A Staged Reading Refers to a Fully Realized Production, With an Audience.

Will Dunne is a playwright, scriptwriter, and teacher whose plays accept received many international, national, and local honors. I got to know him when I copyedited his book, The Dramatic Writer'due south Companion: Tools to Develop Characters, Cause Scenes, and Build Stories, for the University of Chicago Printing.

Will was one of those dream authors: he submitted an immaculate manuscript, quietly corrected my editing lapses, and indulged me when I challenged him to reduce Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to a haiku. (I would share information technology with you, but it contains a plot spoiler.)

A couple of times recently I was invited by playwright or director friends to attend staged readings of drafts of new plays. Both times, the audience was made up mainly of actors and writers, and afterward there was a rather intense postmortem, with a moderator guiding the criticism while the author listened and squirmed. I was curious about the procedure and thought y'all might be, too, so I asked Will to talk about information technology.

Carol: Have staged readings ever been a part of play evolution? This seems so different from the procedure of developing a novel or short story.

Will: I've been writing plays for virtually xxx years, and readings and discussions of the script take e'er been part of the development process.
Unlike fiction, a play consists of much more than the words that the playwright puts into the script. Before the play tin can be fully realized in front of an audience, actors will bring their insights and emotional life to the characters, designers will mankind out the many dissimilar physical elements of the story, and ideally the director will work to keep all of these dissimilar talents in residuum with the playwright'south vision. Because so much else is involved, nearly playwrights invite others to help them understand the full dimensions of the work underway. As others answer, feedback begins to flow and, for the playwright, this tin be both a good thing and a bad thing.

Carol: And then explain the expert, beyond the obvious gaining of ideas of how to improve the work, and the bad, beyond the potential devastation by criticism.

Volition: At its best, feedback does two things. It sheds lite on what you're trying to practise and it provides a way to mensurate how well you lot are accomplishing that. A discussion of a play within these parameters can assistance you uncover specific elements that are non working the way you had intended. More chiefly, such discussions can help you dig deeper into the choices you've already made. As a result, y'all may detect dimensions of your work that were not apparent to you at kickoff and, in doing so, observe new directions for your characters and story. In other words, feedback is not near pointing out "what'due south wrong."

At its worst, feedback steers you lot into other people's ideas of what your play should exist about and how information technology should exist written. In many post-reading discussions that I have observed, both equally a playwright and every bit an audience fellow member, I have establish that the feedback from the audition tends to run the gamut from helpful to destructive, is often dominated by two or iii people who wish they had written the play instead, and needs to be sorted through carefully before any changes to the script are fabricated. I have also found that, while some playwrights resist criticism and make no changes based on information technology, most lean as well far the other fashion. They attempt to accost nigh every criticism they receive and end up pleasing anybody but themselves. Of course, it can be devastating to get criticism, just even worse is to end up with a patchwork that no longer serves your reason for writing the play in the first place.

Carol: I get it. The writer can rework or eliminate parts that don't serve his purpose, and run with promising parts that aren't even so fully realized.

Resisting criticism is easy to understand, but have you ever resisted using a dandy suggestion from someone at a reading because information technology wasn't your own?

Will: Good ideas frequently consequence from discussions of plays and, if I received a great proposition from someone else, I would certainly give information technology a endeavor. In the end, it's not the idea that counts so much as how the idea is executed.

Carol: Ah, yes—true for all kinds of writers. Then what usually happens after the writer uses the feedback from a reading to revise the work?

Will: That depends on the nature and scope of the revisions. If the changes have been substantial and the playwright still has significant questions about the work, he or she may wish to have some other staged reading in forepart of an audition. Information technology is not unusual for a play to go through more than one reading before it is ready for production. If a second or even third reading does occur, unlike actors may exist enlisted to read the roles and so that the playwright can hear the characters through different voices. This is especially important if whatsoever of the actors from the starting time reading were non suited for the roles. Sometimes a problem with a character may be due simply to the actor who read it. When having more than i reading, it'southward also a good idea to observe new audience members so that at least some of them will be hearing the textile for the first fourth dimension.

