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 you’re going to find out how good they were.

For months, we’ve been developing The Blue Violinist Over West End Avenue, a new play I’m producing by Debbie Goodstein opening Off-Broadway this October at Theatre Row.

We’ve worked through character relationships, dramatic structure, scenes that needed tightening, and moments that weren’t quite landing the way we wanted.

We’ve read the script aloud. Talked it through. Rewritten. Read it again. For over a year.

You know the drill.

And then we started rehearsals.

Suddenly, the script wasn’t the only storytelling tool in the room anymore.

We had actors making choices. A director shaping the action. Designers creating the world of the play. And an actual theater waiting for us to load in on October 19.

Welcome to production. It’s a whole different ballgame.

The Table Can Only Tell You So Much

I love a good table reading.

There’s nothing quite like hearing actors bring a script to life for the first time. You discover where the dialogue sings, where the pacing drags, where characters aren’t behaving quite the way you thought they were.

And sometimes you discover that the brilliant joke you’ve been protecting for six drafts?

Yeah. Nobody laughs.

But readings have their limits.

You can discuss a character’s motivation for hours around a table. Then an actor gets up, crosses the room, and suddenly the relationship becomes crystal clear.

You can spend three rewrites trying to make a transition work. Then the director discovers that a lighting shift and a single physical action can accomplish what three pages of dialogue couldn’t.

Or you discover the opposite.

The scene that seemed perfectly clear on the page becomes confusing once actors actually have to move through it.

That’s not necessarily a writing failure. It’s theater revealing itself.

And it’s why some questions can’t be answered until you get the work on its feet.

The Questions Change Once You’re in Production

One of the questions I ask when evaluating a new play or musical for production is:

Are the remaining questions development questions—or production questions?

It’s a distinction that matters enormously.

If we’re still struggling to understand what the protagonist wants, why a character makes a major decision, or whether the story has a satisfying dramatic progression, we’ve probably got more development work to do.

But if we’re asking how to stage a complicated sequence, how design can support the storytelling, or how the actors can make a relationship visible to the audience, those are production questions.

And you don’t solve them by scheduling another table reading.

You solve them by making theater.

Right now, we’re staging Act Two of The Blue Violinist, and let me tell you, this is one incredibly theatrical act!

We’re moving from a wedding sequence into a Sukkot celebration and then into October 7—all through choreography, movement, and, after the wedding, silhouettes.

There’s a LOT of theater magic involved.

And theater magic requires an enormous amount of planning!

Our props people are working overtime. Every transition requires coordination between actors, the director, designers, and the production team.

How do we move from one celebration to another without stopping the dramatic action? How do we communicate the passage of time? How can movement, light, and silhouette tell us something that dialogue alone couldn’t?

These aren’t details we’re adding after the artistic work is finished.

They’re part of the storytelling itself.

And this is exactly the kind of work you simply cannot accomplish sitting around a table.

And Then There’s the Ending. Oh, the Ending.

Here’s where things have gotten REALLY interesting.

We’ve been wrestling with the ending of The Blue Violinist for quite a while.

We’ve tried so many different versions, only to throw them out one by one because something just wasn’t quite right.

We knew what we wanted the audience to experience.

We wanted the play to land emotionally as a story about family—not simply as a political argument. We wanted audiences to leave thinking about their own families, their own disagreements, and perhaps the conversations they haven’t yet had.

But figuring out exactly how to land this puppy?

That’s been another matter entirely.

And here’s the thing about endings: you can discuss them, rewrite them, and read them aloud until you’re blue in the face.

But until you see how the actors inhabit those final moments, how the staging supports the emotional journey, and how the whole experience builds toward that last image, you’re still making an educated guess.

So we’ve kept working.

And working.

And throwing out endings.

After a LOT of work this weekend, I think—by George!—we’ve finally got it.

(Fingers crossed. We are still in theater, after all.)

But here’s what I find fascinating about this process.

We didn’t suddenly discover an entirely different play.

We’re still telling the story we’ve spent the past year developing.

