What do you not know about playwriting?
In the first season of this podcast, we featured the eight members of the 2016 Company One PlayLab Unit. We were all what you might term “Early Career Playwrights”. Regardless of age, we had yet to become playwrights who had been sought out by companies to produce. Part of the impetus of podcast at the beginning was to give a platform to a group of playwrights who had been struggling to break through in their careers.
In the second season of this podcast, we’ve featured some playwrights at a more advanced stage of their careers. We’ve had Artistic Directors, fellowship winners, playwrights with long and admirable track records. Those conversations have been rewarding and education to be sure. However, we don’t want to forget about the plight of the early career playwright.
As we’ve discussed on the podcast many times, there is no roadmap for an early career playwright. No foolproof “how to” that answers your basic questions of how to advance your career. Do you need an agent? How do you get one? How do you get a theatre’s attention? How do you find a theatre that “gets” you? What does a dramaturg do? Do I need to get an MFA? It’s a frustration that playwrights feel.
As a way to address these questions, and a way to remember the roots of this podcast, we’re holding this two part special we’re calling the Early Career Playwright Special. Instead of our normal format, we invited four early career playwrights to the podcast, David Fristrom, Jackie Martin, James Wilkinson, and Sharisse Zeroonian. We asked them each to come with one burning question they had about the business of playwriting. We received a wide range of topics to discuss. To answer their questions, we invited a panel of local theatre luminaries. veteran playwright Patrick Gabridge, who was featured in the last episode; Company One’s Director of New Work Ilana Brownstein, and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre Kate Snodgrass. In the first episode, they help answer the playwrights’ burning questions.
In the second part, which will be posted in June, the expert panels will offer one piece of advice they have from their vantage points. What are the things that early career playwrights don’t even know that they do not know? The answers given may surprise you. We round off the discussion by sharing vital information about the Boston new play scene, including the Boston Playwriting Resources Cheat Sheet I compiled.
We hope that this episode becomes an invaluable resource for playwrights in Boston and beyond. We had a fantastic conversation which any playwright will learn something from. I hope people listen to every episode of the podcast, but in particular every theatre person should make it a point to listen to this episode. It’s a lot of information that I wish I had 15 years ago, encapsulated in two one-hour long episodes.
Mark it on your calendar: May 1 for part one, June 5 for part two.
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