Making Money as a Playwright Part 1

Making Money as a Playwright Part 1

by | Nov 4, 2024 | Business, NPD

How Do Playwrights Make Money?

The playwright Robert Anderson famously said in the late 50’s early 60’s that “one can make a killing in the theatre, but not a living.” The late Tim Kelly, a very prolific playwright for the school and community theater markets who passed away in 1997, published over 350 plays in his life, and would have about 6,000 performances of his plays every year, all over the world.  His pieces were translated into dozens of languages.  He adopted Anderson’s quote and paraphrased it for the amateur theater market:  “You can make a living, but you can’t make a killing”.

Most active writers, including playwrights, have an academic affiliation, which pays the bills. To get your play produced, which if it’s an OK play is relatively easier, by far the best way to do it is to be around people who make theatre: actors, directors, producers. If you can get them to read your play and they like it, there’s a chance they may produce it.

Overall, while making a living as a playwright is possible, it often requires a combination of talent, perseverance, and strategic career choices.

And you will most often need another form of income (or a supportive spouse or other family member) in order to continue with playwriting. You may not make a living with this art form, but it can be fulfilling in many other ways.

Playwrights can make money through various channels, including:

  1. Royalties: Playwrights typically earn royalties from productions of their plays. This is a percentage of the ticket sales or a fixed fee paid by theaters for the rights to perform the work.
  2. Licensing Fees: When theaters want to stage a play, they must pay a licensing fee to the playwright or their representative. This can include fees for amateur and professional productions.
  3. Grants and Fellowships: Many playwrights apply for grants and fellowships from arts organizations, foundations, and government bodies that support the arts. These can provide financial support for writing new works.
  4. Publishing: Playwrights can earn money by publishing their scripts. Some publishers pay upfront fees or royalties for published plays.
  5. Film and Television Adaptations: If a playwright’s work is adapted into a film or television show, they may receive a fee for the adaptation rights and possibly ongoing royalties from the production.
  6. Collaborations and Commissions: Playwrights may be commissioned to write new works for specific theaters or projects, which can provide a guaranteed income.
  7. Teaching and Workshops: Many playwrights supplement their income by teaching playwriting or conducting workshops, sharing their expertise with aspiring writers.
  8. Options: Producers give playwrights an option when they decide to produce their work. (There will be a time limit on the option.)
  9. Producing Their Own Work: Some playwrights take on the role of producer for their own plays, allowing them to retain a larger share of the profits.

Overall, the income of a playwright can vary significantly based on the success of their works, the demand for their plays, and their ability to navigate the industry.

So how do playwrights for the amateur markets make money?  Simple— volume.  The more productions, the more performances, the more money.  So, how do you get more productions?

Your Website and Play Catalog

You simply must have more than one play that’s ready to be produced. When you’ve finished one play, start the next one.

That being said, this is easier for playwrights than musical theatre teams, but the same volume is suggested for musicals as well. If you want to make money writing plays, you simply must have many different plays, in many different formats (full length, one acts, 10 minute plays, etc.)

The easiest way to increase your writing output is to join a writer’s group. One of the best things that a writers’ group can give you is a deadline. When you’re regularly meeting with a community of writers, you challenge yourself to continually bring new work to the group, and to continue to write. If you’re not in a writers’ group, I’d recommend finding other external deadlines, whether they’re playwriting awards or theatre submissions windows. Whatever it is, find a deadline (with a realistic timeframe) so that there is somewhere you have to send a finished play to in a specific time frame (no matter what state your script is in).

Which brings us neatly onto our next step: share the play.

Share Your Play With Those You Trust

Once you’ve written your play, it’s time to share it beyond your writing group. Have friends in for a “pizza reading.” Ask people you trust to sit in a Zoom reading and discuss it afterwards. Continue to write and rewrite, addressing common feedback responses. (Usually I advise writers to listen carefully to feedback, and notice when the same note is given more than once. Usually you should address it when it is mentioned twice. To those comments that sound like the audience member is trying to rewrite your play, a good phrase to remember is, “Hmmm, interesting. I’ll think about that.”)

