The Art of Staying in a (Rigged) Game

In playwriting circles, there is a trend to announce on social media that “I got rejected by XYZ for the umpteenth time and I’ve decided I will never apply again!” It’s usually accompanied by a flurry of commentary either applauding this bold choice or encouraging the clearly suffering artist to give themselves another shot.

The allure of having a sense of refusal in an industry where our work is so often refused can feel empowering. I understand that sentiment in the core of my being. I’ve even given into it on occasion. How to sustain one’s sense of personal agency as an artist is a daily struggle for me and I hold no judgement for how others navigate it. Yet, is reacting to rejection by withdrawing attempts to grasp at brass rings the best way to move your career forward? My career would have been seriously stalled if I had given into that impulse to not repeatedly apply for grants that were long shots—particularly during the decade when I was only being produced abroad and felt largely invisible as a playwright in America, before I shifted to primarily working with theatres that were by and for people of color.

There are no big breaks, only the final whack you need to bust through a creative or professional wall after (and because) you’ve hammered at it enough.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say that applying now is infinitely easier than before the internet existed. Back in the day, you had to drop a pretty penny to photocopy multiple copies of actual scripts and pay for postage. As a young playwright, I would often flip through each page of each script to make sure there wasn’t a hiccup at Kinkos that resulted in one or two pages being missing (which I have to say happened more than once) before rushing to the twenty-four hour post office to get my application postmarked by the deadline. I didn’t fully trust the idea that a literary career was a marathon and not a sprint. It felt like a missing page in one of the copies in my application to an opportunity like the O’Neill’s National Playwrights Conference (which,  incidentally, I never was selected to participate in) could make or break my entire career.

I now know there are no big breaks, only the final whack you need to bust through a creative or professional wall after (and because) you’ve hammered at it enough. It’s harder to trust that when you’re newer at the game. If you have only had one or two productions, the way you manage to connect with the people who eventually produce your play seems to take on an outsized, almost mythic, quality. Those early experiences can color how you approach the rest of your career. I’d probably not be writing this essay about how essential it is to keep throwing your hat in the ring if my turning in an application for a fellowship hadn’t led to my first off-Broadway premiere.

When I applied for a Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists with an early draft of my play ROAR, Ian Morgan, who worked for the New Group, was on the judging committee. He advocated for it at his theatre. The real step forward for me was not getting the fellowship itself as much as having my play be seen by someone who was in a position to help get it produced.

By sending a play out, you are forcing it into the world. A panelist has consented to reading it. You’ve done all the work of writing the play and creating a life that sustains you so you could do so. Why not make strangers read it every chance you can get?

Almost every grant I have received was something I had been rejected for in the past, usually several times. Unless specifically directed not to, I often used the exact same play and application materials to reapply over and over. That contributed to the sense that it was the luck of the draw when my work landed in front of a different judge and I finally got a nod.

I was eventually asked to serve on the judging committee for a fellowship that had once felt so fateful to my development as an artist. We all have our implicit biases. In addition to the quality of the work samples of the finalists, which was excellent and clearly deserving all around, it felt important to me to give the opportunity to someone who I felt “needed” the award the most. That meant I tended to favor playwrights (unlike me) who hadn’t gone to a fancy East Coast playwriting graduate program and were less likely to have other avenues to access the New York theatre community. I knew firsthand the privileges that such a degree afforded, because I experienced them. Was that fair to applicants like myself, some of whom might have gone into debt to attend those schools? Probably not. But I would have felt equally guilty if I had chosen a different criteria to select a winner. I found the process of judging other playwrights excruciating. Knowing these decisions weren’t made solely on the merits of the plays, but on the personal proclivities and inescapable biases of the jurors—including my own—demystified the process for me. It made it that much sweeter when it did work out.

When applying for awards, you often are compelled to write the much-dreaded statement explaining how your work is distinct and why your voice is necessary to the cultural conversation. Though crafting a sale pitch feels like it saps the same source of creative energy you need to write more plays, it’s not a bad exercise, especially for women who know they are perceived as unlikeable and pay a price professionally for displaying naked ambition or people who hail from families/cultural backgrounds that discourage anything resembling the tooting of one’s horn.

When we succeed, we make it easier for the next generation to dare to dream big.

As artists, we must continue to try to put our work into the world. This is particularly essential for artists of color, women, and others from marginalized communities for whom the process of existing in our field and our world is undeniably harder and more exhausting than it is for others. When we succeed, we make it easier for the next generation to dare to dream big. We pay homage and give voice to those from our community who might not have had the same chances we have, due to the luck of the draw (also known as the cruelty of the world).

I’ve found the best way to keep my stamina up when it came to facing repeated rejection during my leaner years was to reframe how I saw success. I began counting the turning in of an application for an artistic opportunity as a win in itself. It’s a victory to be able to say to yourself at the end of a long day: You could have spent your hours rewatching your favorite season of The Sopranos (always a solid choice) or trying to compose the perfect Instagram post that puts you, your work, and your politics in an unassailably positive light (not recommended). Instead, you took whatever faith in the future that you could muster in the moment and reached for the stars.