I have a terrible cold.  My third cold this year.  I haven’t had a cold for ages.  Working with kids in the theatre training program in Danville, Kentucky seems to have given me some sort of natural immunity…until now.  Out here in Montana they must grow their own western strain of bugs and they love me… can’t get enough of  me.   Today I’m drowning in… Hmmm, you expected me to say “snot” now didn’t you? No?  Well, I wanted to but I thought it was a little too crass.  So, lets look at a more pleasant way to drown… in manuscripts.   After a winter hiatus from reading plays and focusing instead on editing the best for publishing in our online catalog, I’m back to working my way through the huge pile of manuscripts lingering in the dark waters of my “to read” file.  I know there are treasures buried there just waiting to be discovered and I plan to dive deep to find them.  If what we’ve already found among our submissions is any indication of what’s still out there, I can’t wait to get my feet wet again.  Okay, enough with all the water metaphors.  The truth is, I love reading your plays and am sorry I have taken longer than expected to get back to you regarding your submissions.  Acquisitions take a lot of time.  And once we offer a contract, there is still the process of editing and formatting your play.  I’m a little afraid to announce again that we will begin accepting new submission in May, but there you go.  So, if you’re reading this, you have a heads up that we will be soliciting submissions again soon.  I’ve set the deadline for getting to the bottom of the virtual stack on my desk for May 1 and then I’ll be ready to jump back in the water with a whole new set of fins. I wouldn’t mind a moment to catch my breath before diving in again… uh, oops, sorry about that.   It’s not funny any more.  It’ snot.

It’s 2010.  2010!  How can that be?  An entire decade into a new century.  A hundred years since George Bernard Shaw wrote Misalliance… 1400 years after some scholars say Shakespeare penned A Winter’s Tale and two thousand four hundred and forty years since Sophocles etched out Oedipus the King.   And yet perhaps the greatest tragedy of all… Twenty three years since I won the Kentucky Playwright Award for By Reason of Insanity.   During the festival of new plays legendary playwright Horton Foote (A Trip to Bountiful) likened the work to Strindberg.  The audience erupted with questions and comments.  I figured 10 years best and I’d have my first Broadway opening.  Twenty some plays later I still haven’t quite figured out the mystery of success but I have figured out that there are a whole lot of playwrights out there that have work that  deserves a spot up in lights.  Pair that with a whole lot of audiences that support their local theaters whether they’re attending the work of a centuries known playwright or the premiere of a brand new play and you just might have a bead on one of the long roads to success.  The key is, the play has to be good.  Okay, so it helps in Community Theatre if your sister’s playing the lead or the director is your second to last best friend or you’re interested in checking out the new seats you helped pay for with your last donation.  The point is, however, that communities have a tendency to support their community theaters and community theaters produce a lot of plays in this county.  So it’s hard to imagaine that lots of really outstanding playwrights still have trouble getting their work seen, let alone making a decent living off their talent.   And yet nobody owes them that opportunity and few over the centuries die anything but penniless if they counted on talent for their daily bread.   But persistence does make a difference.  And so does publishing, especially in this time of cyber communication, interstate interlocking and multi-national interfacing.   The future of publishing as a means to reach new audiences particularly in communities all across America follows a well-known premise that Shakespeare him-or-her-self espoused.  That is, that plays are meant to be performed.  Few people pick up a play to read so publishing plays in book form has its limitations.  I happen to read lots of plays but I’m an editor and a publisher.  And besides that, I love reading fine drama.  But when a theatre is looking for a new play, particularly a Community Theatre, who’s going to sit down and read a list of two thousand descriptions of new plays, select 20 or 30 of interest and pay for a perusal copy of six or eight or ten playbooks?   So why not go the easy route and just pick a title everyone knows, avoid the perusal copy and the shipping cost and the time it takes to fill out the paperwork.  Let Actors Theatre of Lousiville spend the time and resources to tell us what new plays are worth seeing.  Or not.  Play publishing is looking ahead at saving theatres time and money and a few trees along the way.  Heartland Plays, Inc. is a role model for new play publishing.  Using the Internet, allow theaters access to your plays so they can be read for free.  It’s a lot easier to take the chance on a new play by a less than world reknown author if it doesn’t cost anything but time to read it.  That’s where play publishing is headed and Heartland Plays, Inc. has arrived.   What better opportunity for a theatre then to read a description of a play that sounds interesting by one of our truly gifted authors, click on the sample button and read the script.  For free.  Heartland Plays, Inc. offers reasonable licensing fees and the convenience of downloading the play for a nominal fee and making as many copies of a play as is needed or wanted without violating copyright.  Now, isn’t that novel, since we know almost every theater has violated copyright at one time or another.  Imagine, the director can send an e-mail to every cast member and every single member of the production staff with an file attachment of the play and each can copy his own script on his own recycled paper (we all accumulate more than we can imagine) and the theatre saves a whole lot of money on individual scripts that end up lost or never returned.  Heartland Plays, Inc. is moving ahead one script at a time behind the greatest paradigm shift in play publishing since the turn of the century.  The 20th century, that is.  My, how time flies!

