Playwriting Peer Review Series

Throughout the ONSTAGE journey, we’ve been doing our best to promote each playwright and connect them with the people coming in contact with their work at every stage, be it other playwrights, partner producers, the directors, the actors, or the audience—each and every person coming in contact with these plays has been given tools to help them find out more about the playwrights and learn how to connect with these writers through our project.

How many playwrights have been told to self-produce? It seems like the go-to response anytime someone expresses frustration with the current system of “Development.” It sounds enticing, and the idea definitely feeds the angsty rebellion residing within… But let’s be honest: very few playwrights have access to the resources necessary to mount a full production of their work.

I think, rather, that playwrights readily turn over the fate of their work to these committees and power-players, simply because that is the way it’s been done for so long that anything else feels strange. A playwright wants to get produced, after all— and other writers traditionally aren’t the ones assigning production budgets. But this can change.