This Blog is NOT open to "Development"

It’s January 2016 and a fresh, energetic director, full of enthusiasm for their production, notes all at the ready, and a lead production at their side. And they begin their painstaking work on their production of a powerful show with a huge ambition.

Shoot ahead to September 2016.

The Director is ready and satisfied that their production, after years of preparation, development, working with the writer, months of rehearsals, and successful dress runs, is ready to go before an audience. All the actors know their parts; the set is designed and built; the lighting is plotted and programme; the sound is designed and ready; the SM and their team is ready to open. All it will take is for that curtain to be lifted, and away they go.

But wait…

Before that can happen…

We need to take the show to a Directors’ workshop.

We need to show the first scene only – with a maximum of 10 minutes – and get all the other directors to give their opinions. Few of those directors will have ever designed for theatre, or stage managed, but of course they will be all be making comments on how that should be managed, as well as going over the costs of the show. A slot is found for mid-October.

October 2016: After getting a general murmur of approval the Directing group will recommend a 10 minute excerpt of the production to be shown in a showcase in February 2017, of course without the lighting or sound, technical or stage management, and done in the rehearsal room, not on the ACTUAL stage – after all, it’s not ready yet – it’s just looking for a development opportunity.

After the showcase, where the invited audience of theatre critics, theatre staff, and local business people have had a chance to judge the show and all its practical merits (no they don’t need to see all the design work already done on it in order to hold an informed opinion on the production), they’ll give feedback and decide whether it should be one of a few shows to give a 30 minute excerpt in a summer showcase in five months’ time.

July 2017: The 30 minute showcase gets to use a few basic lighting stages from the design, and no more than five tracks from the show score, to give a “flavour” of the show as a whole. Some costumes can be used this time, but no costume changes can be fitted in. Sound can be used, but only off a CD and through a single stereo speaker set up with no microphones. At the end of showcase the theatre will decide which of the 30 minute excerpts it will want to work with.

If the show gets selected, the theatre will take it on board as a “Development” project…

…in the 2018/19 season.

If a director ever had that said to them after they had already done all the work to prepare their show… …they might have an idea what it is like, as a writer, to be researching, writing, organising readings, developing, working with fellow writers, actors, directors, re-drafting several times, working with editors, and getting other industry experts to give feedback…

…to THEN be told to “bring your play to a reading, give us the first 10 minutes, and we’ll see if we want to consider it for a development project NEXT year.

I know this might seem harsh, but I often wonder why it is that people assume that writers can’t do the one thing that is their part in a theatrical production. A lighting designer won’t be required to have a team of designers give his work the nod; nor with a sound designer; nor would anyone else in a production, not least the director. Of course there are writers who think their first draft is the divine word of Dionysus himself, but the vast majority of good writers with slave over and develop their text at great length before having the courage themselves to finally loosen their grip and let the play free.

So why is it that when the play gets to the theatre…suddenly everyone else (all those people who say they could “never write a play, I don’t know how you do it) becomes experts in writing. They have all the right and responsibility to ignore their writer’s ability and treat THEIR contribution as open market. You try getting the sound guy to tell the LX what he thinks of that lighting cue. So my question is this: Why do we feel the need to make it so unbearably hard for writers to get their play staged – especially full length plays? (No, my question is not being submitted for “development”)

#Theatre #Directing #Development #Design #Opportunity #Staging #Production