What Do Producers Look For in a Script?

What Do Producers Look For in a Script?

by | Nov 18, 2017 | Broadway, Theater

What Do Producers Look For in a Script?

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You’ve finished writing your script, held a few readings and incorporated the feedback, and worked with a dramaturg. Maybe you’ve even had a showcase production of your show and have a website up with clips to prove it.

Now you need someone to help you take it to the next level!

Where’s a producer when you need one?

The Writer-Producer Relationship: First Steps

 

The writer-producer relationship is a special marriage of business savvy, creative vision and aesthetic resonance. Somehow your play must powerfully connect in some way to the producer’s psyche, to his “mission” as a producer, in order for him (or her) to go out and raise the kind of money that is needed for production. A producer must BELIEVE in your work and in your voice as a writer.

How do you as a playwright connect with producers?

  • Get to know producer’s tastes by studying what s/he has already produced and email them a synopsis of your script
  • Study regional theaters to find out the personality of the artistic director, and look for patterns that emerge when you compare their past seasons
  • Network through local theaters, the Dramatist Guild, Fringe Festivals, theater meetups, and CreateTheater masterminds, courses and Facebook Live groups.
  • Attend readings and workshops as much as possible, then stay and talk to people. Their connections can become your connections.

What Are Producers Looking For?

All producers are different and look for different things. I’ve asked a few of my friends what they look for in a new script.

Patrick Blake, Off-Broadway producer (The Exonerated, In The Continuum, Play Dead, 39 Steps) and Founding Artistic Director of Rhymes Over Beats Theater Collective

There are only so many stories, and they have been told dozens if not hundreds of times. What I look for is how fresh or stylistically interesting they are.

Daryl Sledge, Off-Broadway producer (Fried Chicken and Latkes, My Father’s Daughter)

 

What attracts me about a script is how well-written and how “produceable” it can be. For instance, what I look for are projects that have very few actors, very few settings and costume changes. That way you can keep your budget down … and it should be commercial. It should have acting opportunities for superb actors. I’m looking for things that challenge us, that set the mark for today, that say something about the type of society that we live in today. I’m looking forward to producing scripts from new writers that we’ve never heard from before that challenge us – that challenge us to be better people, better Americans, better citizens of the world. I’m looking for projects that really resonate with people today that will also bring in a new audience.

 

Jeremy Handleman, Tony Award-nominated Broadway (On The Town) and Off-Broadway producer (Fking Up Everything, White’s Lies)

 

The first thing that’s important to me is that I have to be emotionally affected by the material. That sounds rather basic, but not every script is going to move me and maybe something that doesn’t move me is going to move somebody else. So it has to be the right fit between the material and the producer. I also have a couple of other initial filters that are specific for me, which is that I tend to be drawn to character-driven work. Since I am a commercial producer, there has to be some gut level feeling that I have that there is a commercial path to this even if I don’t quite know what it is at this point. My third filter is whether the writer or the writing team a person or a group of people who I feel good about the possibility of working with, because possibly this is a relationship that could go on for years and years and years, so that relationship has to be strong.

 

Michael Alden, Tony Award winning Broadway (Come From Away, Disgraced, Grey Gardens, Bridge and Tunnel) and Off-Broadway producer (Not That Jewish, Becoming Dr. Ruth, Bat Boy, The Last Session)

 

First of all you want to find good writing, but the thing that intrigues me the most is stories about misunderstood outsiders. People that are having a hard time either finding themselves in their own community or being understood by their community. So the shows that I’ve done in the past speak to either about a child or the child inside of you that’s seemingly isn’t being connected with what’s going on around you, or not being understood by what’s going on around you. So that’s why I like Grey Gardens or Bat Boy the Musical. That’s what speaks to me.

 

Cate Cammarata, Off-Broadway producer (The Assignment) and Associate Artistic Director of Rhymes Over Beats Theater Collective

 

As a producer I’m looking for a script with a strong female protagonist that challenges an audience and inspires them and gives them some kind of a fresh idea, a new thought that maybe they never had before.

 

CreateTheater is about Connections

 

Join our email list and start making connections with producers, general managers, playwrights and other theater industry professionals. We need to hear YOUR voice.

Comment in the section below and contact us on Facebook and Twitter.

Come network online with us – and CREATE THEATER.

Welcome to CreateTheater

Welcome to CreateTheater

by | Nov 5, 2017 | Theater

Connection is the Currency of the 21st Century!

I am so excited to launch CreateTheater, the online community for theater professionals.

What would it be like to be able to meet other working theater artists online? To take classes, join in industry seminars and network like you know you should, and to find your creative “tribe”?

One of my core beliefs is that connection is the currency of the 21st century. 

And those connections can be made online. 

