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1100 Playwright Interviews

1100 Playwright Interviews A Sean Abley Rob Ackerman E.E. Adams Johnna Adams Liz Duffy Adams Tony Adams David Adjmi Keith Josef Adkins Nicc...

Stageplays.com

Jul 27, 2007

from Patrick

"Once you're a writer and have lots of writer friends, you know there are scads of talented people out there with great manuscripts that will never be widely read. The bullshit story told to beginning writers--if you write something great, it'll get published/produced/staged--is a fiction designed to keep the pipeline producing more work for the producers and publishers to choose from."
 

4 comments:

mbh said...

I never believed the fairy-tale that all good scripts find their way to a stage.

And he is right, there are good scripts that will never be produced or get more than the initial production. It's sad and it's the way it works.

In a perfect world, Patrick's work would play down the block from my work, which would be a block away from Adam's work... we'd meet for drinks each weekend discussing our new works in-progress...and then our scripts would do the Regional Theatre circuit after that.

But we live in our world (and I don't have to tell you what it's like).

I'm glad he felt comfortable enough to share his doubts/fears.

I hope he keeps writing (although if he stopped that would be one less good playwright I have to compete against for production space)

Adam Szymkowicz said...

yeah, luck plays a big role as do connections. It also depends a great deal on the taste of whoever reads it--also their history and psychology.

Of course I still believe if I write that masterpiece and work my ass off to get it out there, it'll happen.

Malachy Walsh said...

Isn't there a story about WIT - turned down by everyone it was sent to.

But someone at South Coast saw that it was worthy and the rest is histroy.

I'm sure plenty of theatres that turned it down the first time ended up trying to make it later.

Adam Szymkowicz said...

yes, that is the legend around W;t. Seh sent it to every theatre in the country supposedly and everyone said no until someone said finally said yes. I didn't remember who though. Was it SCR? I know MCC did it in nyc.