It’s been a wild summer.  More busy than I might have liked, chock full of this, that, and the other which correlates to not enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them.  Of course, that fall off the jet ski didn’t help.  Nothing slows you down faster than a cracked rib.  Unless it’s a fall off a ladder.  Or a bike.  Or, well, okay, so none of those happened except the fall off the jet ski, which was really more of an ejection than a fall.  But it is those little things in life that fall our way that can really put a damper on our lifestyle.  Now, on the other hand, I’ve had a slew of plays fall on my lap(top) this summer and I’m still working my way out from under.  When we first started Heartland Plays, Inc. the submissions barely tiptoed in.  With the help of some great forums like PlaysandPlaywrights and The Loop, I’ve connected with hundreds, if not thousands of playwrights talking about, bitching about, longing about and strategizing about the art and struggles of play writing.  And through posting information about Heartland Plays on those forums, we’ve increased submissions about 300%.  Problem now is, I’ve fallen drastically behind reading.  Building our catalog so we have plays to market is timely to say the least.  Having the time to read the submissions is crucial at best.  Between negotiating contracts, editing scripts and corresponding with playwrights, the best part of my work as an Editor has fallen off the cliff.  I now understand why some editors resort to canned replies and promises to get back as soon as they’ve had the time to thoroughtly consider your play.  I have six plays seriously under consideration right now, one waiting to get up on the website and two still in the editing process.  I have three more plays from playwrights who made substantial revisions at my request that are waiting for my decision on publication.  That’s not to mention the 60 some odd plays sitting in my “to read” file, waiting for their turn at bat.  I’m not worried though, everything falls into place in it’s own time.  One just has to keep the target in sight putting one foot in front of the other to get there.  So, if I can just keep from stumbling over my own two feet, Heartland Plays, Inc. will be in great shape to showcase  some outstanding plays for all stages as we move into the fall.

With feedback from business friends, associates, The Dramatists Guild and other theatre professionals, Heartland Plays is doing its best to work out kinks in our contract so that more playwrights will feel confident signing with a publisher with an unproven track record.  In return, Heartland Plays will continue to offer opportunities for playwrights whose work is sledom seen or not seen enough to the totally unproven whose work have never been seen on a stage at all.  Most of the playwrights who have been submitting plays to us have substantial production history and yet they aren’t making money from their work.  That is because theatre is one of those professions, aside from the cream at the top, where almost everyone is working on a shoestring and almost no one is paid to play.  A slim few are rewarded the true value of their time and talent and the public thinks they should have access to all forms of art for free or next to nothing.  After all, it’s not essential to life, is it?  I see theaters advertise all the time for new plays for festivals and they are quick to add that there is no compensation to playwrights but a great opportunity…  Interns bust their chops 24/7 at professional theaters so they can name that company on their resume… Artists are asked time and time again to do workshops, seminars, presentations at schools and in classrooms and perform free in front of audiences who have paid or not paid to see them.  It doesn’t seem to matter that most of these artists, writers, actors, and directors have thousands of years among them in training at colleges and universities and professional theatre programs.  Its all supposed to be free.  Not.  Publishing is one way a playwright has to earn compensation for his or her work.  Okay, so even that’s not guaranteed.  But it has its possibilities.  There are tons of community theaters around the country that don’t have the resources to pay the higher royalties for Broadway plays and they can be matched with quality plays that just didn’t happen to make it to the top for any of a million reasons, some of which are time, resources, contacts, location and luck.  And then there are university theaters who aren’t afraid to take risks.  There programs are not as tied to ticket sales and driven more from the desire to challenge their students.  Community Theatre and Educational Theatre pay royalties for the work you see on stage.   In other words, they pay to play.  And their audiences pay to play.  Small bills, perhaps, but enough to keep their volunteer staffs and student work force going.  Will a new play at your local theater or college make it to Broadway and earn its author hundreds of thousands of dollars with a multi million dollar film contract?  Probably not.  If that’s the goal, and why not, then hold that play tight.  If one plays all his or her cards right, it just might make it to the top.  A publisher will only get in your way.  If you’ve shopped your play around, gotten some good reviews, a number of free productions and you still haven’t garnered an agent in New York or LA, then publishing is a reasonable consideration.   I directed Tennessee Williams’ “Small Craft Warnings” for a Graduate Repertory Theatre in Florida.  Almost no one has ever heard of that play yet everyone knows “The Glass Menagerie.”  They are both quality work and yet only one hit the mother lode.  Publishing allows you to earn on what you’ve written while you’re still shooting for that one that really pays off.  And why not?