What we’re discovering is how to deliver the emotional experience we’ve been working toward all along.

And that’s an important distinction.

Sometimes the solution isn’t another speech or a new scene.

Sometimes it’s a moment of silence. A physical choice. A transition. Or simply knowing when to let the audience complete the moment for themselves.

Of course, the ultimate test is still ahead of us.

The audience.

Will this ending land the way we hope? Will people leave thinking about their families rather than their political positions?

We won’t really know until we put it in front of them.

And that’s one more thing production can teach us that development can’t fully predict.

Here’s Where It Gets Interesting

Once a production begins, the clock starts ticking in a very different way.

In development, you might have another month to explore an idea. Another reading to test a rewrite. Another workshop to consider a different structure.

In production?

The set is being built.

The costumes are being finalized.

The lighting designer is making decisions based on the world you’re creating.

The actors are learning their blocking.

And the theater has a date on the calendar when we’re expected to walk through the door.

For The Blue Violinist, that’s October 19.

Which means that at some point, you have to stop exploring every possible choice and start committing to the ones that will make this production work.

That’s not always comfortable, especially for a writer who has spent a year living with a script. Or for me, the dramaturg who has been at the side for the entire journey.

But it’s essential.

A professional production requires decisions, not endless possibilities.

And that doesn’t mean the work stops evolving. Of course it doesn’t. Theater is a living art form.

It means that the process shifts from discovering what the play might be to delivering the theatrical experience you’ve committed to create.

And Then There’s the Audience

Here’s the part I think we sometimes forget in all our conversations about developing new work.

The audience.

Because while we’re busy making the script stronger, creating the production, and solving technical problems, someone also has to make sure there are people in the seats.

That’s where my attention as a creative producer is increasingly focused this week.

While our director and actors are completing the staging, I’m also working with our team on marketing, advertising, industry outreach, ticket sales, and the final preparations for Theatre Row.

And those responsibilities aren’t separate from the artistic work.

They’re how the artistic work reaches the people it was created for.

You can have a terrific script.

You can have a beautiful production.

But if nobody knows it’s happening?

Well, Houston, we have a problem.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll keep saying it:

Build your audience while you’re still building your show.

Don’t wait until the week before previews to begin introducing people to the world of your play.

Audience development belongs in the producing process from the beginning.

So, How Do You Know When You’re Ready?

Here’s what I’d suggest if you’re developing a new play or musical and wondering whether it’s time to move forward.

Ask yourself three questions:

1. Does the story work?

Not perfectly. No script is perfect.

But do you know whose story you’re telling? Do the characters have clear objectives? Does the dramatic action carry us somewhere meaningful?

If you’re still wrestling with fundamental story questions, another development room may be exactly what you need.

2. Are the remaining questions theatrical?

Do you need to see actors move through the space? Explore design possibilities? Discover the rhythm of scenes through staging?

If so, it may be time to stop talking about the play and start putting it on its feet.

3. Are you actually prepared to produce it?

And this is the question that often gets overlooked.

Do you have a realistic budget? The right creative team? A venue? A production schedule? Agreements in place? A marketing strategy? A plan for reaching audiences?

Because a script that’s ready for production and a production that’s ready to happen are two different things.

You need both.

Development Should Lead Somewhere

At CreateTheater, I believe in taking the time to develop new work properly.

But I also believe that development should lead somewhere.

Not every reading needs to lead immediately to a showcase. Not every workshop needs to become an Off-Broadway production.

Sometimes the right next step is another rewrite.

Sometimes it’s a different development room.

And sometimes?

It’s time to open the rehearsal room door and let the rest of the theater-making process do its work.

Next week, The Blue Violinist Over West End Avenue moves into Theatre Row. Previews begin October 27.

And I can’t wait to see how all those months of development translate into the living, breathing experience of a production.

Because ultimately, that’s why we do this.

A script tells the story. A production lets us experience it.

And there’s nothing quite like being in the room when that happens.

I hope you can come see this beautiful production. If you do, make sure you send me your thoughts afterward!