Especially if you’re writing a new musical, plan a 29-hour Industry Reading. Make sure to record it using the highest tech standards you can afford (especially if you believe the work is ready for important industry people to see). This is a ten times more important if you’re holding your reading anywhere outside New York.

You learn so much about what needs to change in your play when you’re collaborating with a director and/or dramaturg, and when you hear it read by actors. The rewrites carried out on the play during the rehearsed reading process is an instrumental step towards it eventually being staged.

When you feel your script is ready to be produced, submit the new play to calls for submissions, to literary departments near you, to directors you know., etc. Send it out far and wide.

The important thing about sharing your work is it increases your chances of it getting produced. Someone might love it.

This feels like it has a lot to do with luck. It does. But realize that you can help create your own luck by:

  1. Writing a play that’s true to your artistic voice.
  2. Sharing it far and wide and then using feedback to develop it
  3. If a theatre shows interest in it, doing your very best to prove that you can deliver.

Remember, you get paid per performance, so you have to find someone to produce your play or musical.

(Part 2 is coming next week…)

 

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Do I Need a Star?

Do I Need a Star?

by | Dec 4, 2019 | Inspiration, NPD, Theater, Writing Tips

The Need for Stars?

 

 “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” – Steve Martin

 

Writing a play and then staying the course to see it produced is a daunting task. It requires tremendous focus and 100% dedication to each step in the developmental process.

 Once you think your play “works,” the next step is to have a staged reading to introduce it to the public, either in NYC or elsewhere. A reading is the step before a workshop or a production.

 So if a staged reading is the step before a workshop or production, what is our goal for the staged reading? Getting people to see the reading. And not just ANY people – specifically, people who could help us get to that next step, a production or a workshop. (We also want to get smart, experienced people to the reading for them to give us feedback as well, but for the purpose of this blog post let’s stay with the people who can help us move the play forward.)

 So, who are these people? How can I get them into my reading?

 

 It’s All About Relationships

 

Since everything in this business is about relationships, you should be developing relationships and networking like crazy as soon as you realize that you want to be a playwright. Specifically, you want to cultivate relationships with Artistic Directors, directors, producers, and generally, almost anyone in the industry.

 Sooner or later you realize that everyone in the theater lives or dies by their network of friends and friends-of-friends. And it’s helpful to be friends with or in close association with someone who knows or has access to a “star.”

 

Getting a “Star” Interested in Your Play

 

 I can hear the plaintive cry from many of you: “I don’t have access to a star, and don’t know anyone who does!”

 Sigh. That’s where most of us start, but if you’re in this industry for any length of time and make an effort to network, you’ll inevitably meet someone (or hire someone) who knows someone to make a connection for you. And if your work is good enough (and your price is right), you’ll probably be able to hire someone that’s worked on Broadway before to be in your reading. Often it’s not as expensive as you think.

For a quick answer, you can contact your intended celebrity by signing up for the IMDbPro, which is what most people use. You can also try contactanycelebrity.com.

 BUT the real answer is that quality work shows up very early, in the writing and in the score (if we’re talking about musicals). Sometimes I start to read a script and quickly become riveted to the story. When it’s this good, I smile and say to myself that “the magic is starting to happen.”

Losing yourself in a theatrical world established by a talented writer is a completely magical experience. The “magic” is found on the page long before it makes its way to the stage, and if you’ve read a few hundred scripts or so like many of us have, you know it doesn’t happen all that often.

“Star” actors see the “magic” when they read your script; the same with “star” directors, music directors, and yes, theaters and producers. The cream always rises to the top. Eventually.

 Unfortunately it usually takes its damn sweet time getting there.

 

I Don’t Have a Star – Yet

 

Notice the operative word here – YET.

