A reminder that members of the Dramatists Guild can sign up for the "Playwrights Welcome" program which offers free tickets when they are available.Recently the Roundabout Theatre Company offered free tickets to Alice Childress' TROUBLE IN MIND.Currently the Roundabout is offering free tickets to BIRTDAY CANDLES starring Debra Messing.Roundabout signup form:https://www.roundabouttheatre.org/about/playwrights-welcomeA list of participating theater groups is availble at Concord Theatricalshttps://www.concordtheatricals.com/resources/playwrights-welcome*** END OF PLAY® ***The Dramatists Guild of America is sponsoring the third annual national playwriting challenge, End of Play.®Beginning April 1st, 2022, participating playwrights, composers, lyricists and librettists will be challenged to write a brand new play or musical, or revise an old draft. Through a combination of community building events, motivation, and that all important deadline, DG hopes to inspire countless new works.You do not have to be a member of the Dramatists Guild to participate.Learn more here:https://www.nycplaywrights.org/2022/03/national-playwriting-and-composing.html*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***Keegan Theatre, a professional, non-equity theatre in Washington, DC, is accepting submissions for development in its 22-23 Boiler Room Series AND possible inclusion as a full, world premiere production in a future mainstage season. Up to six pieces will be selected for a workshop process that will culminate in public staged readings, interviews, and audience talkbacks. At least one playwright from the 22-23 cohort will be commissioned to develop a world premiere for Keegan's 23-24 season.***Rising Sun Performance Company is planning a return for our 6th season on Governors Island this summer (permit pending). As we will be presenting the festival pieces outdoors–free and open to the public–it is essential that we ensure that all material is suitable and appropriate for all ages, and “family friendly”. Therefore, we especially welcome and strongly encourage submissions of plays that are intended for young audiences. However this call is not exclusive to such plays; and we will also be considering pieces that are not strictly meant as “children’s theater”.***The International Analogio Institute announces its Second International Playwriting Competition. Applicants are invited to write a play of approximately 45 minutes in length, on the subject of "Crossing borders".The competition is open to all playwrights without regard to age, sex, nationality, or membership in any organization. It's open to emerging and established writers, and offers a unique opportunity for playwrights to have their drama play produced by the International Analogio Festival in Athens Greece. The prize includes publishing, recording/broadcast of the script globally.*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ****** FINISHING YOUR PLAY ***Script Writing Lesson 6: Finishing the playTask 1Read through everything that you have written so far. It would help if you could read it with other people so that the different characters can be read by different voices. When you read it make sure that someone reads out the stage directions as well. If possible, try to read out a staged version of it, where you create a stage area and everyone does as the stage directions tell them.More...https://burtsdrama.com/script-writing-lesson-6-finishing-the-play/***Identifying these 4 obstacles can help you scramble out of writing pitfalls, rather than stumbling around inside them and wondering where you are.”I have two novels in print (The Sum of Our Gods and Corporate High School), and I’m pretty sure that I could have completed ten times as many if not for these common pitfalls. Identifying the main obstacles keeping you from finishing your manuscript won’t, in itself, prevent you from falling into them from time to time. But knowing what to watch out for can certainly help you avoid them some of the time.1. Video Games / Facebook / TwitterThis may seem too specific, but console games, especially role playing games, are a real problem for me. Why? Because I love them too much. They are immersive, they have propulsive narratives, they are vacations from reality, and they are exciting. That’s not what makes them particularly problematic, though. All those things could also be said of a good book, whether you’re reading it or writing it. What makes RPG video games particularly dangerous for writers is that they are designed with another specific goal in mind: to eat up as much of your time as possible.Manuscript gaming is one of the obstacles that can keep you from finishing your manuscriptA group of intelligent, talented people go to work each day trying to create games that will satisfy gamers and critics, and they know that the highest praise for games comes in the form of descriptions of how long people played them…or, better yet, replayed them.Conversely, if a critic says she beat the thing in a few hours, that’s a nail in its coffin. Who wants to spend sixty bucks on a few hours’ entertainment when the same sixty can get you a week’s or a month’s? To non-gamers, this seems counter intuitive. Wouldn’t you want something that provided the pleasure of victory quickly? No, because watching credits role is not as much fun as killing hordes of the undead.Consequently, these are intentional time-sucks. Be aware of that going in; if you have a manuscript to finish, save your sixty bucks until the book is done. By then, the game will be on sale for $15. And the console will be out of date. And maybe you’ll be more excited about your next book idea than an old video game.Non-gamers might be thinking, “Well, I’ve already dodged that bullet.”True, but be honest with yourself. You might have avoided Dragon Age or BioShock, but how long did you spend on Angry Birds or Candy Crush? Dodged those, too? Well, just as the video game industry thrives on “extended gameplay,” the people behind Facebook and Twitter know that the longer you linger on their sites, the more ads you see. Their sites are designing their keep your eyeballs locked on their pages for a long as possible, too.So, identify your game of choice and go into it knowing