Cate Cammarata is the Creative Producer and Artistic Director of CreateTheater, a New York City-based theater company developing and producing new plays and musicals.

 

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 drafts. I know why scenes changed, why characters evolved, and what questions the writer has been trying to answer along the way.

That continuity matters because theatre may be the most collaborative of all art forms.

Once a play moves into production, the director, actors, and designers begin contributing something the script cannot provide on its own: theatrical language.

The director becomes the interpreter of the play. Actors bring their own views about their character’s behavior, objectives, and emotional life. Designers bring the theatrical elements of space, sound, light, costume, music, and atmosphere into the mix.

The script is no longer the only storytelling tool.

And that is partly what makes theatre so exciting.

But – every collaborator also brings their own interpretation of the play.

And that is where my job changes.

During development, I may be asking:

• Does the scene work?
• Is the character’s intention clear?
• Is the structure doing what the writer intends?

In production, I am increasingly asking:

• Are all of these theatrical choices helping us tell the story the writer intended to tell?

That question has been in front of every choice we’re making in our newest production, The Blue Violinist Over West End Avenue.

I have worked with Debbie Goodstein and this play through multiple drafts and stages of development. I know the conversations that created the script we now have, and how each of the previous versions helped us arrive here. I know the story Debbie wants to give to the audience at the end.

My responsibility is not to impose my own interpretation on the production.

It is primarily to protect hers.

Protecting the Writer’s Intention

That responsibility was very apparent earlier this year.

Back in March, I made the difficult decision to replace the director and the design team then attached to the production.

The issue was not that the director lacked ideas. Quite the opposite.

The interpretation was beginning to move the play toward a much more overtly political frame than the one Debbie had actually written.

That distinction matters.

A director has to interpret a text. But interpretation should reveal the play the writer wrote —not replace it with the director’s own version.

I became increasingly concerned that the play was beginning to tell a different story from the one Debbie intended.

So – I made the difficult decision to change direction.

It was expensive.

It cost the production time and money.

And it would have been much easier in the moment to continue rather than to start all over again.

But allowing the wrong central interpretation to take hold would have been far more expensive artistically.

Once a production begins building around a mistaken premise, every other choice follows it: design, performance, tone, marketing, audience expectation.

Sometimes protecting a new play means being willing to stop that process before it goes further.

In the end, I know it was the right call.

The Director Must Still Direct

Protecting the writer’s intention does not mean limiting the director.

The director must bring a theatrical point of view to the work.

That is the job.

• How does the space tell the story?
• Where does the audience look – and when?
• What can sound, movement, light, or music communicate that the words cannot?
• How do we make “theater magic” happen – within budget?

These are production questions.

When a new work stops asking script questions, it may be ready to move forward.

 

Are the remaining questions production questions?

If we are still wrestling with fundamental questions of story, structure, character, or intention, the work may still need development.

When the questions increasingly concern staging, design, performance, rhythm, and audience experience, then theatrical collaborators need to take over.

But all of those contributions still need a center.

With The Blue Violinist, that center is Debbie’s intention – why she wrote the play.

Not the director’s version of the story.

Not the actors’ version.

Not the designers’ version.

And certainly not mine.

Debbie’s.

From Dramaturgy to Creative Producing

This is where my dramaturgical experience still informs my work as a creative producer.

A dramaturg helps protect and clarify the writer’s intention during development.

For me, producing carries that responsibility into production.

The question changes from:

Is the script expressing the writer’s intention?

to:

Is the production expressing the writer’s intention?

Lighting, sound, performance, and design each contribute to telling the story.

Even marketing begins telling the audience what kind of story they are coming to see.

Someone has to keep looking at the whole, protecting the integrity of the story, and what the audience should be understanding at the end.

Someone with the continuity of knowledge about the project, through each stage of development, helping to shape the final draft an audience will see on stage.

That person must be me.

Sometimes That Requires Me Leaving the Rehearsal Room

Last week, I was in rehearsal every day while we worked at the table.

This week, I am stepping in more selectively.

That is intentional.

The director needs to direct. The actors need space to discover. The production no longer needs the person who remembers every previous draft explaining how we got here.

