Publishing a Play - I don't know where to start!

Well, I'd guess that your best bets would be at the local university, or perhaps at a more avant garde little theater group.

I was once in a little theater production of the story of Pere Ubu, but they did it as a musical. Pretty fun.

If nothing else, you want to have your script performed just so you can see what works and doesn't work. I wrote one 20 minute play. As it was rehearsed, the actors brought a lot to it which got incorporated into the final version.

Playwriting

Community theater is the best option for you right now.

Also, buy (or check your public library for) Writer's Market. It comes out every year and has a pretty big section that lists theaters around the nation that accept submissions, describes what they are interested in, etc.

Getting started

More than 95% of the plays we do come from the royalty houses (Samuel French, Dramatists Play Service and dozens of smaller shops). To make the big time you need a major professional production. Many of the second tier royalty houses (Broadway Play Publishing, Dramatic Publishing) will include your play if it has won a major national award. I don't visit playscripts or the other "accept any" sites. I have to sort through too much really bad stuff to try to find a gem.

There are also many genre houses that include plays for high school students or plays with a religious theme or another sub genre. Writers Market includes many of these places as does The American Association of Community Theater web site.

The other 5% of our plays comes from or through friends or people I meet on line. I purchase at least 100 plays a year from the royalty houses and even more that I receive on line. Out of this I hope to find four or five plays to produce in our small (60 seat) community theater.

While everyone wants to get their play produced, it is more important to get experience. Not many people write a great play the first time out. Our small community has over a dozen active playwrights. We started a playwrights group to give the writers the opportunity to hone their skills by writing and having their work read.

If your play is any good, most local community theaters will host a reading of it so that you can hear it read by actors and let you refine the script. We want your scripts to be good too. If they won't give you a reading, that tells you something too.

Having said that, let me explain the realities of the theater. Most small theaters will present five or six productions a year. Those productions (plus memberships and donations) have to generate the revenue to pay the bills for the whole year. As a playwright, you are competing with Neil Simon, Arthur Miller, Shakespeare and hundreds of others for one of our slots. I know that Neil Simon will fill the house, night after night. I need that to pay the bills. At most, I can risk one slot for an unknown script or a genre outside our core presentations.

Where do I find these unknown scripts? Word of mouth is a major factor. I have a list of playwrights I follow waiting for the script that is right for us. I follow what other theaters are doing. If a theater that I follow does a piece that I think might interest me, I look for reviews of that show in their local newspapers. Then I have to track down the playwright to get a copy of the play.

For example: Last year we presented an extraordinarily successful production of the play "Arthur: The Begetting." I saw another play by the playwright and liked it. I tracked him down and got the script to Arthur and fell in love with it.

One final comment based on an actual experience. When I read a spec script I will put it down if it doesn't excite me and catch my interest in the first 15 or 20 minutes of the play. When I told a playwright I gave up after several minutes, I was urged to keep reading because "it gets better". I don't want it to get better. I want it to start out great.

I know I'm rambling but . . .

Doug

Publication is really not the ultimate goal of a playwright. Production is. (Think of how many playscripts are sold in Barnes and Noble, and you'll get the idea.) So you should be sending your play out to theatres, rather than publishers. Most publishers will not look at your plays at all without a major production - and no, it's not essential that the production be in New York, but it does need to be in a large, commercial, regional theatre at the very least.

You send letters off to theatres in much the same way you query agents. The Dramatist's Sourcebook is a great resource - or you could also join the Dramatist's Guild, which will give you the contact info of all the theatres that accept queries. (Quite a few do not.)

Re: Playscripts and other publishers. Playscripts is not an "accept any" publisher. They will look at your play without a production if you have a large cast show suitable for high school productions, since that is their major market. If you're querying a play for adult theatres, you still need a production to be considered. Like most publishers, they reject the vast majority of their submissions.

