Thanks for your help! My question is simple and basic: What is your company's (and all the others you're familiar with ) approach to international voices in producing new plays? Is there a different procedure for us? For example, I studied in the U.S, and am now back home in Turkey for a year applying to grad schools again in U.S. When I am back there next year, and decide to submit a play to your company, does my citizenship create any problems in your desicions whether or not to produce it?

Hello, Zak:

Thanks for your question. While I can't speak for other theatres, ours reads plays from other than USA playwrights. In fact, we have commissioned writers from the UK, and produced a Russian playwright who adapted his play with help from a US playwright. As long as the play is in English, we can deal with it. The citizenship of the playwright isn't relevant to our consideration. Particularly with international submissions, given the costs of mailing mss, we suggest sending a letter of inquiry with 5-10 sample pages from the play.

I'm a European playwright who's been sending material to SCR for the last three-four years. I've received polite replies from you many times so far. I was wondering: when theatres have a certain profile and programming philosophy, is it possible to get some info on that when the script is returned?

Often literary managers of different theatres write back and say something like, "It doesn't fit in our way of programming....", and I think "What is their way of programming?" Is it just a way to say, "No thanks this time"? Or does it discourage submissions if you set strict limitations?

While there are plenty of theatres which look for specific kinds of plays to support an aesthetic, an agenda, or just some personal tastes or preferences, I don't think SCR is one of them. Writers ask, "What do you want?", and the only honest answer we can give is that we know it when we see it. We believe our theatre should respond to the clear voices of writers who make us want to produce their work. On the very few occasions (in my 30 years here) that we have tried to "lead" a writer, we've wound up with some theatrical version of TV--bad theatre. TV and films are written by committee, and I believe that's why much of what's produced there succeeds in spite of rather than because of the writing. I believe some comedy can be written by more than one person, but little else.

So when you get that response from SCR, it most likely means that we simply weren't engaged enough by the play to want to pursue it. I like Dylan Thomas's line about "forked no lightning"--if the play forks lightning for us, we pursue it. We also tend to believe that if a writer's voice is genuine--that is, that the play that engages us is representative rather than exceptional for that writer--we look at both the play submitted and to plays that will come after. We like to set up ongoing relationships with those writers whose work excites us.

Please tell me about your new play development programs. I'm interested in your philosophy as well as your practice. What is the NewSCRipts Series about?

We at SCR believe that an institution should support artists in the creation of theatre. For playwrights, that means we should have as many options to serve the writer in the creation of new work as possible.

Some plays come to us ready to produce (not many); some are very nearly finished (and these, after some dramaturgical discussions, are given NewSCRipt readings, which are rehearsed for three days and then read to a regular audience of 200 or so, followed by a discussion in which the audience describes their experience but never offers suggestions on how to make it better); some are first drafts which can be served by bringing the writer in for a reading by actors hired for the day; some can be served by circulating the script among the artistic leadership at SCR and responding (we--5 of us--meet after we've all read the ms. and try to come up with a single unified response that we hope focuses on the perceived areas in question in the play at that point, and we communicate that response by letter, which forces us to be precise and allows the writer some time for reflection and study). Some ideas are expressed to us and we commission the writing of them, although this is only done with writers who've attracted our attention.

In recent years we've begun projects with directors and actors--we're doing one now with Culture Clash--to which we assign a writer and try to develop a piece. These tend to be adaptations of classics. In short (or long, I guess), we try to anticipate every sort of condition that a writer might find the work in, and to offer a response or support that will help. The one thing I wish we had is a series of workshop productions--fully staged works with limited technical expenses--that might run 8-10 performances to see a play that hasn't jelled as well as it might, or to put up a play by a writer we admire, but who has a play we don't believe we should put up before 9,000 or 25,000 depending on the venue of our patrons.

Sorry if this is an old chestnut. What is good playscript form? I believe it is different from the prescibed screenplay form, or radio play form.

Assuming 8 1/2 X 11 paper, I have seen stage directions in italics, in brackets; character names in block plain, block bold, at the margin, with text a half inch indented, two inches indented, right side three inches indented, or two; text single-spaced, with double spaces between speeches; printed on both sides of the sheet to save postage and paper, printed on one side only; bound in a three-hole punched tang cover with a clear plastic front,
unbound . . . .

Is there a preferred form?

I've seen all those formats you mention and a couple of others besides. Frankly, if the play's good, it doesn't matter which one you use. If it isn't. . .

I guess if I had to choose I'd take all caps centered for character names, speeches indented on both sides, and stage directions with wider margins. I'm not fond of all the italics and bold face to distinguish things--it distracts me. But I've read good plays by writers who use that format. Ireland's Thomas Murphy, one of my favorite writers, has never taken up typing. He writes longhand and has it prepared old style, on long paper, with character names left side in caps, by a typist. The play's the thing.

