Writing by the Numbers 2025

   

Writing by the Numbers 2025

The Kittie Knox Plays felt like a triumph this year. (Photo by Benjamin Rose Photography

This year got off to a rough start, as the Trump administration's attack and gutting of the National Park Service put an end to Plays in Place's Suffrage in Black & White project with the National Parks of Boston. This meant that our production of A New Era by Miranda ADEkoje scheduled for July was canceled (as well as our production of Nothing But Victory! by Ginger Lazarus in 2026). This squelched the telling of important, powerful stories about the intersection of race, abolition, and the movement for woman suffrage in America.  Financially, it was blow to our company, erasing a third of our planned budget for both 2025 and 2026.

Our other projects kept going, and we had a busy spring, with sold-out concert readings of my plays Blood on the Snow and A Light Under the Dome in Northampton, in partnership with Historic Northampton and the Unitarian Universalist Society of Northampton. Both of these plays were hugely important to me as a playwright, and it was a joy to see them reach audiences in my new hometown. Both were directed by Brianna Sloane and produced by Talya Kingston for Plays in Place (PiP).  My play, Hot Love in the Moonlight, made a return visit to Mount Auburn Cemetery for the 10th anniversary of their Artist in Residence Program. My work at Mount Auburn has made a huge impact on my life and career.

My play Revolution's Edge made a spectacular appearance in Boston in April as an outdoor concert reading for the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere's famous ride. We saw more than a thousand spectators crammed into the Prado pavilion behind Old North Church. Producer/director/ASL coordinator Jess Meyer led this project that ended up being one we won't ever forget and included visits from Governor Healey and Boston Mayor Wu.

Yes, that's me sitting next to the Governor. 

The Summer got off to a big start with a workshop production of Mox Nox (or soon some the night) directed by Alexandra Smith for Moonbox Productions Boston New Works Festival. Even though it was technically a workshop production, the team went all out in every aspect--set, sound, lights, magic (led by my pal Evan Northrup), and a totally committed and talented cast. This play's initial production was squashed by the pandemic and had waited to finally reach the stage. This year's process was boosted by being part of Gloucester Stage's Water's Rising Festival in the spring. 

Dustin Teuber and Marleena Garris in Mox Nox (photo by 

Jenine Florence)

We managed to raise the money for PiP to produce The Kittie Knox Plays, a series of three one-act plays by me, Claire Gardner, and Kirsten Greenidge, about the barrier breaking bi-racial cyclist Kittie Knox and her friends in the 1890s. Our large team included 9 actors, 3 musicians, 4 understudies, and many others, all skillfully led by director Michelle Aguillon, producer Hannah McEachern, and stage manager Katelyn Paddock. The plays were produced over three weeks in three different spots in three towns. It was a project that took years to make happen, in partnership with MassBike, and it was a fabulous experience.

Hampton Richards, Beyonce Martinez, and Rebekah Brunson in The Kittie Knox Plays. Photo by Benjamin Rose Photography

In November, we produced my play A Revelation of Character, about Boston abolitionists Maria Weston Chapman and Lydia Maria Child and their friendship which was battered by the fight for abolition in the 1830s and 1840s. This piece was commissioned by the Associates of the Boston Public Library and focused on letters and writings from the Anti-Slavery Collection in the BPL's Special Collections. Designed to be presented as a concert reading in Rabb Hall at the Main Branch of the BPL, we had a killer cast led by director/producer Lisa Rafferty. (This project is quite portable, and we have high hopes it might appear elsewhere in 2026).

Jennifer Drummond, Emma Friend, and Amie Lytle in A Revelation of Character. Photo by Benjamin Rose Photography

I feel extremely fortunate to work with a such a great team of artistic collaborators at Plays in Place. My kick-ass producers (Jess Meyer, Hannah McEachern, Talya Kingston, Jessica Chace, Nicole Young-Martin, and Lisa Rafferty) make it possible for us to have so many high quality projects in development and production at once.

Productions of my published plays were lower than usual. I don't know if they're just too old within the catalogs or if the market has softened overall. I send out many fewer of unproduced plays to theaters because most of my energy is focused on work for PiP.

Next year will be extremely busy, with four new PiP productions in three states, plus a big consulting gig we're doing in Texas (on five sites!), plus a commission that I'm writing for Central Square Theatre and the MIT Museum. And we're going to publish a paperback book of The Kittie Knox Plays in the spring. I've got all the work I can handle.

I share these statistic with the hope that others will do so, too, and that aspiring writers (aren't we all) will get some data points about the writing life and business.