Boy, did I get an eye opener last week.  One of our authors tipped me to a forum for plays and playwrights where he thought I could post our call for submissions.  Little did I know that Heartland Plays, Inc. would fall victim to attack because we have (but are waiving as we build our playlist) a reader’s fee.  Now, don’t get me wrong, ten years ago I would have made some of the same comments about any publisher asking for a fee to read one of my plays.   Perhaps not as viciously, but in spirit the same, more or less.  After all, I was Kentucky Playwright of the Year and the legendary Horton Foote likened my work to Strindberg.  But after ten years of observing the decline in publishers and theaters that accepted unsolicited submissions and playing a few little tricks of my own, like placing a note to the editor about 15 pages into the script and receiving a form letter stating “after carefully considering your work, we determined it does not fit our market at this time” I came to the conclusion, I’d be happy to pay a publisher to read my script if I knew it really would get read.  Cover to cover.  Including a critique of the work with our reader’s fee seemed to be a good way to show we are sincerely interested in supporting new writers.  However, submissions were trickling in and we wanted you to send us your scripts, so we waived the reader’s fee and got our call for submissions out on a number of additional sites and wow, they started rolling in.  I can hardly keep up and I’m loving it.  However, some disgruntled playwright on the “playsandplaywrights” forum went to our site and started lambasting me starting with, the only reason a publisher would ask for a reader’s fee is because it doesn’t have good titles and it’s the only way it can make any money.  I can’t imagine he read any of the work in our catalog, which by the way anyone can do for free without having to pay for a perusal book and postage and wait three days to get it.  If he had, he would have seen the quality of the work we carry and the standards we expect in our playwrights.  I was also informed it was my job to read plays and a privilege to read the scripts and that who cares about my critique anyway since presumably I don’t know anything about plays or theater or anything of that sort.  I went from relishing opening my e-mail to see what I was going to read for the day to cringing that I was going to get attacked again.  Fortunately it’s been quiet the last two days although my entire contacts list was spammed.  Coincidence, I hope.  The experience has left me a little wiser and the few better points stated in some of the comments about the pros and mostly cons about reader’s fees may help us decide if we will request a fee for anyone other than those who want a guaranteed cover to cover reading with a critique.   For now, politics aside, we still hope to hear from you– even you, the disgruntled playwright and those of you who seem to think it is easy to get a publisher to read your work without an agent or major production history.  We don’t care about your particular politics, we only care about the quality of your work.

