Open Wardrobes

I wrote last fall about the PlaywrightBinge group I belong to (and if you're a playwright, you should too) and how twice a year it holds a submission Binge, the idea being that in the space of 30 days you send out 30 submissions. It's a way of helping encourage playwrights to think about the other side of writing: trying to find someone who will actually produce what you've written. I did a personal binge in December/January as I sent out queries for The Princess and the Moon, and for the last couple of months I've been sending out more submissions as I find opportunities, so I'm not sure I'll hit the official 30-submissions mark this time. The current Binge started March 1st, and I've kept up so far with 12 submissions in 12 days. But I'm now reaching the point where the opportunities (at least for the plays I have handy) are starting to run a bit thin. But with close to 200 queries and submissions since early December, I don't feel too bad about that. But it is good to focus on that side of the business form time to time, and since joining the PlaywrightBinge group I've put out many more submissions than I ever did before.

Last night I finally sent off the submission I really wanted to get out: to East Valley Children's Theatre's annual Aspiring Playwrights contest. This is the contest I took second place in last year with The Princess and the Moon and I'm hoping to have similar (or better) luck this year with my new commedia play The Captain's Treasure. I wrote it with the idea of teens performing it for teens (specifically something my friend Brian, who teaches middle school theater, might be able to use to do scene work in his class), so I'm hoping that East Valley will see it as I do as a way to introduce kids to this particular form of theater. The deadline for the contest is Monday, so I managed to just get the piece submitted in time! (Thankfully they accept submissions by email.) At least by sending it in at the very end, I won't have to wait as long to hear the results.