I’m Cate Cammarata, a producer, director and dramaturg, and I know this: the internet was developed for one main purpose, to make connections. Connections with ideas, connections to new resources, and connections between people. But as a theater artist, I often find that traditional ways to make connections are difficult, online or off. Yet we all understand the necessity of networking, of finding a community of people you know and trust, where you feel like you belong. That sense of home, of belonging, is usually what got us into the theater in the first place.

But where are all of these people? And where can I meet them?

Your Social Network: Beyond LinkedIn

If you’re a playwright, even with a social connection or an introduction, it’s hard to get people to read your scripts. How do you meet producers? How do you know what they want?

If you’re a producer or director, where’s that next play that resonates with you? Where’s that new voice that needs to be developed? And where’s the theater willing to join you in that development?

CreateTheater is a way of getting out there and meeting other theater artists – right from your own home. It’s a place to find your creative community, for collaboration, for spreading ideas, learning and meeting other theater people online. It’s a way to connect playwrights with producers, directors and artistic directors, librettists with composers and music directors, in order to make theater happen. It’s your online space for networking with other working theater artists.

It’s Not What You Know, But Who You Know

This truth certainly predates the internet. It holds a lot of truth, though. Statistics show that people rate their personal connections, both professional and personal, as the most effective means of finding jobs. And we’re told that we are an average of the five people we spend the most time with.

You know you need to be a self-starter. You have to be out there. Finding ways to meet the “right” people, to drum up interest in you and your work, is necessary so that your script doesn’t arrive “unsolicited” on a producer’s desk. You have to create your own opportunities.  You have to introduce yourself to the right people. You need to network.

Your social network is the web of connections you have with the people you know, and the people they know, and so on. Social networking is the effort you make to create and maintain relationships within that social network, to move you ahead in your career.

But deeper bonds are forged in true community. Community is formed when a group of people share the same beliefs and have the same goals. Community offers us a home, where we are accepted unconditionally for being who we are. It offers us a sense of belonging, of safety, of being truly “home.” 

Connections Form Community

Today around seven in ten Americans use social media to connect with one another, to engage in news content, to share information and entertain themselves. People hold meetings and classes online, collaborate over apps and search for their soulmates on their cell phones. Let’s use that power of the internet to create theater.

Join us in making this theater community come alive. We’re producers, general managers, playwrights, directors, artistic directors, entertainment attorneys and other industry experts who are passionate about this art and moving it forward into the 21st century.

Let’s translate this social currency into creating theater! Sign up for our emails and join in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Post your comments below.

I look forward to meeting you and hearing more about your work!

Denial is not just a river….

Denial is not just a river….

by | Feb 8, 2016 | Theater

Money.  There.  I said it.

As much as I try to avoid it, everything comes back to one thing: money.

As artists that’s a dirty word.  Our art, our mission, is what’s important.  It’s our life’s work, our passion, what means more to us than anything in the world.  And we’re right – our art IS the most important thing that gives meaning to our lives.

But we are composed not just of spirit, but body.  And that body needs to eat, to be warm, to be refreshed, just as much as any stock broker, engineer, or doctor.  No value judgements on what we each contribute (which is significant, speaking as an artist).  The plain bare bones facts are that artists can’t starve – they have to eat too.

Just as important – artists have to sell their art to create the significance both their body and spirit need.  Engaging an audience and getting our message through to them is at the heart of our art.  But it’s a constant struggle.

Rule of Engagement

The truth is, there are no rules to find the money you need to get your art, your show, out there.  And if someone tells you there is, a quick google search will prove them wrong.  Ingenuity trumps all rules every time.  But the reality is, if you don’t make the effort your play will wither on your hard drive or your heart and be buried faster than my car in this current blizzard.

Since this topic is at the top of my pre-frontal cortex now as a creative producer, artist, and as human being, I think it’s a topic worth exploring.  The mission of this blog is to Create Theater, and raising money is a major challenge to that in the current economy.

Raising Money for Theater is necessary.  Nobody likes it!

The next few posts will delve into raising money both as a non-profit, for a commercial venture, and as a mixed hybrid of both.  So stay tuned, and let me know your thoughts.  This isn’t meant to be a monologue, but an dialogue – or maybe an improvisation!

What are the arts to me?

What are the arts to me?

by | Feb 5, 2016 | Theater

 The Relevance of the Arts

What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? 

The spring semester has just begun at the university where I teach, and once again I am faced with the issue of the relevance of my profession.  To my large roster of non-theatre arts majors, most of whom have signed up for a theatre arts class for that “easy A,” the arts in general, and theatre in particular, are not relevant to their lives.  In fact there was a significant percentage of students last week that agreed that “art should be free.”

This is a problem for all of us who create theater.  These students are for the most part not going to be artists themselves but our audience; they will be the doctors, engineers and business people who [we hope] will support the arts in the future.  But will this happen if they believe that art should be free?