Live music was an important part of The Kittie Knox Plays. Lee Forrest, Elise Brown, and Nick Chieffo did great work. 

My writing/life stats for 2025:  

Performances/Audience.

Number of Productions/Readings:  19 (18 full productions and concert readings, 1 developmental reading). 

These were of 15 different plays, including 5 different full-length scripts, in 7 US states. 

Number of Performances:  47.  This includes published plays. This is almost half of last year's total, but that's because our productions at Plays in Place had very limited runs.

Previous Years' productions and performances:

2024:  20 productions and readings, 91 performances

2023:  43 productions and readings, 141 performances

2022:  18 productions and readings, 33 performances

2021:  26 productions and readings, 60 performances

2020:  14 productions and readings, 21 performances

2019:  46 productions and readings, 310 performances

2018:  42 productions and readings.  259 performances.
2017:  48 total.  227 performances.

2016:  40 total. 106 performances.

2015:  49 total. 151 performances.

2014:  44 total. 123 performances.

Estimated Audience for 2025:  4,685 total. 

My audience numbers were up just a tad from last year. Plays in Place had strong audiences, but fewer performances overall than in past years.

Previous years' audiences:

2024:  4,529

2023:  7,293

2022:  1,760

2021:  3,300

2020:  1,607

2019: 12,077

2018:  11,424

2017:  13,092

2016:  6,000

2015:  11,578

2014:  13,411

(For published plays I estimate 50 people/performance, which is probably low. I don't track plays used by students in competition, so the actual number is higher. )

Book sales remain tiny. However, Steering to Freedom just came out as an audio book from Audible, which has me motivated to get more people to listen and read this story. (I've been listening to it and it's REALLY compelling.)

Books sold:  10
Previous Years'  book sales: 10

2024:  10

2023:  8
2022: 22
2021:  15
2020:  76
2019:  35
2018:  77
2017:  40+
2016:  60+
2015:  350+
2014:  78

Marketing:

Almost all my marketing time is spent securing new Plays in Place projects, which leaves little time for other submissions. The Playwright Submission Binge remains a useful reminder to make sure I take some time to market my non-PiP work. 

Submissions:
Total:   17  (up from 12 last year)

Carpentry projects provide a break from writing and theater work. I'm still in the process converting the loft of our barn into a rehearsal space.

Writing output:

This year I had commissions to write a couple new plays for Plays in Place.

• I wrote A Revelation of Character, an historical play about Lydia Maria Child and Maria Weston Chapman for the Associates of the Boston Public Library, which was produced at the BPL in November, directed by Lisa Rafferty.
• Wrote a new one-act play for Historic Deerfield, Sparks on Dry Tinder, which we'll produce there in July 2026
• Wrote a new ten-minute comedy for next year's Boston Theater Marathon.
• Finished one-act play, For Love and Glory, which Plays in Place will produce at Hunter House in Newport in June.
• Wrote The Slippery Truth: Prisonbreak at New-Gate, a new full-length site-specific play which Plays in Place will produce at Old New-Gate Prison and Copper Mine in Connecticut in July.
• LOTS of research on new historical projects.

In the coming year, I have two big full-length commissions to write.

Inputs:
Plays watched:  19 (saw 31 in 2024)
Movies/TV series watched:  45  (37 in 2024)
Plays read: 11 (10 in 2024)
Books read:  21 (25 in 2024)

Plus more than a dozen concerts and museum visits. I saw many fewer plays than in a normal year because I was in rehearsal or at performances a LOT this year. Next year will be the same.

Live music was an important part of The Kittie Knox Plays. Lee Forrest, Elise Brown, and Nick Chieffo were so much fun.

Patrick's writing $$ for 2025

Gross Income:  $38,729
published plays performance royalties:  $186
non Plays in Place play production royalties:  $1,795     
film projects:  $0  
play commissions & Plays in Place playwright pay:  $23,040  
teaching/coaching/consulting: $570   
my books:  $7
Prizes/fellowships: $0     
Producer work for Plays in Place: $13,129
misc. (essays, panels, editing, other): $0

Expenses:  about $2,625   

Net Income:  $36,104 (before taxes)

Past years:

2024:  Gross income:  $27,278   Expenses:  $3,600  Net:  $23,678

2023:  Gross income:  $22,765  Expenses:  $13,000   Net:  $9,765

2022:  Gross income: $22,025  Expenses: $7,095  Net:  $14,930

2021:  Gross income:  $11,394   Expenses:  $5,866  Net:  $5,582

2020:  Gross income:  $14,162  Expenses: $5,822  Net:  $8,340

2019:  Gross income:  $19,511  Expenses:  $7,500  Net:  $11,761

2018:  Gross Income: $23,192  Expenses: $14,227  net:  $8,965

2017:  Gross Income: $31,343   Expenses:  $9,715  net:  $21,628

2016:  Gross Income:  $25,857  Expenses: $11,472  net:  $14,385

2015:  Gross income: $8,662  Expenses: $4,979  net:  $3,682

2014:  Gross income:  $7,974  Expenses $5,580  net:  $2,494

2013:  Gross income:   $7,767  Expenses:  5,758  net:  $2,029

2012:  Gross Income:  $3,844  Expenses:  $2,808  net:  $1,063

2011:  Gross Income:   $2,638   Expenses:  $4,665  net:  $-2,027

This was a good year for my writing/producing income, my best ever, and a step up from last year. Depending on how you look at it, I'm still not earning as much as I should be for my producing work (works out to about $10/hour), but I make up for that on the writing/commission side. 

My income is highly erratic, as I tend to get paid last on a project, after all the other expenses and paychecks have cleared. That's the peril of owning and running a small business.

Anyone will tell you that it's almost impossible to make a living as a playwright. This is my best attempt. 

A Revelation Character was written specifically for Rabb Hall, but it's pretty portable. (Photo by Benjamin Rose Photography)

My time stats for 2025:

Total working time: 2,052 hours    total transit time: 211 hours

Time spent on writing stuff:  1,759 hours   

• actual writing and research:  400 hours 

• reading for work (not project research):  18 hours  

• play attendance:  35 hours 

• rehearsals/meetings/consulting/teaching:  99  hours  

• marketing and admin:  30  hours  

• Seven Devils New Play Foundry board work & Play Incubation Advisory: 25 hours

• Plays in Place:  1,153 hours   (this includes all aspects of production, including rehearsals)

Time spent on Home/Barn Renovation/Projects : 293 hours

Overall, I put in about 100 more hours of work this year than in 2024. (I need to watch out for hours creeping up too high.) My writing/research hours were down slightly, producing hours were up. I've had to step back from some of my volunteer board work--with four big shows coming for PiP, I'm going to be stretched pretty thin in 2026.

I don't count vegetable gardening and making maple syrup as work, but I did track my hours, and I spent an additional 151 hours on these hobbies.

How I spent my time in past years:

2024:  1,918 total work hours.  1,694 writing work hours (422 writing/27 reading/58 play attendance/87 rehearsing & meetings/43 admin & marketing/12 board & organization time/Plays in Place 1,045. 202 in transit.  224 hours on home renovations & real estate.

2023:  1,904 total work hours.  1,597 writing hours (421 writing/12 reading/56 play attendance/108 rehearsing & meetings/96 admin & marketing/27 Seven Devils/Plays in Place 585.  260 in transit.  307 hours on home renovations & real estate.

2022:  1,705 total work hours.  1,340 writing hours (409 writing/18 reading/44 play attendance/130 rehearsing & meetings/127 admin & marketing/60 Seven Devils/Plays in Place 844.  167 in transit.  365 hours on home renovations & real estate.

2021:  1,698 total work hours. 1,358 writing hours (480 writing/11 reading/48 play attendance/189 rehearsing/156 marketing/27 Seven Devils/37 Dramatists Guild/9 Media Work/ 451 Plays in Place.  157 in transit.  339 hours on home renovations/real estate.

2020:  1,882 total work hours. 1,382 writing hours (580 writing/21 reading/55 play attendance/129 rehearsing/176 marketing/36 Seven Devils/106 Dramatists Guild/200 Plays in Place.  78.5 in transit.  519 hours on home renovations/real estate.

2019:  2,119 total work hours. 1,619 writing hours (394 writing/31 reading/83 play attendance/375 rehearsing/210 marketing/11 New Play Alliance/79 Dramatists Guild/437 Plays in Place.  294 hours in transit.  500 hours on home renovations/real estate.

2018:  1,905 total works hours. 1,905 writing hours (546 writing/30 reading/89 play attendance/553 rehearsing/373 marketing & admin/41 New Play Alliance/110 Dramatists Guild/164 Plays in Place).  282 hours in transit.

2017:  2,018 total work hours.  1,338 writing hours (371 writing/23 reading/468 rehearsing/347 marketing/129 New Play Alliance and Dramatists Guild)+680 hours on house renovations

2016:  2,096 total work hours. 1,223 writing hours (416 writing/28 reading/438 rehearsing/274 marketing-admin/67 New Play Alliance)+873 on house renovations.