If the changes after a reading have led the playwright to feel confident virtually the work, the play may exist gear up to send out to theaters and competitions. When the play is selected for production, the rehearsal process will begin with yet some other reading. This time it will be a "tabular array reading" where the actors who will really play the roles read the script aloud in the presence of the playwright, manager, and designers, and another set of questions gets asked. At this bespeak in the play's development, the feedback is usually more practical, focusing on cut and clarifying the script rather than making huge changes. In addition, script adjustments often must exist made to see the real demands and limitations of the product. For that scene when the aunt arrives from Austria, for example, exercise we really need to show a life-size train pulling into the station?

Carol: Whoa—let'due south back up a minute. We made a bit of a leap in that location, between the readings and a play existence selected for production. Can you say something about how a writer decides where to ship a play and what the odds are of having it chosen for production? Are in that location dos and don'ts for submitting a play to a theater or a competition? And at the other end, practice producers commit to a play before they hear it read by actors?

Will: For most playwrights today, information technology's difficult to get work produced. Especially in tough economic times, many theaters are struggling to make ends encounter and producing a new play, particularly by a new playwright, means taking a risk that could lead to meaning fiscal loss. Every bit a result, larger theaters tend to work with playwrights who already have track records. Smaller theaters are more likely to have on the risk of new work considering less coin is involved, but, for the same reason, production quality may fall short of what the play actually needs.

The good news is that there are a lot of theaters in the The states (more than than 200 in the Chicago surface area alone) and they produce plays all the fourth dimension. You simply have to discover the right theater for your piece of work and the opportunity to go your play read by the right person. Many resources are available to help playwrights tackle this daunting quest. At the national level, The Dramatists Lodge provides a powerhouse of back up for playwrights, including the annual Dramatists Club Resource Directory (sometimes referred to as the "Playwright's Bible").

Earlier submitting a play anywhere, you need to know what producers want and don't desire, how they expect to receive a submission—for example, synopsis and sample pages versus full script, electronic submission versus difficult copy—when exactly to contact them, and whom to address. The Resource Directory puts all of this information at your fingertips and includes in its scope non only theaters, simply also festivals, conferences, contests, colonies, residencies, grants, fellowships, and other career opportunities. No playwright should be without it.

Here in Chicago, we are lucky enough to have Chicago Dramatists, a 32-yr onetime "playwright's theater" devoted to nurturing new voices for the American stage. Playwrights proceeds many resources—classes, workshops, individual script consultations, reading opportunities, business advice, industry panels, and more than—to assistance them non only develop plays, but become them upwards on phase. And you don't take to live in Chicago to have advantage of many of these resources, such every bit script consultations. Similar types of organizations include New Dramatists in New York and the Playwrights' Center of Minneapolis, among others.

How do theaters select plays? Like each playwright, each theater is unique so there is no one set of guidelines or advice that will utilize to them all. My experience has been that an unsolicited script has a better shot at getting a good read in a playwriting competition than it does in a stack of scripts that take been on the desk of a literary manager at a theater for the past year. My experience has also been that, on that same desk, there are 2 stacks—the tall one and the short one—and that information technology is really of import to effort to get into the brusque stack. That ways getting out and meeting other theater artists, condign familiar with theaters that experience similar the right friction match for y'all, and finding means to get yourself known there and drum up interest in your work then that it is not "unsolicited" when information technology arrives. I know many playwrights who created their ain career opportunities by volunteering to work at a theater and getting to know the staff that fashion. Playwriting conferences, such as the O'Neill's US National Playwrights Conference, 7 Devils Playwrights Briefing, and PlayPenn too offer opportunities not only to develop your work but advocate for yourself equally a playwright, though first y'all have to exist accepted.

Speaking of creating your own career opportunities, there is a lot to be said for making a existent commitment to your piece of work and producing it yourself. This doesn't need to be a Broadway production. If yous can assemble a skillful team of theater artists, y'all tin mountain a streamlined production of your play in a minor venue without spending a ton of money. You might too check out the fringe festivals in your area. Many provide the venue and handle the marketing for y'all. Whether you produce the play solitary or through a festival, you will exist getting your work upwards in front of an audition and perhaps a few critics and, if the response is good, information technology may open a door elsewhere. Even if it doesn't, you will have learned a lot about your play and yourself in the process.

Ballad: Will, this has been amazing—you've shown us the whole play-evolution procedure from first draft to acceptance for production. Thank you so much.

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