In order to find that “star” you think you need to attract the theaters and producers that you think you need to help move your script forward – the most important thing you need to remember is that the first star of your show is …. your script. 

Let me say it again.

Your writing should be so good that your SCRIPT is your very first “star.”

 So, while you continue to network and develop each of your plays, remember it’s the constant fine-tuning to your scripts that is the real work.

No amount of networking or self-producing expensive staged readings can substitute for the nitty-gritty down-and-dirty daily work of meeting with yourself every day to sit down and write.

  •  In order to make your writing the true star it needs to be, remember to acknowledge the daily discipline to write (or re-write) every day.
  • Remember to recognize the need for real craft in your work, and
  • Understand the need to constantly keep learning.

You must be a constant student of life and of the craft of writing to master the craft of writing.

 

As Steve Martin quipped, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”

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Make Submissions Easy

Make Submissions Easy

by | Nov 14, 2019 | Inspiration, NPD, Writing Tips

‘Tis the (Submission) Season

 

Ah, the coolness of the air, the crisp sound of the leaves rustling underfoot. It’s the time of non-profit galas galore and Christmas party networking.

For playwrights and librettists, it’s also the season of submissions.

I’m sorry to say that some of the major submission opportunities have already passed (the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, the Richard Rodgers Award, the Jonathan Larson Grant, and Sundance Theatre Lab, for instance). If you didn’t apply this year, there’s always next year.

However, there is still time for some other major festivals, like NYMF (which has extended their deadline to November 18).

 

Why Submit to Theaters and Festivals?

 

If you want to get your production on its feet and onstage, there’s no better way to begin the process than by participating in an established theater company or festival’s lineup, if you’re ready for it.

What do I mean by ready?

  • Your script has had at least one table reading and seems to “work”
  • You have had a few theater professionals advise you to move forward with the piece
  • You’re through with the re-writes, and it’s time for your script to live and breathe onstage in order to learn more about it.

I believe we’re living in an Age of the Playwright, something akin to the ancient Greek Fifth Century era, where the power of the theater and its storytelling was at its peak. Never before has there been so many writers and storytelling for production (which includes film, tv, and internet storytelling in addition to live theater). Our society is primed to consume storytelling via visual dramatic action, much more so than in previous eras when vital storytelling was shared primarily through words: through oral tradition or through text (novels, newspapers, poems and radio theater).

I call this the Age of the Playwright instead of the “Age of the Director,” since the ideas come from the playwright’s vision. A director interprets the theme and makes it come alive on stage, but the original vision, intention and form – the raison d’etre of a piece – remains embedded within the meaning endowed unto it by its creator, the writer.

And unfortunately more and more, the costs associated with birthing it to life come from the writer as well.

Enter the non-profit theaters and festivals. Drum roll, please.

 

Creative Playmaking in the 21st Century

 

I’m certainly not saying anything new, but the cost of putting your precious show onstage can be daunting. This is the world that I live in too, as a producer and mentor for many writers.

How do we create opportunities to put stories on stage in the 21st century? How can we produce our work, or help others to produce our work, without needing to take out a second mortgage on our home or risking money that we really shouldn’t risk?

The secret is two-fold of course:

  1. Through constant pitching for OPM (Other People’s Money) and
  2. By consistently submitting your work to as many opportunities as you can.

In a field where it seems as if “they” hold all the power, this is a wakeup call to remind you that YOU hold all the power.

  • This is your “baby,” your creation, and no one will foster it and promote it better than you
  • You hold all the cards, because at some point it is really a “numbers game” and entirely within your power to pitch or not to pitch, to submit or not to submit.

Let me say it again: “they” don’t hold all of the power; YOU hold all of the power.

You create your own opportunities.

 

Pitching and Submitting: Make It Easy

 

There are differences, and you must do both.

By “pitching” yourself and/or your work, usually in person, you are demonstrating that you are a professional artist that believes in yourself and in your work. “Submitting” is the process where you submit your work to a person, theater or festival, and then wait to see if you are selected through their process.