And as someone who has a play published by Samuel French, and multiple plays published by Playscripts, I much prefer the latter. My play with Samuel French won a major award and has been produced a grand total of two times in the past four years. It sits in a massive catalogue and cannot be read online. People like Doug B must buy it on the basis of its description alone. Not only that, because SF is so massive, I'm not even informed when my play is about to be produced - I have to google the title just to find out. With Playscripts, prospective buyers can read scripts online, so they can determine its quality before they buy it. (And for the record, SF and Dramatists publish a lot of terrible plays too). With Playscripts, in the same time period, I've had over 2,000 productions. So if I look at my royalty checks, I have a clear preference.

That's great!

With Playscripts, in the same time period, I've had over 2,000 productions.

Click to expand...

Wow! That is really great. It is quite a contrast with Samuel French - I agree.

I hope nobody minds if I hijack this thread--the etiquette on other boards I frequent is to not start a new topic if there's one close to your question, so I hope that's the case here.

Is there any market at all for short--by which I mean ten minute--plays? There's a local theater company here that puts on a festival of new shorts every year based around a theme, with one slot reserved for a local winner. In 2010 (theme: a green world) I was the local winner, and I got to see my work produced, which was a lot of fun. This year (theme: war and peace) I came in third. That's great, but it goes against my grain to leave something I've written just sitting on the hard drive if there's any life for it all out in the world. I sent it to playscripts and got a rejection, which is perhaps a sign that I should just let it die, but short of sending it to every theater company in the country one by one is there any other option? Are there no magazines/journals that publish short drama, as others publish fiction and poetry?

There are many publishing houses that publish ten minute plays. I'd try Heuer publishing.

www.heuerpub.com

You can also go the the American Association of Community theater web site to see a list of publishers

http://aact.org/making/playsource.html

Doug

Many thanks, Doug!

I've submitted the piece to Heuer Publishing now. It feels good to be able to just add it to my "pending response" list.

One of the routes I tried was to publish my (previously staged/award-winning) plays on Amazon Kindle - along with some prose books.

After some weeks online, the prose books/novellas took off, but the lack of movement with the play scripts began depressing me. Silly, I know. Its an incredibly niche market. I'll probably put the plays 'live' again, just to have them out there in the world.

Point being, when all else fails, and provided you get the formatting right - the Amazon Kindle is a way of 'self-publishing' ones work without ending up with crates of unsold books.

Not surprising. Look at the plays section of Barnes and Noble. Not many people go out to simply purchase copies of playscripts. I'd work on getting into the hands of directors and producers and try to get more productions of your show.

Just to add... Another route for publicity for ones plays is to have a website with samples. Here, feature a brief blurb for each work, and a downloadable few pages of the script in .doc or .pdf format.

I was contacted out of the blue a few weeks back by 'Actor X' who'd read the sample and wanted to see the full script, which I supplied. This was followed by a productive call from his agency.

Result: barring unforeseen mess-ups, one of my shows'll be appearing at Edinburgh Festival next year - with the potential of further stagings in other countries.

And all from simply having a few dedicated pages with blurbs, and samples.

Doug B said:

More than 95% of the plays we do come from the royalty houses (Samuel French, Dramatists Play Service and dozens of smaller shops). To make the big time you need a major professional production. Many of the second tier royalty houses (Broadway Play Publishing, Dramatic Publishing) will include your play if it has won a major national award. I don't visit playscripts or the other "accept any" sites. I have to sort through too much really bad stuff to try to find a gem.

There are also many genre houses that include plays for high school students or plays with a religious theme or another sub genre. Writers Market includes many of these places as does The American Association of Community Theater web site.

The other 5% of our plays comes from or through friends or people I meet on line. I purchase at least 100 plays a year from the royalty houses and even more that I receive on line. Out of this I hope to find four or five plays to produce in our small (60 seat) community theater.

While everyone wants to get their play produced, it is more important to get experience. Not many people write a great play the first time out. Our small community has over a dozen active playwrights. We started a playwrights group to give the writers the opportunity to hone their skills by writing and having their work read.

If your play is any good, most local community theaters will host a reading of it so that you can hear it read by actors and let you refine the script. We want your scripts to be good too. If they won't give you a reading, that tells you something too.

