Erik Sherman

Complex ideas elegantly expressed

Producer’s Notebook

Why is it that I’m doing this again? I’ve even made my own plays ineligible for consideration. Oh, right, I’m doing it for the love of theater. To be candid, I might make a few dollars at the end, but that’s the last consideration, and certainly nowhere near enough to justify handling all the things that can go wrong. Everyone else comes first in line for the cash. Aside from bills, each theater group will get a cut after we at least cover the hard costs to the theatre. And the playwrights. I negotiated a small royalty—10% off the gross receipts—to be split among the presented playwrights.

It could be a pretty damned small amount of money, but it’s the principle. The whole night is supposed to be about the plays. There are no chances of revenues without the plays. Why should the playwrights be expected to be volunteers at fund raisers for organizations to which they do not belong? Heaven knows I need some kind of incentive, because I’m putting up lots of barriers in terms of length, format, cast size, amount of tech anyone could expect. An invitation with so many caveats is probably off-putting, but there’s no choice. I’ve already had experience of ranting playwrights who want to know why you can’t condense their Wagnerian-length opi to the existing time slots, or why the producers and directors can’t have the imagination to envision the period reenactment using a half dozen scarves, sound effects, and a dozen raw eggs.

No, the only choice is to limit what they can send in, stating up front that anything out of line will get tossed, and hope that something good will come in. That’s what producing at this level is really about – hope and faith. You hope that things will work out and have faith that no matter what goes wrong, you will find a way to open the curtain on time and see an audience laugh, cry, and experience what a play can be. Life has too few miracles and sometimes we have to invoke one.

Always be ready to pull a rabbit out of the hat.

First Entry

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