You Cannot Wait Until Opening Night to Find Your Audience
Build the audience while you're still building the show. We're moving The Blue Violinist Over West End Avenue into Theatre Row this week, and as we prepare for previews beginning October 27, I'm thinking about something that every writer and producer developing new...
A Production Tests Everything Development Couldn’t
You can develop a script for years. But at some point, you've got to get it on its feet. There's a funny thing that happens when you take a new play out of the development room and put it into rehearsal. All those things you thought you had figured out? Well, now...
When the Producer Leaves the Rehearsal Room
I have spent much of my career in an unusual place in the development of new work: somewhere between dramaturg, creative producer, and head of creative development. I often come into a project long before production, and stay with it for years. I know the earlier...
How Do You Know When a New Play Is Ready for Production?
At some point in the development of a new play, you have to stop asking what the script still needs on the page and start asking a different question: Does the play work? By that I mean: can an audience follow the story, understand what the writer is trying to...
The Development Gap: When the Next Step Is Clear but the Money Isn’t
Most experienced theatermakers know that different projects need different development rooms. A reading can help us hear structure and language. A workshop can test staging, scene-to-song integration, transitions and theatrical storytelling. A cabaret presentation can...
You Have to Produce for the World You’re In
There is a point in developing a new play when the questions stop being mostly about the script. You are no longer asking just: Does this scene work?Is the character clear?Is the structure holding?Have we earned this moment? You start asking different questions. Can...
You Don’t Have to Live in NYC to Develop Your Work in NYC.
New York Development. Global Community. One of the things I find myself thinking about more and more is geography. For a long time, most serious theater development was tied to New York. If you wanted to develop a new musical professionally, the assumption was that...
The Next Step After a Successful Workshop
One of the most common mistakes I see in new-work development is the assumption that there is a correct sequence. First a reading. Then a workshop. Then a showcase. Then, if all goes well, a production. But that isn’t really how development works. A successful...
Not Every Script is Ready for a Showcase
There is a moment in the development of a new play or musical when the writer begins to ask a very understandable question: When can I get this in front of industry? Maybe the script has had a few readings. Maybe it has been through a writing group. Maybe the writer...