I've really appreciated Jerry's comments so far -- very eloquent. I particularly like the idea of "forking lightning". It's extraordinarily difficult to tell artists "I can't really tell you what we like 'til it smacks us in the face", but there it is. I ran the Festival of New Plays at Cleveland Public Theatre for many years, and no matter what we'd put in guidelines, the fact remains that often we're struck most by a writer's voice rather than a particular type of content. It's one reason that a "synopsis"-type screening without sample pages is so difficult -- it's so much harder to get a sense of the writer's voice.

A few questions/comments, Jerry:

How much do you think the "greying" of the audience has affected you (or will affect you) at SCR -- in terms of coming to grips with some of the riskier writing coming out now? I've seen a trend (nationally here in the US, anyway) toward more conservative seasons as funding gets chancier. There seem to be fewer and fewer new plays in LORT seasons overall.

I know that at SCR you've also pioneered developmental work with "minority" playwrights (hate that term) -- Latino writers recently, I believe. In Southern Cal. (like here in Cleveland) you face all the contradictions and excitement of "multiculturalism" in your larger metropolitan area -- and yet one has to assume that your subscriber base, like most LORT's, is still basically suburban, upper-middle class and white. How does that affect your playwright- and audience-development?

(These aren't trick questions, all. I'm currently in the Playwrights' Unit at the Cleveland Play House, which I know is struggling with all the same things.)

Great question--thanks for writing. Not that I have THE answer, but here are some stabs at mine.

I've been with SCR for 30 years and I can't exactly remember when a significant portion of our audience wasn't "greying." Even when we were in a storefront, a significant portion of our audience was upper-middle class and grey. We have folks who've grown older with us, but we also have a marketing department that's doing all it can to bring in younger people. The blue-hairs tend to show up at the matinees on Saturday and Sunday. A number of them are offended by plays we present, and write us letter after letter, but more of that in a minute. I think theatre by nature tends to attract older people. They want the collective experience without the backbeat and feedback guitar. They want to be surprised, amazed. They want to bring their clients, to talk about it afterwards with their friends. They have the money for the tickets, which are 3-5 times what a film costs. But we do what we can with student discounts, pay-what-you-will performances, etc.

Remember, we're in Orange County, CA, home of B-1 Bob Dornan (but not, apparently, anymore, HALLELUJAH!). Our people have always been conservative. But for twenty years we've been giving them a steady diet of new works, and enough of our patrons have come to like them. This year we're doing five new plays (all premieres except CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE OF JOY, which Lynn Nottage rewrote significantly for our production) and a new adaptation of Marivaux by Richard Greenberg. That's out of 11 productions on the seasons of our two stages.

The key is they're all good plays--by Greenberg, David Henry Hwang, Donald Margulies, Tom Strelich, Nottage.

The older audience thinks they want all the same old chestnuts, but they don't really. If we did seasons like that we'd lose many patrons. You don't pay parking, tickets, maybe a babysitter, and go out at night to get comfortable, or to get the same thing you always get at home on TV or video. The key is doing plays that stretch them without stretching them to the breaking point. They don't always like them--they always tell us so--but if by virtue of their excellence the plays are engaging at some level, they keep coming. We've done quite a bit of Nicky Silver, whose works are a stretch for a lot of our audience. Sometimes it works, sometimes they can't stretch with us. Critics could help a lot in these kinds of instances. Good critics can build bridges between plays and audiences that allow the latter to cross over and enjoy the plays. Except for Michael Phillips in San Diego, we don't really have any of those out here, just between us. Brantley's doing a fair job at the NY Times so far.

Besides doing a number of Latino plays, we've done two Asian plays the last two seasons, and two African-American plays. Again, the key is that these plays are good enough that they crossed over to white, middle-class audiences and made their worlds accessible to them. A play like August Wilson's TWO TRAINS RUNNING if done well will work for anybody. "Average" plays, decent works which would serve audiences of a particular culture but don't cross over as well, don't work as well in this regard.

A story: my neighbors, an architect and an urban planner, called recently to ask if I thought they should see our production of John Guare's SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION. I said, sure, why not? Because, they said, his mother had seen it and thought it was reprehensible and bad theatre (remember the nude male hustler?). She told them not to see it. See it, I said. You'll like it. They went and saw it, loved it. Now my neighbor and his mother, who wrote us a letter scolding SCR for doing the play, are fighting: over the merits of the play and how could he think like that and be her son. Ain't theatre grand?