play development landscape. By the end of the retreat, what I discovered was not a “one-size-fits-all” formula. Instead, I needed to shift my perception of myself and place myself in the driver’s seat of my playwriting career – not a passenger waiting for a theatre to pick me up.
3 Ways To Find New Play Development Opportunities
We will all come across ensembles, theatres, and institutions that value our plays and us as writers. These places are our homes. No matter how big a budget or small a black box, these theatres want to nurture our voices. Stay with them and invest in them. Their admiration is faithful.
Stop playing the game
This phrase was heresy to me. It was counterintuitive to everything the new play development industry taught me. I needed to network, email, set up coffee dates, submit, submit, submit. No matter how many times the institution rejects us, JUST KEEP SUBMITTING!
Sure, you can continue to do all those things. Maybe they’ll work. But the idea is not to let the game – the hustle – control you. Don’t make it your focus to the point of burnout. Submit, network, and meet for coffee, but never let the game change your writer’s voice. If a theatre rejects you, move on. If a theatre accepts you, then leverage the opportunity. But remember, some institutions’ admiration of your work is fleeting. When the gig is over, move on. Your focus must be on developing your writing and your voice.
Find homes for your plays
We will all come across ensembles, theatres, and institutions that value our plays and us as writers. These places are our homes. No matter how big a budget or small a black box, these theatres want to nurture our voices. Stay with them and invest in them. Their admiration is faithful.
Advocate for each other
Once you find your theatre(s), cultivate relationships with the individual artists. Promote their work and advocate for their writing. Share social posts, tell friends, write reviews, and collaborate on projects. Whatever you would like to see done for your writing, do for them.