2015: 1,596 total work hours.  1,035 writing hours (262 writing/52 reading/295 rehearsing/303 marketing-admin/123 New Play Alliance) + 561 on moving and house renovations

2014:  1,556 total work hours. 1,426 writing hours (452 writing/109 reading/342 rehearsing/396 marketing/127 New Play Alliance) + 130 hours farming.

 2013:  1,898 total work hours.  996 writing hours (394 writing/308 rehearsing/294 marketing)  + 902 hours farming

2012:  1,630 total work hours.  896 writing hours.  (386 writing/278 rehearsing and meeting/231 marketing)   + 734 hours farming

2011: 818 writing/work hours.  My kids were a lot younger back then.


That's it. I hope you find these stats are useful or interesting. 

Thanks for reading. I hope you all have a Happy New Year!

I'm lucky--I get to make plays in amazing places with amazing people, and often learn a lot about history and life along the way.

Here are some links to other end-of-year posts by my playwright friends:

Adam Szymkowicz

Donna Hoke

John Minigan

Adam Richter

Brynn Hambley

Useful things to track: Submission Rates for Individual Plays

On Facebook, among playwrights there can be a fair amount of discussion about play submissions and rejections. I've seen a couple people ask about acceptance rates, which I think is an excellent question. I've only recently updated my database to allow me to have better stats on individual scripts. I've been tracking annual submission stats for many years, but I'm glad that I finally took the time for the new reports.

Here's what I have for a bunch of my full-length plays. Most of these are fairly recent, though Reading the Mind of God is a much older play. I still send these out, though with varying frequency.

A few caveats before I talk a bit more about the results.  In this database, not all acceptances are productions. In this case, I'm counting publication, a workshop, a reading, or even a finalist slot in a major competition.

So a few things jump out:

• The acceptance rate is within a pretty narrow range, 6-8% for 9 out of 11 plays.
• The two outliers are plays that are naturally going to be harder to place, but I've also not sent out either script nearly as much as most of the others. Will their acceptance rights move towards the average, if I get them more submissions?  (Lost in Lexicon is a children's musical, without many options, it seems.)
• For me, it would appear that I tend to reach some sort of upper limit of just over 100. Did I run out of opps for these plays?  Did I get distracted by the other plays?
• The totals aren't as high as I thought they might be. I'm left feeling that I need to work a little harder for each of these full-length plays.
• I have a "hold" option, for when a company has said they are considering a play, at length. I just went through the database and cleared out any holds that are clearly not going to pay off. That was a little walk through a map of past heartbreaks.

Now that I have this report, I think I'll be checking it a fair bit, because I know I need to get my full-length plays out there more. I'd love to see each of these get to 100 and beyond--because they don't get picked and produced if they're not going out . I'm not doing my job if I'm not looking for opps, or people aren't requesting to read my work.

At the same time, I'm involved with a whole bunch of commissioned projects right now, and those, and a few past ones, don't even show up on this list because they were pretty specific for those institutions. Working on those projects takes up a lot of my submission time right now, and that's not a bad thing. My hope is that all the projects together keep gaining some heat, and will lead to more serious reads of these other plays.

But we'll see.

Just for kicks, I started setting up the stats for my short plays and one-acts. It'll take a while to do them all, because there are a lot them.  But for now, here are these:

You can see that, as you'd expect, the acceptance rate for short plays is MUCH higher than for full-length plays. And the top performers can be pretty strong indeed. Though for this small sample, there's also a wider variance.

As with the full-lengths, this report should help me identify scripts that have fallen off my radar and need to go out more. Or else scripts that aren't as strong as I'd hoped. 

(Two of the stronger performers, Quack and Insomnia, are now published, but these are pre-publication stats. My experience has shown that pre-publication performance is not a good predictor of how well the play will do after it's published.)

What Playwrights Need from National New Play Development Workshops

For playwrights struggling to develop their work and careers such that they are at least getting a small voice in the national theatrical conversation, there are a few ways to start to break through. For some, attending a prestigious MFA program might be the ticket. But not everyone has the financial resources, or family space, or time, to carve out 2-3 years for an MFA. Other might try working with local theaters who are LORT members, or companies who are part of NNPN.  But those are hard to approach without an agent (more and more so all the time). Or a writer could move to New York City and try to get into the scene there. But not everyone can make that work with their lives.