Every artist should have their two minute “elevator pitch” down pat, ready to go at a moment’s notice when fate puts an opportunity smack dab in your face. How many times have you felt yourself unprepared for that moment when the universe put someone in your path who could help you professionally,? Get your elevator pitch ready now.

That’s why I now insist that I constantly have a memorized elevator pitch for the shows I’m currently working on ready to “present” when an opportunity shows itself. You can follow up by email with people you meet in person with “pitching” materials prepared ahead of time, that give information about your show, reviews, a sizzle reel, etc.

Pitching should happen in person and over email if you know someone personally. A “cold” pitch is less effective, unless introduced by a common acquaintance. I try to always remember to follow up with prepared material after meeting someone and speaking about one of my shows. I keep their business card in my pocket or in plain sight as a reminder, so I don’t forget.

That may be a good goal for you in 2020.

 

People Are Interested in You!

 

People are interested in hearing about you and your work. They may also be willing to help you produce it or connect you to others who can, because either the work sounds compelling or, more often, they just really like YOU and want to help you succeed.

It’s up to you to sound articulate and represent yourself and your work really well by being prepared beforehand.

While pitching usually happens in person, submissions are done in the privacy of your own home or office. They rely on your organization of material and the productive use of your time. You MUST set aside a regular time each week to submit. Make it part of your weekly routine to submit to at least 4-5 opportunities a week on a regular basis.

 

You Hold All the Power

 

Writers who make a routine of setting aside a regular time each week to submit create more opportunities for themselves than writers who submit in a haphazard “I’ll get to it when I get to it” manner. Ditto those writers who have their pitches memorized and follow up afterward with pitching materials.

It’s all part of being a professional playwright in the 21st century.

 

It’s my job as a dramaturg and producer to inspire you and to help you in every way I can. I’m constantly trying to think of new ways to do this.

Recently I’ve been sitting down with writers to help them figure out ways to send out submissions more easily and quickly, making it “no big deal” to submit their work. If you make it part of your routine and have the needed documents at your fingertips, it actually becomes no big deal.

And that’s how you create opportunities that come to you.

 

Upcoming Submission Deadlines

 

I always advise my writers to join the Dramatists Guild and Play Submissions Helper to keep up with their submitting goals. I also am now reminding writers of upcoming deadlines in my weekly member newsletters. It helps to have the prodding come from a few different places!

Here are some of the upcoming deadlines for approaching deadlines for November that may be of interest to you:

The Eric H. Weinberger Award for Emerging Librettists at Amas Mustical Theatre

  • Deadline Nov. 29

The Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival

  • Deadline Nov. 30

Lost Nation Theater (see their Artistic Vision)

  • Deadline Nov. 30

Waterman’s Playwrights Retreats (Female Identifying Playwrights only)

  • Deadline 11/30

 

If I can help you dramaturgically with your script, help you achieve your submission goals, or if you would like a production consultation with next steps for your project, email me at cate@catecam.com   I’d love to speak with you.

 

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How to Get to Broadway in 3 [Not So Easy] Steps

How to Get to Broadway in 3 [Not So Easy] Steps

by | Jun 24, 2019 | Broadway, Theater

Still Flying After the TONYs?

 

How many of you are still flying high after the 2019 TONY Awards ceremony? The encouragement to all performers to continue the work, to celebrate our diversity, and the overall pure celebration of this art form in general and our NY Theater community specifically was so clearly demonstrated and felt. I want to hold on to this positivity and feeling of limitless potential – especially when life clearly wants to show me the opposite.

Who here wants to feel that you too can get to Broadway? How do we – we, the little people sludging through the theater pipeline – escape the muck and murkiness and come out shining on the Great White Way?

How do WE get go Broadway?

I’ve given this a LOT of thought – after all, it’s what I do – and from where I stand, here are my observations from watching how many of my friends who were present (and on screen) at the TONYs got there.