Having said that, let me explain the realities of the theater. Most small theaters will present five or six productions a year. Those productions (plus memberships and donations) have to generate the revenue to pay the bills for the whole year. As a playwright, you are competing with Neil Simon, Arthur Miller, Shakespeare and hundreds of others for one of our slots. I know that Neil Simon will fill the house, night after night. I need that to pay the bills. At most, I can risk one slot for an unknown script or a genre outside our core presentations.

Where do I find these unknown scripts? Word of mouth is a major factor. I have a list of playwrights I follow waiting for the script that is right for us. I follow what other theaters are doing. If a theater that I follow does a piece that I think might interest me, I look for reviews of that show in their local newspapers. Then I have to track down the playwright to get a copy of the play.

For example: Last year we presented an extraordinarily successful production of the play "Arthur: The Begetting." I saw another play by the playwright and liked it. I tracked him down and got the script to Arthur and fell in love with it.

One final comment based on an actual experience. When I read a spec script I will put it down if it doesn't excite me and catch my interest in the first 15 or 20 minutes of the play. When I told a playwright I gave up after several minutes, I was urged to keep reading because "it gets better". I don't want it to get better. I want it to start out great.

I know I'm rambling but . . .

Doug

Click to expand...

I signed up to this site today, unsure as to whether or not I'd find myself in another tube of forum jism... this post (and the poetry forum) has already made it a worthwhile visit.

Speaking of play publishing, what publishers would you recommend to publish a 1 act (slightly blue) play about teen pregnancy?

comped

where to submit

Here is a link to a comprehensive list of the royalty houses showing their specialties. You can find those who offer plays that match your script. I'm sure each has a means to submit your work.

http://aact.org/making/playsource.html

Doug

^TY for that Doug.

On a similar note, does anyone have a list of agents that rep playwrights? (keep getting a ton of theatres that want agented subs)

comped

It's tough ...

comped ...

You will find listings of agencies in various books on playwriting. Naturally, only buy something recently published.

One that I will recommend for its listing of agents, theaters, and contests is The Dramatists Guild Resource Directory, published every year. It is less than $17 from Amazon, plus shipping.

If you have written a play, you can join the Dramatists Guild for (I think) $90 a year. It is not necessary to have had a production; but you must submit a play. In return you receive a copy of the Resource Directory and copies of the magazine The Dramatist.

Making a five-minute search of the internet with Google, I did not have any luck finding a listing of agents for playwrights. I have the Resource Directory, though, and it lists about two dozen agencies.

The brutal truth is that you are not going to find an agent for stage plays until you have a track record of some productions or you have written something impressive and you know a theater professional who has the inside track with an agency or is himself of such high standing that a recommendation will carry weight.

Of course, you may prove to be the extremely rare exception. But your main goal should be to get some productions. You can buy a copy of Writers Market, which has an excellent listing of theaters that accept plays. Most theaters across the nation accept submissions without an agent.

Best ...

If they don't have the requirement that the work has not been previously staged, I would try submitting it to more contests (normally my strategy). In terms of publishing, it might be worthwhile to try to get it in a collection.

jazzman99 said:

I hope nobody minds if I hijack this thread--the etiquette on other boards I frequent is to not start a new topic if there's one close to your question, so I hope that's the case here.

Is there any market at all for short--by which I mean ten minute--plays? There's a local theater company here that puts on a festival of new shorts every year based around a theme, with one slot reserved for a local winner. In 2010 (theme: a green world) I was the local winner, and I got to see my work produced, which was a lot of fun. This year (theme: war and peace) I came in third. That's great, but it goes against my grain to leave something I've written just sitting on the hard drive if there's any life for it all out in the world. I sent it to playscripts and got a rejection, which is perhaps a sign that I should just let it die, but short of sending it to every theater company in the country one by one is there any other option? Are there no magazines/journals that publish short drama, as others publish fiction and poetry?

Click to expand...

First visit my Amazon page about stage production tips, then write to your hearts content. Get something that resembles a story and ask people to read it and give you feedback.

http://www.amazon.com/Ridiculously-Production-Artistic-Business-ebook/dp/B007Z93F2E/

There is more information on the website http://www.johndegaetanoproductions.com

Also check out our new video for 10 minute plays: http://youtu.be/mEZjVZfraNQ