For many others, national playwriting conferences and workshops provide a potential opening for their plays to be noticed, and to work with artistic collaborators from outside their own communities. The list would include the O’Neill, Sundance, Great Plains, Last Frontier, Inge, Bay Area Playwrights, Seven Devils, PlayPenn, the Lark, Cape Cod, National Winter Playwrights Retreat, Ashland, New Harmony, and more. At a time when our art/business is engaged in a conversation about increasing diversity/inclusion, these opportunities have a low cost of entry (compared to MFA programs or moving to a new city), are for a limited time (so don’t require you to quit your job or uproot your family), and many offer blind submissions, so that (in theory) the identity of a writer is not a barrier to selection.

I (and many others) would argue that for our artform to remain vital, we need to encourage writers of color, women, and those who identify as LGBTQ. And also not limit our writer pool to people of financial means. We need to include writers who have children, or who might be caregivers for family members. We need these diverse voices, and our informal network of playwright’s workshops can help bring them in.

But.

I’ve been to some amazing conferences, and they’ve changed my life. (Thanks, Seven Devils!) I’ve been a finalist and semifinalist in a bunch of others (which is exciting and heartbreaking). And I think there are ways that we might encourage these organizations to be even more effective.

These are suggestions—some are free to implement, some are not. I realize that every organization has its own reasons and methods, and no one asked me for my advice. But I’m a writer who has been through the process, who has been a stay-at-home parent, and who has tried to figure out how getting into one of these important opportunities could be possible given the restrictions of my life.

So here goes:

1.  Early notification.  Most programs operate in the summer. My summer books up months ahead, both with family stuff and with writing projects. Two weeks away is tricky if you have a steady job or have kids at home. Three weeks or four weeks takes a LOT of planning and asking for favors. Many places start notifying in mid-March for July, which can work. Notifications in April are much harder for writers. Every extra week of notice helps writers. Less lead-time favors people without families or people with more financial resources. Shifting submission deadlines earlier does not inconvenience writers—so if you need to shift the deadline 3 weeks earlier to give 3 more weeks of lead time, many writers would thank you, and you might change your pool of applicants/participants.

2. Minimally coordinate to avoid overlap.  In my ideal world, we would have a big convening (via HowlRound?) of all the organization leaders, and they would all look at their calendars and coordinate a little. Yes, the summer is only 12 weeks long, so some workshops will necessarily be simultaneous. But the ones that overlap by just a few days force really tough choices for writers who are multiply selected (I know, boo, hoo). This year, I was a finalist at BAPF but need to attend the Dramatists Guild NYC national conference, and they overlapped by 3 days (thus had to step out of the pool). The Guild conference might also overlap the O’Neill.  At the very least, the Guild and workshops could attempt to coordinate so that writers who are at these workshops—some of our best writers—can attend the conference.

3. Set the dates early. Some conferences have only a range of dates posted when the submission window is open. Writers tend to apply to as many of these opportunities as possible, but they’re making uninformed choices if they don’t know what the exact dates are. Some family situations and many jobs will require significant notice and planning in order to take multiple weeks off. If we want people without significant financial resources to participant, we need them to be able to plan.  There are conferences coming up this summer for which you still can't find the dates posted online right now.

4.Consider using a common app or common requirements. Many places ask for artist statements and  have specific formats for cast list, development history, bio, etc.  Which is fine. But they’re all slightly different. Shifting this same info from format to format takes a fair amount of time for writers. Spread out over thousands of writers, this seems like many thousands of wasted hours. This is an application cost, of time, that has a greater impact on people without means or who are caring for children/family members.

(these are going to start costing money)

5.  Feed writers. If you pay a stipend, but don’t make arrangements for food, guess where the stipends have to go. There are creative options—Seven Devils has arranged discounts with local restaurants, plus they set up a cooler of picnic food every day that the entire company can access. This helps save money for folks on tight budgets.

6. Pay for travel. Many of the larger opps pay for travel. Just about all of them provide housing. Airfare costs will keep out people who don’t have deep pockets, which, given how income/wealth is broken out across America, means a less diverse pool of applicants.

7.  Increase stipends, or start paying one.  A few places offer them now. Sometimes it’s hundreds of dollars, some are up to $1,000 or more. And as a playwright participant, I am always extremely grateful for every dollar. But if we want a diverse pool of participants, in every sense, then in an ideal world, I think we’d shoot for $500/week. That amount would help cover lost wages, help pay rent, or help offset childcare costs. When I was the stay-at-home dad for our two small kids, I applied to the O’Neill with a vague sense of dread—how would I be able to afford to pay for someone to watch the kids for a month? (Fortunately/Unfortunately, I never had to figure it out.)  Also, if you pay a stipend, please post how much it is on your web site. Writers with restrictive budgets need to make informed choices.