Here are my three not-so-easy steps on how to make it to Broadway:

  1. Get an idea that’s highly relevant
  2. Be prepared to do the work – for a long time
  3. Don’t be afraid to self-produce your own work.

 

Get an Idea That’s Highly Relevant

 

What speaks to you? What story, mission or message is burning a hole in your heart to get out to the world?

THAT’s the story you need to tell.

Chances are, if it’s burning a hole in your heart it’s burning a hole in many other hearts as well. You’re just the message-bearer meant to bring it to everybody else. And remember, karma’s a bitch.

Now what do I mean by “highly relevant”? By that I mean a message that:

  • Speaks to a larger issue in our culture that is of great concern. By identifying and promoting a larger conversation you are participating in the current cultural conversation and sharing the right ideas at the right time.
  • Topical or Universal. If your story, mission or message cuts across the cultural and chronological divide, you have a timeless human story with a thread that resonates for human beings everywhere. Human beings love to watch inspiring stories about other human beings struggling to succeed with something that’s important to them.
  • Stories that engage both the audience’s head AND heart. As I tell all the writers I work with, write from your heart first and edit with your head afterward.

If the message is important to you and you can answer the question, “Why this story NOW?” then it’s a highly relevant story.

 

Be Prepared to Write and Re-Write

 

Getting to Broadway is a marathon, not a sprint. If you only hold the vision of seeing your work being celebrated on a Broadway stage somewhere in the future, you’re in for many long, dark days stuck in the pipeline. Find joy in the process and understand that not every script needs to find its way to Broadway.

There are many smaller achievements to celebrate as you travel along en route. Learning to recognize and celebrate the little things that put a smile on your face gives you your daily inspiration to keep going.

  • Celebrate every “aha!” moment that comes from the daily work in the trenches (yes, I said daily). There’s joy in that delicious idea that manifests itself
  • Celebrate the YOU that’s becoming. You are DOING what you said you’d do for yourself, and in the promise you are growing into what you said you wanted – someone who writes successful plays or musicals. How many people that you know actually do what they dream? Remind yourself, “I AM a writer/composer/lyricist.”
  • Find the joy that comes with collaborating with other creative people. Part of becoming a successful writer is knowing and working with other creative and brilliant artists. Take joy in immersing yourself in all of the creativity that’s around you, until one day you realize this is where you belong. This is who you are.

A note of caution here: don’t feel compelled to listen to everyone. Not every opinion needs to be addressed by anything more than a brief acknowledgement. “Thank you, that’s interesting. I’ll think about it,” should be your most frequent response. However, if the same comment, in various forms, appears more than three times, it is probably something you should look at.

 

Don’t Be Afraid to Self-Produce

 

THE DREAM: I need to find a [producer, theater] to produce my script. I’m a writer, not a producer.

THE REALITY: You need to be your own producer – at least at first.

How many of you were always the last to be chosen for the softball teams? Doesn’t sitting on the bench suck? It’s the same here. Be proactive in your life. Start the momentum by producing your own work.

Overwhelming, you say? Take it easy. Start baby-stepping your way to success.

  • Save your money. No one is going to love your baby (your work) more than you do.
  • If you don’t have money, be creative about finding people who do.
    • Learn how to start a Kickstarter fund
    • Ask! Start with those who know and love you, and their friends and family.
    • Make relationships with theaters near you. Volunteer, donate, go to their galas. Show up on their social media. Be their local ambassador and build a relationship with them.
    • Find groups, companies, non-profits or institutions who resonate with your show’s message and target audience. Find ways to introduce them to your show.
  • Network! Join communities online (like createtheater.com) as well as your local networking groups. Believe that synchronicities are always around the corner, and they will be.

Whoever promised that achieving a life-time dream was easy? Was anything worthwhile ever easy? Is life really a Staples commercial?

 

If You Are a Writer, You Write.

 

Ask any of the recipients that earned their stripes – er, TONYs. Nothing is easy. Ever! Nothing is promised.

