Bitter Gertrude

Sometimes I open a play and see something that makes me feel like this:

Here’s what you do that makes my heart sing as I’m reading the plays in my stack. Are these subjective? Sure. But I made sure to only include things I’ve heard echoed by other artistic directors. Is this meant to be all-inclusive? Of course not. I’ve written a lot about playwriting already, so there’s a lot I’ve left out here. (Search for the tag “playwrights” if you want to see more.) So here we go– what makes my eyes turn into cartoon hearts when I look at you:

1. Your play is set anywhere but New York. Every time I talk about this, I get ten playwrights saying, “That NEVER HAPPENS anymore. That’s OLD SCHOOL.” And then I open the next 20 plays in my consideration folder and 14 of them are set in New York. So believe me, this is still alive and well. When I see a play is set in the San Francisco Bay Area, I immediately start rooting for it just a little bit harder. So few plays are set where my audience lives. Stories happen in every corner of the globe.

Mutt: Let’s All Talk About Race! by Christopher Chen at Impact Theatre. Photo by Cheshire Isaacs.

2. You have a male/female professional pairing, and they do not have sex or even try to. When I see on page one a female cop and her male partner having a conversation about The Important Mission That May Be The Plot, I start tensing up, because I know that too few playwrights will write a scene wherein a penis and a vagina are anywhere near each other without being compelled to meet on page 50. They will write plays wherein two men can do a professional thing without involving their penises, but as soon as a woman enters the scene, her magical hypnotic vagina powers will compel that professional relationship to eventually be about sex. Listen, a vagina is not a rifle. You can actually put one onstage in act one without the audience expecting it to go off in act two.

I get incredibly excited when there’s a male/female professional pairing and they have professional respect for each other and live the story without sex being part of the story. Which leads me to:

3. I get incredibly excited when there’s a male/female professional pairing at all. Ask yourself: Does that doctor/cop/bartender/psychologist/politician HAVE to be male to retain narrative integrity? Sure, some stories are just about men or the male experience, and that’s totally fine. Not every play has to be gender balanced. But many (probably even most) plays are about stories that aren’t gendered. When I read a play that isn’t about a gendered experience, and half the characters are women, just because women are people who live in the world? I get happy. This also leads me to:

4. You have a female/female pairing and avoid every stereotype. This can be a professional pairing (co-workers) or personal (friends, roommates, sisters). They’re not fighting over the same man. They don’t fall into the hot one/ugly one, or skinny one/fat one, or beautiful but dumb one/plain but brilliant one, or any of the ridiculous, misogynistic dichotomies we’ve invented. They’re both well-rounded characters with strengths and weaknesses like people? HOLY CRAP. I love you.

What Every Girl Should Know by Monica Byrne at Impact Theatre. Photo by Cheshire Isaacs.

5. Your play has a Jewish character who isn’t from New York and isn’t whiny, a Muslim character who isn’t a mouthpiece for all religious Muslims everywhere (either a stereotypical terrorist or a gentle soul whose main function is to condemn terrorism), a Wiccan who isn’t a punchline, a Buddhist who isn’t there to provide WORDS OF WISDOM to the main character, etc. Basically, when I see diversity of religion or religious heritage in characters, and those characters are well-rounded people whose identity isn’t entirely about that religion or heritage? I’m surprised and thrilled.

6. Collaboration. You’re specific about what the design should feel like (“a rundown motel room,” “a beautiful high-rise apartment,” “an open field that stretches for miles”) and what the needs of the action are (for example, multiple levels, or specific pieces of furniture around which action takes place), but you don’t dictate every aspect of the design. I’ve seen playwrights get as specific as the color of a character’s dress or the kind of flowers on the table, when neither of those are part of the narrative or the action. A playwright who creates a world and then leaves room for others to play within that world is a gift. I also love responsive playwrights. I love sending an email or a text with a question and getting a timely response, even if the question is “Can I change this?” and the answer is “No.”

The Chalk Boy, by Joshua Conkel at Impact Theatre. Photo by Cheshire Isaacs.

7. And after I read and love your play? What makes my heart sing? A playwright who’s willing to go to bat for a small company. We don’t talk about this a lot, but it can sometimes be difficult for a small company to get the rights to a play when the playwright has an agent. Agencies don’t make as much money from small companies, and they’re (understandably) much more interested in scoring a LORT or Broadway production. I’ve been denied the rights to plays that afterwards sat unproduced for years waiting for a LORT production that never came. Many playwrights are willing to go to bat for small companies and direct their agents to release the rights to a company they can trust to stage the material according to the playwright’s intent. Sometimes a playwright works with their agent to help get a smaller company into a rolling world premiere (where more than one company in different markets premiere the play on or near the same date), or has the smaller company stage the play as a “workshop production,” ceding the world premiere rights to a future larger company. I LOVE THESE PLAYWRIGHTS.

I see a LOT of excellent work out there. Without your work, my work doesn’t exist. So THANK YOU, playwrights.