Please understand, I think all these organizations are doing amazing work, and they are providing an essential role in the theatrical ecosystem. And I also understand that every one of them is scrambling for dollars every year just to keep their programs open. So a logical response to many of these suggestions will be a collective eye roll and/or sigh of despair. And, like many writers, if chosen for any program, I am incredibly grateful for the chance to work on my play, and to interact with other artists in a creative, nurturing environment. But it’s important for writers to at least state our needs, if we have any hope of them being met.

Most importantly, enacting any of these steps will help widen an important entranceway for writers who have traditionally not had access to participation in the larger artistic conversation. We need those plays, we need those voices.

(My secret fantasy is for some big foundation to think about this, and decide, "well, let’s try an experiment, and try funding these tweaks across the board for two years." It would impact hundreds of writers. Would it help diversify and change the pipeline? It might. Which would in turn might have ripple effects across the theatrical landscape, for years to come.)

Build (and Share) Your Own Writer Marketing Tools: The Binge

I’ve been actively marketing my writing for years. As I do, sometimes I find a glaring lack of tools to address a particular marketing challenge. Sometimes I get lucky and discover that someone else has found the same problem and has already been hard at work to solve it, and maybe I can buy a piece of software or join an organization. But sometimes it’s necessary for me to make the tool myself.

Back in 1993, it was hard for playwrights to find up-to-date marketing information—we had annual guidebooks with listings, but they went out of date quickly. So I started publishing a monthly newsletter, Market InSight for Playwrights, that gave playwrights fresh info. Hundreds of playwrights subscribed and a lot of us got a lot better about sending out our plays to the right places.

I sold Market InSight around 1999  (it lasted under new ownership until 2016), and I kept submitting my work and using the info in the newsletter. But I found it hard to stay motivated. Then I heard about an entire town that was banding together to collectively lose weight. By making it a communal event, and building in layers of accountability and fun, the town found a way to establish healthy habits and get healthier.

I thought maybe I could bring playwrights together to do something similar for marketing our scripts. Thus the Playwright Marketing Binge was born. In 2003, about a dozen of us took the challenge of sending out a play every day, for 30 days. We committed to reporting back to the group every day about what we sent, why, and where. It was a way to have fun doing chores that can often be a real drag. And it worked! We all sent out a lot of scripts and started to get more productions.

 It worked so well, that we started taking the challenge twice a year, every March and September. On March 1, Binge #30, will commence, now with 940 members from around the world. What began as a lark has turned into an extremely supportive and active online community. And a very generous one—where people share submission opportunities all year long. Many of us have met in person, and sometimes members band together to encourage (or demand) that theaters treat playwrights more fairly. Our writers get productions around the world. I submit a LOT more scripts now that I'm involved with the binge, because I have the information at my fingertips, and I'm inspired by my fellow bingers.

Some important lessons to keep in mind from the success of the Binge:

• Sharing works. This group experiences success because people are generous about sharing opportunities. Creating a large and active cloud of opportunity ends up benefiting the whole group. Not everyone posts or shares, but enough people to do make it work.
• Successful tools aren’t always planned. The first Binge was an experiment, with very limited goals—we wanted to have fun and submit more plays. The community that grew up around the events is the most powerful aspect of the Binge, but that wasn’t the initial goal. Part of the reason it ended up working had to do with tone, openness, and the right amount structure (not too much, not too little).
• Tools don’t have to expensive or complicated. There is no budget to run the Binge. It’s free to join, and it doesn’t cost anything for me to run it. (It’s a Yahoo Group.) You can participate if you want, but you can also join and merely lurk. The only thing you can’t do is be a jerk to other members. The goals for each binge are simple: submit something every day for 30 days; but those are only goals—each person uses the group in their own way.
• Consistency helps longevity. The dates used to shift a little. Deciding to make the Binges start on March 1 and September 1 simplified operation. Choosing a software platform that is easy to manage helps a lot. Simplicity of operation is important if you want something to last without burning out the people who are running it. The time required to manage this group is minimal. The benefits, to me and to many, many people, are large—in terms of sharing information, building community, and establishing good marketing habits.

As you make your way through the artistic and business aspects of creating plays, books, and films, consider where you find gaps in resources, information, community.  You are not alone in experiencing these gaps.  Has someone else already found a way to fill that gap? Or is there an experiment that you can try, on a limited scale and budget, that might solve the problem not just for you, but for other writers, too?

Let me know what you try.

If you’re playwright and want to join the Binge, all you have to do is click here and join the group.


Great examples of other tools people have created include Donna Hoke’s Trade-a-Play-Tuesday, and QueryTracker (for fiction writers).

What are the Playwriting Odds (and the 4 ways writers can improve their chances)

C-3PO: Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1.
Han Solo: Never tell me the odds.