It was a lively discussion in all of my classes this first week.  There were art supporters who recognized that artists had to live too, and deserved to be paid for their work; nearly every student had paid for pricey tickets to concerts to see their favorite artists.  Music seems to be the most accessible art, which is understandable in this age group.  Visual art, symphonies, opera, and theater are for the most part dismissed as irrelevant to their lives and unnecessary.

Okay, no surprise here.  Yet it bears repeating – how can we engage new audiences and create relevance to insure our individual and collective survival as artists? 

 

How to Engage and Attract New Audiences

 

 1. Use Video

My friend Ken Davenport has been advocating for video accessibility of theater to create audiences.  I’m with him. Bootleg videos of Broadway musicals serve the purpose of acquainting a younger audience with music and plots, and that familiarity can translate into ticket sales.  

To create an audience we must go where the audience is.  Our audience is online.  The danger is, of course, that the push to digitalize will come with a subscriber cost, thus creating another barrier.

 

2. Engagement and participation is all-important.  

Audiences want to be valued (significance in Maslow’s hierarchy).  This sometimes means immersive production elements (Sleep No More), but can be simple enough as providing information beforehand so that ticket buyers feel like an “insider” before they even arrive at the theater.

To create that sense of belonging and relevance we must not only surround our audiences where they live, we must also speak their language and show we have something important to say.  Diversity of expression, diversity of casting, diversity of theme – when our audiences relate with what happens on stage and believe we have captured the Truth and put it onstage, then we create that social platform of engagement of significance that our audiences will feel reflects their experience and, hopefully, want more.

Theater is collective and participatory.  It always has been a social platform to engaging ideas and getting them out there for public discourse.

 

3. Reconnect the audience with the message of relevance.  

Re-vision the classics or create new plays that present current Truths that look and sound like the audience you’re targeting. The classics can be exciting and relevant to this generation, and the discovery that connects classic literature with art can be a powerful tool for changing perspectives.

 

Now that’s exciting theater for today.

…the play ‘s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

 

 

Hamilton: Innovation and Inspiration

by | Jan 23, 2016 | Broadway, Hip Hop, Theater

The first gift of 2016 was the unexpected opportunity to see Hamilton on Broadway.  (Yes, sometimes the theater gods are very generous!) Even without Lin-Manuel Miranda – Jon Rua gave an outstanding performance as Alexander Hamilton at our matinee – Hamilton embodies the energy and storytelling engagement model for today’s audience.  There’s no wonder why everyone who sees it is so excited!

Just to let you know, this is not another Broadway Theater review blog.  However, Hamilton provides the most exciting example for us theater-makers of innovative elements that WORK, not just because the show is making millions of dollars (which is nice), but because it communicates visually and textually in the language of our time to give the intended message to the audience of our time. Resonance depends on receptiveness and relevance.

Hamilton’s audiences are astonishingly receptive to its main messages: that hard work and diligence lead to success, that America is a land of opportunity, that New York is the greatest city in the world (shameless plug) and that Alexander Hamilton is a founding father of significance.  But this is no dry history lesson; as everyone knows, the receptiveness of the message proceeds from the language of performance.  Hamilton works because it engages us in the idioms of our time: rap music and performance, ethnic diversity, hunger and struggle, power plays, politics and love.  The show sounds like us, looks like us, and is about people just like us.  And we love it.

I saw the show with two thirteen year old boys – a tough audience for musical theater to reach.  They were mesmerized and excited.  They bought the soundtrack on Itunes and are now listening to it constantly.  This has never happened before, at least to these kids.  What gives?  Is it just the music?

Hip Hop music is a large part of Hamilton’s sung-through score, but not the only style.  There are also elements of R&B, jazz, pop and more typical musical theater songs, especially in the second act.   But the energy and relevance of the sound from the beginning draws the audience in, forces them to listen carefully to every word so as to not miss a beat.  The rhyme and delivery is delightful to hear and exciting to watch.  It is a “sung through” musical, and the beat continues to energize and engage us to the very end.

The insistent beat moves the plot along and forces us to keep up. It accelerates the action, along with the lighting and choreography, and cannon “booms” that go right through you.  The result is a mind-blowing swirl that immerses you in the action of a war for freedom and helps you understand the cost.  The Federalist and Anti-Federalist debates come alive when performed as a rap battle as the new nation deliberates the form our government should take.  

If innovation and relevance are the point of this blog – which they are – then Hamilton succeeds artistically in reaching its audience through its excellence in the following elements:

  • Hip Hop, a major musical genre today, is how many experience music – it’s a “today” sound
  • Non-stop movement and contemporary choreography keeps the action interesting
  • Contemporary idioms that sound like street language – the language of the audience
  • Making history relevant by diverse casting and a text that makes economic struggles and power plays sound contemporary  – which is identifiable and relatable.
  • A musical theater structure that works.

There are many audiences and many ways of performance.  Our job is to speak the language of our audience today, wherever they may be. Hamilton succeeds because of its capacity to engage its audience.