that we, as writers, have an added level of difficulty.After “Easy,” “Medium,” “Difficult,” and “Nightmare,” there’s a secret level called “Writer” for the person who has to look that next zombie in its remaining eye (or that clickbait article right in it’s “3/28 Next” button) and refuse to go on until there are a few tens-of-thousand more words added to the manuscript.More...https://willamettewriters.org/4-obstacles-keeping-finishing-manuscript/***How to Finish Your Play if You Take a HolidayYou’re writing a play. You’re half-finished. But you have a crazy job with a boss who calls you up at all times of day. And you’ve set aside a week of leave. Unpaid. Paid. You forgot to check. But you don’t care.Because there’s your play. You have notes for all of your characters. You have a half-completed manuscript. You’ve lined up all your playwriting ducks. You sense a finish line. Your dreams focus upon horizons and flight.You just have to finish off a couple of things at your ‘real’ job before you get back to your script.The Monday that is truly yours to be that playwright that you want to be is coming. You’re going to do it. All by yourself. You’re going to write and finish this f**ker. (Sorry about asterisks – swearing sends this to subscribers’ spam boxes.)You finish work on the Friday.You consider starting on the Saturday, you’re that excited.You binge-watch a documentary series about lemurs. Lemurs are cute. Even so, you yell at yourself in the mirror for wasting your life.More...https://www.benelliswriter.com/how-to-finish-your-play-if-you-take-a-holiday/***You’ve started your script, you’ve better honed your writing discipline, you’ve pushed through the midpoint, and now you’re in the home stretch, actor-writer. Outstanding, inspiring.Still, as a writing novice plenty of obstacles can block your way to the finish line. Here are a few questions to answer on your journey home.Does every scene further the plot?Years ago in rehearsal at the Public Theatre, our director Kwame Kwei-Armah, now artistic director of London’s Young Vic, employed a structural method that stayed with me ever since. He invited us to collectively title each scene of the play. This sharpened our individual character’s journey and asked our team to approximate, what’s happening in this scene? Why is it essential to this story? I’ve applied this to every script I’ve acted in since.More...https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/questions-actor-writers-should-answer-finishing-first-script-73269/***10 things to do once you’ve finished writing a playYou’ve done it! You’ve finally got to the end of your script! Perhaps you took part in #WrAP2018 and wrote the whole thing in January or maybe you’ve been working on it for what seems like all eternity.Either way, there are few things more satisfying in life then ceremoniously typing out the phrase ‘The End’ as you hit the milestone of finishing your play. (Wahoo!)But then what, hey? Once the initial jubilation of getting your play finished wears off, it’s easy to feel daunted by the possibilities of what you should be doing with it. And whilst there’s plenty of information out there on actually writing the script, there are no hard and fast rules about what to do next.With that in mind, here are our top 10 tips for what to do once you’ve finished your play:1. Step away from itThat’s it step. away. from. the. laptop. This might seem counterproductive since you’re feeling all buzzy about getting your play finished, but taking a break can help give you a perspective on where you want to go with it – or what needs editing.It doesn’t have to be a long break, especially if you’re working towards a submission deadline, but reading a book, catching up with friends or just zoning out in front of some trashy TV puts some distance between you and your play and helps you to see things with fresh eyes.More...https://londonplaywrightsblog.com/10-things-to-do-once-youve-finished-writing-a-play/
***One of my favorite questions to ask playwrights during interviews is "how do you know when the play is finished?"They can spend months (or more likely years) crafting their story and characters. If they're lucky, after sending their scripts to dozens of theaters across the country, they find one interested in producing it.And then the work begins again, as the director, producer and actors add their opinions on how to best get the play ready for the stage.Sometimes, playwrights do so much work, you might not recognize the opening night script from what it looked like months before, or even yesterday.Consider the example of "For the Ages," a new project commissioned by Florida Studio Theatre for playwrights KJ Sanchez and Emily Ackerman.More...https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/2014/06/01/when-is-the-play-finished/29250484007/
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***You’ve written a first draft, second draft, and so on. You feel you’ve done all you can do with the script, when it’s just you and the script. How do you know when a play is ready to move on to the next phase?How do you know it’s ready to go out into the world?You’ve received feedbackIt’s not enough for you to think your play is ready, you need to find out if it resonates with others. That doesn’t mean you have to change your play to suit the whim of every respondent, nor should you. But your play will not and should not exist in a vacuum. That means you have to get some reaction.If you get positive feedback from at least 3 respondents ( don’t put all your eggs in one basket) consider yourself on the right track.You’ve heard the playThere’s no such thing as silent reading in theatre. Reading your words or hearing the lines in your head will work only up to a point. You need to hear your play read aloud by others. You need to focus all your energy on listening for awkward dialogue, repeated dialogue, sentences that confuse the readers. You’re listening for how long it takes to set up a character or a scene – are you overwriting or is your script sharing just what it needs to keep an audience on the edge of their seat? A text at it’s best is going to be clean, efficient and orally engaging.More...https://www.lindsay-price.com/playwriting/when-is-a-play-done/