I had a birthday this weekend.  We celebrated by going to a great Mediterranean restaurant in Helena.  Altricia joined us.  She is with us for the summer from Jamaica on a student work visa.  We ordered a bottle of wine.  She got carded and didn’t have her passport with her.   She was a good sport about it.  The owner came over to explain.  He seemed more concerned than she was about the situation.  Now, the cold is another story.  Altricia has barely even seen snow and here it is June and we’re in a white out!  I took her outside kicking and screaming today for some photos.  I’m kidding, of course.  She asked me to take a few of the snow and I thought it would be better with her in them.  We’ve given her sweaters and a coat to wear.  It’s not like she would have known how to prepare or even had the kind of clothing you might need in Montana.  Even I’m not prepared.  This is my first June here and I didn’t bring my winter clothes either.  I came back in May and expected maybe a week or two of less than warm weather but not snow!  Okay, I should have figured it was a possibility.  I remember my first trip to Yellowstone was on my birthday way back in the late 70’s and I saw snow then.  But only on the mountains.  I didn’t think it actually fell from the sky that late!  But as time goes on, we are reminded over and over again that there’s always something new about to fall on us.  Sometimes on our head.  Which Chicken Little discovered can lead to a pretty wild ride.  But we need an occasional knock on the head from things falling from the sky to keep us alert.  Ive been deluged with scripts the past week and I’m loving it.  I’m having some trouble keeping up with the reading- falling asleep on one or two, no offense intended.   But I’m committed to giving each one full consideration during this moment in time when we truly welcome your unsolicited scripts.  So keep them coming and I’ll do my best to stay on top of it even when I’m snowed under.

I just got back from an international film festival in Las Vegas.  Okay, so I didn’t just watch films.  I spent a few minutes in front of a slot machine.  Or maybe that was a few hours.  I’ve conveniently forgotten, I think.  Whatever the case, I risked a dime or two on the penny slots and a chip or two at the Black Jack table where I refused to listen to the dealer and hold when I had 16 showing.  You’re supposed to listen to the dealer but I have this problem with directions.  That’s why my sweetbreads often fail.  (I refuse to follow a recipe.)  Same reason why I don’t sew.  It’s something about patterns.  The truth is, lots of artists think this way.  Artists have a need to discover their own way through life.  Even the menial parts.  It’s part of our make-up and it disguises a greater drive to create.  There is nothing grander to an artist than creating something from nothing.   The moment when one stands back and sees a work of art that was a mere pile of clay or a blank piece of paper days before.  The process of taking a thought and creating a finished product is challenging to say the least.   Writers in particular often find inspiration in a single moment and build an entire story around that moment.  Or have a beginning of a story and sit down with pen in hand with no idea where it will lead them.  Or start with in inkling of an ending with an open road how to get there.  Oddly to an artist the status quo takes comfort in sticking to the map where a wrong turn might lead to the unpredictable.  The artist risks the unpredictable and knows that mistakes are nothing more than insights into creative solutions.  So when you find yourself in front of your computer racking your brain trying to find that perfect plot for your next play, forget about it.  Take a risk by writing one line.  Any line will do.  And see where it takes you.

Mark and I spent 7 hours yesterday cleaning up the yard from an ice storm that struck central Kentucky in  February.  Seems a little late, I know, but I’ve been in Montana all winter and just got back east to face the mess.  And it was quite the mess, the whole town, still when I got back last Monday to host a Benefit for Kids Arts Activities.  FEMA trucks were scheduled to come through weeks ago.  Limbs and branches piled eight feet tall and half again as wide lined most of the streets.  It was like driving through a gauntlet.  I heard people describe the storm and the subsequent loss of power, for some as long as two weeks, as a “catastrophe”.  It did earn a rating of disaster and the hardest hit areas received federal emergency relief.  But Mark and I toured New Orleans three months after Katrina and in all due respect, what happened to Kentucky in comparison was an inconvenience.  Still, I admire the community for springing into action and getting the clean-up under control.  The pick-up trucks started rolling several days after I returned and by yesterday most of the walls of broken limbs had been hauled away and lawns raked clean of the remaining sticks and branches too short to stack.  Damaged roofs were repaired or replaced or in the process of replacing.  A crushed porch or swingset here or there remained, primarily to the left and back of my property where my fallen trees graced my neighbors’ yards.  But other than that, it’s almost back to normal sans a number of trees that will be sorely missed.   Whether it’s an ice storm or a hurricane or a national financial crisis, action becomes the necessary course to survival and recovery.  Nothing is accomplished by sitting back.  And although it’s neither necessary nor required nor a catastrophe or national disaster if you don’t do it, now is a great time to finish your scripts and get them in to us for consideration.  We’re looking forward to more action this spring from all you playwrights out there.  So lets get busy!