But as trite as it sounds, “the joy is in the journey,” and if this is WHO you are and this is WHAT you do – it’s worth all of it.

Do what you have to DO to BE who you need to be.

DO BE DO BE DO.

 

Ok, let’s get to work! 🙂

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Planning For Success Part II

Planning For Success Part II

by | Feb 14, 2019 | Inspiration

Winter Doldrums?

 

Do you find winter to be your most creative season?

It always has been for me. There’s something about being more at home and quiet that ramps up my creative energy to flow into more artistic pursuits.

Maybe because I’m more still I listen more? Who knows. But my best writing, ideas and projects have all had their origins in this time from January to April.

Getting back to my previous post, February is when I’m in the thick of it. Ideas are coming so fast and furious they sweep me away. Like most of us, January’s work on planning our year get down and dirty in February.

The rubber meets the road. It’s do or die.

Sometimes I do… and some years I die. That’s honest.

BUT when I DO – when I take ACTION – it’s a great year!

My whole year is determined by what I do or don’t do in the first quarter.

Is that true for you too?

 

Scripting and Planning Only Go So Far

 

Like actors that blossom when they stand up and step into their character, what makes or breaks us is the discipline to take action and build momentum.

In other words, our routines can make or break us.

I’m working with two writers right now. Both are very talented and full of ideas for the new musical they’re writing.

  • Writer A is mainly a songwriter and performer. He’s never written a musical before, but has a routine in place of coming to the computer every day after he gets his daughter to school. We meet every week like clockwork, on the same day at the same time, interrupted only when he occasionally has to tour. After six months he has an exciting Act One and is working on Act Two.
  • Writer B has extensive musical theater experience as a performer, director and producer. She has a wonderful idea for a new musical and is determined to see it on stage. However, more often than not our weekly sessions are moved or often rescheduled to the next week. Life seems to constantly interrupt her daily writing schedule, rendering it haphazard or nonexistent. After three months of working together she’s still struggling to write her outline.

Your Routine Frees You To Fly

 

I’m the last one to deny that often I’ve been more Writer B than Writer A. But even so, I recognize that my routines make or break me. It’s not what I do now and then that determines my life, but the action I take consistently that creates success, or not.

Writer A is his own hero. He is creating his future as he sees it in his mind.

Determine your own priorities and responsibilities. I know you know this – I’m now acting like that nagging voice in your own head that sounds like your mother. (Annoying, I know.)

If you want to see your plays onstage you must take regular and consistent ACTION to make that happen. No one can do this for you. You can pay someone, but really, it is your baby and it’s up to you.

A Checklist for Success

 

  1. Write every day at the same time in the same place. Establish a routine that works for you. Make it consistent, day in and day out.

Plan for your own success daily. Once you finish one play start the next one, so when an agent or producer inevitably asks to see your other work you have something to show them.

  1. Feed your creativity regularly. Keep a journal or notebook to capture your great ideas before the wind blows them away to someone else. Do interesting things every week to inspire and delight you.

Happiness is a wonderful inspiration of creativity. Keep your inner artist happy.

  1. Network, network, network. Meet people in the industry and learn about what they do. Make friends with people from every walk of life – they feed your writing and may possibly become your chief supporters in the future.

You never know where your next coincidence will come from.

  1. Submit, submit, submit. It’s a numbers game. Keep it a game by challenging yourself to collect the most rejections of anyone you know.

Because the reality is that the more you submit, the more opportunities you’ll create.

  1. Keep learning and growing. Like an actor must continually keep his instrument tuned and available by taking classes and learning different styles of acting, dance, vocal techniques, etc., a writer also must continually keep learning and advancing in his art. Writer’s groups and workshops in person and online are available everywhere. Take advantage of them.

Not only do workshops provide inspiration and knowledge, but they also provide built-in discipline in the form of assignments AND you meet really interesting people from many different walks of life.

 

 

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