A lot of playwrights approach the business end of theater a little like Han Solo flying the Millennium Falcon through an asteroid field--we just hit the gas and go. But not all of us are skilled hyper drive navigators, so it might not hurt to give a little thought to where we're going and how we're getting there.

Gwydion Suilebhan has a great post this week over on his blog, about "Beating the Playwriting Odds" where he lays out some numbers about our field, and makes the case for being grateful about the productions that we get, and taking strong efforts to improve those numbers, and for being very grateful to the theaters who are producing new plays.  Which I agree with 100%.

But I want to look a little more closely at the actual odds we're facing, to be sure we're clear (given certain assumptions) on what the situation really is, and to have playwrights think carefully about whether they're taking the right actions to boost their chances of success.

First, let's look at Gwydion's assumptions:

• By my best estimate, there are approximately 10,000 playwrights living in the United States. I base that figure on a small number of sources, from membership in the Dramatists Guild to the number of entries in Doollee, and though it might be off somewhat—the number could even be as high as 20,000—it’s accurate enough for the moment.
• Each of those playwrights produces, on average, approximately one new play a year. Some may finish two or three, and some may have entirely fallow years… but one seems to be a believable estimate. So that’s 10,000 new plays (one per playwright) entering the American theatrical landscape every twelve months.
• At the same time, there are approximately 500 world premieres of new plays at regional theaters every year. I’m also uncertain about that number, but I don’t think I’m off by very much. (I’m also not including, for the record, fringe festival or university or workshop productions.) Is the number as high as a thousand, even? Maybe: so, okay, let’s use 1,000.

So if you take those numbers together—10,000 new plays annually for 1,000 world premiere production slots—then for a playwright, the odds of having a new play produced in any given year? They’re only 10%.
The other 90%? They never get produced.

 
To start out, let's use his number of 10,000 new plays a year, for 1,000 slots.  But the 10% figure as to your odds isn't necessarily right, outside of the most general sense, because:

• No theater looks at all 10,000 plays.
• No play selection is entirely random.
• No writer can submit to all 1,000 theaters.

So what are your real odds, and what should you do to improve them?  (Part of what has me thinking about this is a great talk by my friend, director, and really smart guy, Dan Milstein, gave at The Lean Startup Conference last year. In same ways, playwrights are all mini startups. Key takeaway--make sure you're spending your time doing the right thing. If you don't know whether you are, stop and find out.)

Let's assume, for the moment, that instead of getting 10,000 plays for each new play slot, a theater only reads 500.  (FYI, the O'Neill got 1,200 submissions this year.)  This is better, right?  But keep in mind, that means that if you submit to this theatre, your odds of being picked are only 1 in 500.

That's a lot less than 10%.

Ah, but you submit to more than one theatre.  Assuming selections are entirely random, there's a way to calculate your odds based on how many submissions you make.

(But I can't get the damn equation to show up on Blogger.  It's not too crazy.  If you want a lesson on basic probability, I highly recommend this Khan Academy video.)

If you submit to 100 theatres that each accept 500 plays, your odds of acceptance turn out to be about 18.1% (in a world of random play selection).  So that's good news, right?  Better than Gwydion's 10%.

But most people don't submit each of their full-length plays to 100 theaters.

If you submit your new play to 50 theaters, your odds drop to about 9.5%.  Which seems pretty reasonable. (And is exactly what Gwydion predicted.) Except that still means that your play is more than 90% likely to remain unproduced.  Forever.

There are four main ways to improve these odds:

1. Write better plays.
2. Enter the right piles.
3. Enter smaller piles.
4. Enter more piles.

 Sounds good.  But how do you do this, and which is the best strategy (since you have limited time and energy)?

1.  Write better plays.  We're saying each theater gets 500 plays.  But as we know, the selection process isn't really random.  A lot of the plays in that pile aren't very good.  If you concentrate your energy on writing a better play, your scripts basically competes in a smaller sub-pile of the very good plays. Maybe you take some classes, join a critique group, read more plays, get readings and workshops, go to grad school, etc.  What if the quality of your play improves so that it's in the top 20% of every pile?  In essence, you've changed your competition from 500 scripts to 100 scripts.  Guess what: if you send out to 50 theatres now, your odds of a production jump to 39%.  Quality counts.


