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Building a Sustainable Theater: How to Remove Gatekeepers and Take Control of Your Artistic Career

Chapter 13: Why You Should Consider Having a Playwright

We’re in the realm of “opinion” here, I guess—it’s certainly a suggestion, not a "rule." Nevertheless, I think there is a good argument to be made for having at least one playwright as a member of your company. But the same rules apply to them as to everyone else in the company: playwrights need to do more than “just” write plays; and like anybody else in the company, they need to have purchased a full share. Their primary skill should be writing plays, and the commitment of the company should be to producing everything that they write. No, I don’t mean “give everything they write a staged reading,” or a workshop, or a production if the play is “good”—give every play they write a full production immediately. Period.

British playwright Alan Ayckbourn is a brilliant example of this in action. He served as Artistic Director for the Stephen Joseph Theater for 37 years and over his career he wrote 89 full-length plays not counting one-acts and plays for children! Despite his prolific and noteworthy career as a playwright (he’s won several Olivier Awards and Tony Awards, and has been nominated for many more), he has been quoted as saying, “I always consider myself as a director who writes rather than a writer who directs, because directing takes up so much of my time.” In fact, he’s directed over 350 plays in his career. Even after stepping down as AD after developing health problems, he continues to write and premiere his plays in Scarborough under his own direction. I’d take Ayckbourn on my team any day.

Some reasons why I suggest considering a playwright as part of the company:

It is good for the American theater scene in general. Thanks to Tyrone Guthrie and those who bought in to his “classics-only” policy when he formed the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in the 1960s, many theaters continue to produce mostly old plays that are “conceptualized” in such a way as to seem to provide commentary on our contemporary world. Why not just cut out the middleman and produce plays that were written by people actually living in our contemporary world? As Margo Jones, one of the Founding Mothers of the regional theater movement, said, “if we produce only classics, we are in no way reflecting our own age. Our theaters must not only be professional, they must be contemporary as well.”
It’s good for playwrights. The theater demands skills that are unique to the stage, and emphasizing theater’s uniqueness is necessary to making sure it has a reason to survive. If the theater is only live TV, or tries to compete with film (hello, Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark) or worse yet, animated film (hello, what sometimes seems like half of the new musicals on Broadway today), then why would audiences drag themselves off their comfy couch to see a play when they can have the same experience by logging into their Disney+ account and eat popcorn and wear their jammies while they watch? Further, experimenting with what works and what doesn’t work on a stage in front of an audience is as important to a playwright as to an actor or designer. They need to have their work fully produced early and often. If a playwright knows that their play is going to be done the minute the ink is dry and not years in the future, they might be motivated to write more, and also write in response to company needs. I continue to believe that writing for specific actors can be a help to playwrights’ imagination.
It’s good for diversity. Having a playwright writing for specific company members would encourage the company to include a more diverse group of people. Instead of using color/gender/ability/age/whatever-blind casting, there would be plays written with those specific things in mind—and maybe those plays wouldn’t treat those differences as a Big F***ing Deal to be focused on. It would become the norm. How cool would that be?
It’s good for the bottom line. Royalties can be a major expense for a theater, and if you are interested in doing a musical the royalties are murderous. Shakespeare wasn’t paid for each of his plays, but as a company member he was paid according to his share, same as everyone else. Follow that model and let your playwright(s) have “skin in the game.” And if the company decides it wants to, say, stream the production at some point (one direction that digital theater might go), then you’re not dealing with sorting out the legal issues that are in the boilerplate agreement with a licensing company. Having a playwright knowledgeable about the everyday realities of your theater can also be a benefit. For example, in Asheville where I used to live, there are two actors, Charlie Flynn-McIver and Scott Treadway, who work together frequently, splitting their time between North Carolina Stage Company and Flatrock Playhouse. They have developed a strong following among local audiences, and perform in plays that highlight their comic talents and mutual chemistry. How great would it be if there was a playwright writing plays specifically for them? And if the theater needed something particular—say, a 2-character play in order to reduce costs or to accommodate a company member on leave—then that can be part of the mix as well.

I’m sure you can think of other reasons as well. For instance, it never hurts to have someone in your company who writes well, and in fact their secondary skill might be writing marketing copy and press releases. The point is that, because of the way that theater students are educated in high school and college, combined with the direction that institutional theaters have gone over the past fifty years, they often forget that there are living, breathing, creative playwrights in the world, not just scripts you get from an agency or some anthology. Having them working with you can add a great deal to your viability as a company.

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Alan Ayckbourn