I have a secret – I’ve become a producer over here in Arizona – I’ve actually produced more shows/events this past year than I’ve written and I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop… because it’s hard out here for a Playwright.
It’s damn hard.
So I created Little Black Dress INK, an organization dedicated to promoting/creating production opportunities for female playwrights. I invited some talented ladies to put pen to paper (or fingertips to keys) and draft up some plays for a festival last summer and it was a great success! We didn’t know it would be a great success, we just went for it and crossed our fingers – because it’s better to do that than waste time hemming and hawing over a thing for so long that you forget what it is you’re even considering.
Which is why, when I decided to do it again, I decided to go reach even further… to get the fest to travel. One hell of a lofty undertaking, to be sure… but so worth the work… isn’t it?
I ask, because I’m finding that while I may be tired of sitting around waiting for someone to produce my work, not everyone else has my same verve for making-it-happen-ness.
(which may actually be more of a testament to their common sense than my tenacity)
In any regard – I am trying to get the plays some sort of reading in LA… it’s just a reading… no big expense, no set, no props… just a reading… And it’s been a hell of a lot more work than getting the thing fully produced here in AZ.
Which draws images to mind of the Los Angeles battleground I abandoned two years ago – so many theatres, so many artists, so many denizens of the “Industry” running their scrawny-underpaid butts off to get produced, be on stage, be seen, and knock some socks off…
I don’t miss the rat race of LA, but I am definitely feeling out of her frenetic loop.
But what else can I do than keep on keeping on? I’m a playwright who’s fallen into producing as a means of feeling less impotent against the theatrical unknowables… no one ever said any of it would be easy, did they? Nope. Not even for a second.
