For those of us that didn’t make the final 30 (or indeed the final 3)… What are your plans to secure that professional production?
For me, I now realise that I have to develop my synopses to a format that is at least half way decent, develop my rehearsed reading and securing more, keep writing and develop new contacts.
What are you going to do? (Other than swear at the TV on Monday night.)
Jay: A good question. My TTPT proposal turned into a finished play called The Whole of the Moon (from the Waterboys song) in May and has gone out to some agents, theatres and production companies.
I was thinking about sending the script to agents of actors who I think would be fabulous at playing the lead, Abigail Hunter. Abi is strong, provocative and mentally ill, sort of a female McMurty from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and the directors who have read the play have commented that it would be a very challenging role.
But for The Whole of the Moon, my answer is "wait".
I am also going to start another play. I am sifting around some ideas in my head. My poor husband: I am thinking about doing an intense two-hander about a marriage on the rocks. I want something that has low production costs, so that I consider blowing our life savings taking it to Edinburgh.
But The Whole of the Moon was started in September, 2001 so I may take some time writing this next one.
I thought about investing time and money in a website but then thought that the time could be more fruitfully spent writing, or rather, plotting. I think the biggest mistake I made with The Whole of the Moon was not to roadmap out the entire thing before I wrote the dialogue. I have literally hundreds of pages of dialogue, and while that writing helped me understand the characters, I think what was much more useful was my roadmap, which is all I worked on from September 2005 until March 2006 - making sure I had a tight suspense plot and understood the different character's voices and motivations.
The short answer is I will keep writing and try to limit long-winded answers to forum enquiries.
I've been snooping around ScriptCircle a bit, and made contact with a UK writer (I won't say who) who has written about 25 plays! I got in touch with him out of curiosity on another matter, but during our e-mail exchange it transpired that although he has written all these plays, and had quite a few amateur productions, he has NEVER had a successful response from an agent/producer/artistic director, and has in fact given up trying to punt his stuff around at all. He did try initially, but has now become disillusioned.
To answer Jay's question, then; I'm going to write two more plays, the one being what I consider to be a really good 'West Endy' comedy synopsis, the other of which won't be comedy at all (don't ask, I don't know yet, but it will be one of Sonia's "dark and meaningful" pieces.
Then I'm going to spend a small fortune and punt them out like crazy, pretty much all in one hit, every suitable agent/producer/AD in the UK that I can find.
If I get nowhere after hitting just about every relevant postal contact I can track ... I rethink the strategy.
Is that dreadfully naive of me? Anyone see a major flaw in that as a strategy? It's a typical marketers' numbers game approach, and I suspect the answer to both of my questions is 'yes', but I'd be interested in your thoughts!
That's pretty much been my strategy with mine, Adman, with one distinction - I handed out the play to seven people when it was completed but needed editing and then met with them (or got written questionnaire responses) to find out their initial responses. They were fascinating. One had me move a boy from age 11 to age 15 because 11 is prohibitively young for most theatres, one enlightened me as to certain factual assumptions I had made about one character's job that were incorrect. I guess I think your middle step should be getting feedback and then using it as you will to improve the play. You only get one shot with some place like the Royal Court, you have to make sure it's your best one.
I was kinda assuming I'd done all the feedback and editing stuff, and felt as good as I could about the material before I used the shotgun! But is there a drawback I can't see to (for instance) binding up 200 printed copies of an MS and sending it to multiple agents / producers / artistic directors simultaneously? There must be, surely!