2.  Enter the right piles. Theaters are pretty specific in terms of the kinds of material they produce (whether they admit it or not).  They perform for a certain audience, within certain constraints.  Some companies focus on comedies.  Others, like New Jersey Rep, do a lot of new plays, but they have a cast limit of 4. Some only do musicals.  You get the picture.  Unfortunately, a lot of playwrights don't. They submit somewhat randomly, to any theatre that appears in the Dramatists Guild Resource Directory, or that they can find online.  Submitting a script to the wrong theatre essentially gives you a 0% chance of production at that theatre. If you make this mistake 10% of the time, your 50 submissions are really only 45. For an average quality script, this drops your acceptance rate to 8.6%.  This is a simple problem to avoid, with a little basic research. If you don't know anything about a theatre and the kind of work it does, you've got a high probability of wasting your time.  (And you're clogging the system for everyone else.) 

3.  Enter smaller piles. Here's where you can make a big difference in your acceptance rate. If, instead of submitting to the same place as everyone else, you get your script to a theater that reads a smaller number of scripts, your chances go up fast. In Boston, where I live, the Huntington Theatre has an amazing fellowship program that's only open to New England writers. They take three Fellows each cycle. In the most recent cycle they had 68 applications That's 1-in-23!  It's doesn't guarantee production, but you do get a reading from a major LORT theater, a chance to work on your plays with really smart people, other doors open, and you now have access to other smaller piles. There's another theater here, Fresh Ink, that also produces only local writers, and only reads the first 40 plays they get.  Of these, they'll pick 3 for production.  Yep, if you submit to Fresh Ink, your chances are 1 in 13 of landing a production!  If you change your marketing focus to finding opportunities with odds of 1 in 50 or less, you would have a likely acceptance rate of better than 18.2% with just TEN submissions.  Finding such chances requires paying close attention to the theater world around you and doing some strong networking.  In Boston, smart writers watch the StageSource weekly newsletter closely for locally focused opps--I got a commission to write a musical from a StageSource ad last year (and it premiered in November).  In addition, we should encourage resources that publish submission opportunities to list the annual number of submissions they receive (like the DG Resource Directory and NYCPlaywrights). I used to list this stat when I published Market InSight... for Playwrights--it's a critical piece of information for writers to make smart choices about where to submit.

4.  Enter more piles.  This one's pretty clear.  If you only submit to 10 theatres with 1-in-500 odds, your chances of selection are 1.9%  If you send to 100, you get to 18%  Taking this route takes a lot of time--joining groups like the Binge can help get you some motivation and ideas for places to submit.  NYC Playwrights is a great site with submission opps.


With these four options, you can see why grad school seems to be an increasingly appealing option for writers trying to get more productions.  In theory, getting your MFA will help you write better plays, while also gaining you access to smaller piles.  (For example, Boston Playwrights Theatre produces 3 world premieres every year, but only produces plays by writers associated with BU and their graduate program.)

You can also see why Gwydion has started a cooperative playwrights' theatre company, The Welders, following the model of 13P, and why a similar group, Boston Public Works, has been started by 10 Boston playwrights.  Through self production, you don't have to worry about the odds at all (but you have plenty of other things to worry about).  I did the same sort thing with a bunch of fellow playwrights when we formed Chameleon Stage in Denver, back in 1993.  It's a lot of work, but it gets your work on stage.

The bad news is that new plays face very long odds in their search for a first production, but the good news is that playwrights can be smart and proactive in making those odds more favorable.

Win a Free Copy of "Collected Obsessions"

I have a special fondness for people who go through life battling or embracing their obsessions.  (I might be one of them myself...)   Earlier this year, Heuer and Brooklyn published an anthology, Collected Obsessions, of eight of my short plays, each of which focus on lovable lunatics whose fixations include numbers, the rapture, a co-worker, lovers, spiders, silence, an extinct bird, and the act of writing.  Whether their paths end in laughter or tears, the characters in these plays pursue their desires with singular focus and intensity.

This is a particularly good collection for advanced high school and college groups--it has a flexible cast size (4-20), with a bunch of challenging, fun roles. 

I'd love to get more students to take a look at these plays, so I'm giving away copies of the script to the first and second students who leave comments on this post and who e-mail me their contact info.  Be sure to tell us the name of your school and drama group and the title of either a recent or upcoming production.

The titles of the plays are:  Insomnia, Crowded Heart, The Sky is Falling, Quiet, Den of Iniquity, The Invisible Husband, Confirmed Sighting, and Measuring Matthew.  All have been produced professionally in Boston and/or New York, and there's even been a film made of Measuring Matthew (currently making the festival rounds).  The scripts get used individually by hundreds of students every year in competition and performance, but now there's a chance for all of them to be on the stage together, at once.  And that would be really cool.  If you're at a school that's done a production of Collected Obsessions, I hope you'll contact me and let me know.