And I have another job now, with new questions.

• Is the production moving along as planned?
• Are the departments communicating?
• Is the budget holding?
• Is the marketing telling the right story?
• Are potential audience members finding us?
• Are we reaching the industry people we need to reach?
• What happens after opening?
• What’s going to be the next step?

Those are producing questions.

Leaving the Rehearsal Room, Not Leaving the Artistic Team

I’m still in daily communication with the writer and the director.

But at this stage my responsibility has widened.

Earlier, I helped the writer create the script.

Now, I help the production remain aligned with the story she set out to tell.

Earlier, I asked whether the script was working.

Now, I ask whether all of the theatrical elements are working together.

And sometimes that means being in rehearsal. Sometimes it means being in a marketing meeting. Sometimes it means asking a difficult question. Sometimes it means making an expensive decision because the artistic direction is taking us away from the play.

And sometimes it means leaving the rehearsal room and trusting the collaborators we have chosen to do their jobs.

Because that, too, is part of making theatre: knowing when to hold the larger vision, when to speak, when to listen, and when to trust the artists around you.

Especially now, when making professional theatre is difficult, expensive, and increasingly fragile, I never want to lose sight of what a privilege it is to be doing this work at all.

To sit in a room with writers, directors, actors, designers, stage managers, and producers and build something – together.

To take a story that once existed only in a writer’s imagination and help it become something an audience can experience together in the dark.

That is why I do this.

And I am deeply honored to be on this journey with Debbie Goodstein and the extraordinary team bringing The Blue Violinist Over West End Avenue to New York audiences this fall.

There are easier ways to make a living.

But there are very few things I would rather spend my life doing than helping important stories find their way to the stage.

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 communicate, stay engaged, and arrive at the end having received what the play intended to give them?

Do they get it? Are they “picking up” what you’re “putting down?”

If the answer is yes, then the next questions may no longer be writing questions.

They may be theatrical ones.

What happens when actors fully inhabit these characters? What does movement add? What does the physical world of the play need to look and feel like? How do scenery, costumes, lighting, sound, music, choreography, rhythm, and silence deepen what is already on the page?

This is where the “fun stuff” enters—but it is more than decoration. These elements become part of the storytelling.

And some discoveries simply cannot be made in another reading.

They can only be made once the play is on its feet.

That threshold is not always obvious. Writers can spend years revising a script and presenting it in reading after reading. A project can become increasingly polished without necessarily becoming more ready.

So how do I know when a new play is ready to move forward?

I ask one question:

Are the remaining questions production questions?

If the fundamental story, character, structure, intention, and meaning are communicating clearly—and the questions you still need answered require actors, staging, design, movement, and an audience—then the project may have reached the point where development needs to become production.

That distinction has become one of the clearest ways I know to determine what kind of room a project needs next.

Development Questions and Production Questions Are Different

When a play is still in development, the questions tend to be foundational.

What does this character want?

Why does this scene exist?

Is the structure working?

Do we understand the relationships?

Is the central conflict clear?

Does the ending grow out of everything that came before it?

What is the play actually about?

Those are writing questions.

They can often be explored through rewrites, table reads, developmental readings, conversations with actors, and focused workshops.

But eventually, if the work is to move forward, the nature of the questions begin to change.

Now you may be asking:

How should this moment be staged?

Where does the audience need visual information?

What does the actor discover by actually moving through the scene?

How long does that transition take?

What does the costume tell us before the character speaks?

How does lighting shape the emotional turn?

What happens to the rhythm once actors are standing, moving, interrupting, crossing, reacting, and sharing space?

Those are no longer primarily writing questions.

They are theatrical questions.

And theatrical questions often require a theatrical room.

A Reading Will Not Answer Every Question

Readings are enormously useful.

I believe in them. I produce them. I have spent years using readings to help writers hear what they have actually written rather than what they think they have written.

But readings have limits.

A table read can tell you whether a scene tracks.

It may not tell you whether the scene works once two actors have to cross the room, handle a prop, change costumes, negotiate silence, or play a physical relationship.