Valentine’s Day has gone but the hearts that beat stronger still echo across America.  Or not.  Amidst the turmoil and bickering on Capitol Hill and the critical state of our economy, it’s difficult to hear anything echo at all.  Should I be happy that money will be dedicated to bolster artists and the arts in America?  Yes.  But I’d be much happier if the decision had been made at a table where both Democrats and Republicans had their say.  To shout dissent after a decision seldom changes the outcome.  Debate from all sides of the table during the decision making process acknowledges culpability and shared responsibility.  We all played a role in this mess.   We all must work together to solve it.  When we voted for change in America, that didn’t signal an embrace of a single vision by Democrats, it called for a shift in the policies that brought us to the edge of democratic extinction.  I voted for Obama in part because of my belief that he weighs the opinions and insights from a variety of perspectives by groups and individuals who should have, through education, training and experience, expertise in the areas of concern not just concern for the areas in debate.   And that requires listening.  Listening sometimes to people whose initial ideas and opinions oppose your own.  It is not important to me which side of the divided aisle brings the right idea to the table as long as it’s the best idea.  Granted, there is often more than one solution to the same problem and unfortunately no clear solution to an astronomical crisis, but that being said, expediency should not come at the price of exclusion.  On the other hand, those who choose to exclude themselves from the process in hopes of gaining political capital if that process fails to accomplish the intended outcome win nothing but another hot seat in the house.  The problems we face are now.  The decisions to address those problems are now.  To hope for the worse to save your own seat is the worst position any politician can possibly assume.  I prefer less fodder for satire in the arts and a decisive, collective, intelligent drive towards a healthy America at heart.

It’s easier to break into a house then into publishing.  Not that I’ve ever broken into a house.  I haven’t.  But I have broken into a car, my car, to retrieve my keys.  I have a nasty habit of locking my keys in my car when I’m absorbed in thought, such as when I’m directing a play or late for a dinner party.  I’m more often directing a play then late for a dinner party sad to say.  I missed the Inaugural party altogether I had intended on attending having been tied up for five hours at a Planning Board Meeting at City Hall.  Yeah, it was even more exciting then it sounds.  Since I was all dressed up with nowhere to go, we stopped by after at one of our favorite places in Helena, The Silver Star, often referred to as the Silver Spur.  Have you ever called something by the wrong name so many times you had trouble remembering the real name?  Or at best, which was which?   Well, that’s how it is with The Silver Star and even at this moment I want to say Silver Spur.  My guess the founding fathers couldn’t make up their minds either.  Let’s see, are we the United States of America or America, the States United?  Or how about the Silver United States of America or the United Spurs of America?  I’m rambling here, I know.  But if you’ll come along with me on one last tangent before I get back to the beginning, I do want to say how very proud I am of our country and how very happy I am that I lived to see someone break into the Whitehouse who shared my belief that no one knows it all, but that a truly intelligent person is smart enough to gather as much information from as many reliable sources as possible before making a decision.  And that hopefully that decision comes from a place of good judgement, which I must say I trust Barack Obama possesses.  That premise stated, let’s get back to the original, that it is easier to break into a house then into publishing.  The best strategy I can suggest is to act like a statesman and keep putting yourself out there.  You want your work published?  It isn’t going to happen unless you send it out.  Again and again and again.  If you’re lucky enough to get it read, and get a comment or two, listen to what is said.  At least take it into consideration.  I’ve had several plays I’ve wanted to publish but not exactly as written.  Successful playwrights and screenwriters rewrite all the time.  If you’re so married to your work that you can’t see the forest for the trees, take out your own ax and start swiping.  Save the original first, of course, because you may not like what you see when you cut the deadwood.  But, on the other hand, once you get rid of the deadwood, there might be room to plant some new seeds and see how they grow.  Take it from the top.  Barack Obama is an example of believing in yourself, persistence and a willingness to solicit and explore the ideas of others.    So, if you’re hoping to get your first play published, a little adjustment here and there in your writing might be just the wiggle room you need to break in.