How To Get Your Play Produced

How can I get my play produced?

Being a playwright is not an easy job. The best way to get your play produced is to submit your plays everywhere: To theatres, to directors, to producers. There is actually a great resource for playwrights. It is called, "The Dramatists Source Book," and that lists all of the regional theatres in the country, non-profit theatres that are looking for submissions. The best thing that I would tell a playwright to do is to start on the local scale. Look in your hometown and see if there are theatre companies that would be more willing to do your work. You could even produce your own plays on a smaller level. It is well worth the investment. You get to get those reviews you need in order to move yourself to the next stage. And the next stage usually requires or involves literary agents. They are the people who have the entree to be able to submit your work to the producers that you want to be reading it and it is a slow road. There are also a lot of great theatre festivals out there that give opportunities to up and coming playwrights who have never been produced before. The Fringe Festival, for instance, The Actor's Theatre, you have Louisville Humana Festival. Fantastic resources out there that can help the playwright succeed. It's something that we need more of in this country. I just wanted to add that just because it's a shame. We are losing a lot of our best playwrights to TV and film because it is such a hard road for playwrights to struggle with and it has become more important for the non-profits to take on that risk because commercial producers are not really going to take a risk on an unknown play that has never been produced before, doesn't appear on Broadway but sometimes rewards can be well worth the effort.