A reading can reveal pacing problems.

It may not tell you whether the pacing problem is actually in the writing—or whether it disappears once the director, actors, movement, sound, and design begin doing their share of the storytelling.

At some point, another reading may simply give you another version of information you already have.

That is when I start asking if the project needs a different room.

Production Readiness Does Not Mean the Script Is Finished

This is important.

Moving into production does not mean that nobody changes another word.

Are you kidding?

New plays continue to evolve in rehearsal.

• Actors reveal things.
• Design reveals things.
• Staging reveals things.
• Transitions reveal things.

Sometimes a practical production problem exposes a writing problem you could not see before.

That does not mean the play was not ready.

It means theater is collaborative.

The playwright is no longer carrying the entire storytelling burden alone.

The director begins interpreting the work through space and behavior.

Actors begin communicating relationships that may never need to be explained explicitly on the page.

Costumes tell us who someone is.

Scenery establishes world and circumstance.

Lighting controls focus.

Sound creates emotional and environmental information.

All of those collaborators now carry part of the story.

That changes what the script itself has to do.

The Questions Tell You What Room You Need

One of the mistakes I see in new-work development is deciding on the format first.

“We should do a reading.”

“We should do a workshop.”

“We should produce a showcase.”

“We’re ready for production.”

But the better question is:

What do we still need to learn?

If we still need to understand the story, structure, character, or intention, then the project probably needs more development.

If we need to understand how actors embody the relationships, how movement affects rhythm, how the physical world supports the story, or how an audience experiences the piece in space, then another table read may no longer be enough.

The next room should be the room capable of answering the next question.

Sometimes that room is a writing room.

Sometimes it is a table read.

Sometimes it is a workshop.

And sometimes the next room is the rehearsal room.

The Threshold

There is no single checklist that makes a play “production ready.”

But there is a shift I listen for.

The questions stop sounding like:

What is this play?

And increasingly begin sounding like:

How can a musical motif carry this idea? What happens if one character looks to another, then out to the audience, to end the scene? What can the lighting tell us without anyone saying a word? How can we make this dream sequence more theatrical?

That is a meaningful threshold.

It does not mean the script is perfect. It means the questions that remain may no longer be solvable through another rewrite or another table read.

The next discoveries may require actors, space, movement, design, sound, light—and eventually, an audience.

So before deciding whether the next step is another reading, a workshop, a showcase, or a production, ask yourself what you still need to learn.

Are you still trying to clarify story, structure, character, or intention?

Or are you beginning to ask how the nonverbal elements of theater can deepen the storytelling—how performance, staging, sound, design, movement, and visual imagery can communicate what the words alone cannot?

That is the distinction I pay attention to.

Are the remaining questions still development questions?

Or have they become production questions?

Because sometimes the clearest sign that a new play is ready to move forward is that the answers no longer live entirely on the page.

And Now, the Next Room

The Blue Violinist Over West End Avenue has been in development for a long time.

We have worked endlessly on the script. We brought in a cultural consultant to help us deepen the world of the play and sharpen the conflict within it. The writer, the director, and I have gone over words, ideas, scenes, transitions, and drafts again and again—always asking whether the story is communicating clearly and whether the ideas we are planting are paying off by the end.

We have thought carefully about what the violinist means, and how the music itself can carry meaning that does not need to be spoken.

At a certain point, though, you have to recognize when the page has taken you as far as it can.

The questions we are asking now are different.

What happens when these characters are embodied by incredibly experienced actors? What changes when they are standing in the room together? What can a glance communicate? What can music do that dialogue cannot? What will the physical world of the play tell us? Where can design, movement, silence, rhythm, and performance make the story richer than it could ever be on the page alone?

That is where we are now.

On Tuesday, we begin rehearsal.

And this is the part I love: the moment when all of that careful development begins to meet the collaborative magic of theater.

The script is not being abandoned. It is being handed over to a new set of storytellers.

The actors.
The director.
The designers.
The music.
The room itself.

Now we get to discover what they know.

On to the next room.