The big disconnect

Sitting outside a television studio this morning waiting for the producer to cue our playwright-in-residence for her interview, I crept up on one of my favorite soapboxes. (No, not actor pay.) The playwright was talking about an artist colony where she goes to write plays. I made, but didn’t press, the point that theater producers should be featured guest lecturers at such conclaves because playwrights, presumably, write plays to be produced, not studied in playwriting classes.

I didn’t get any argument, but I didn’t get an enthusiastic endorsement, either. Judging from the themes and casting requirements cited by the people who read the hundreds of plays submitted each year for our New Play Festival, the artist colony folks would object to the notion that they should be listening to their audiences, rather than the other way around. Sigh.