Interview With Master Bookseller Bob Gray

I recently had the good fortune to be a part of an interview with Master Bookseller Bob Gray. Mr. Gray works for Northshire Books, an independent bookstore in Vermont where he also teaches, regularly contributes to Shelf Awareness with his column Fresh Eyes Now, and he is one of a small handful of people who have been named a Master Bookseller. Mr. Gray’s wealth of knowledge about the literary world is truly intimidating, but he was nothing but kind and generous with both his time and knowledge.

“Good books are what matters,” says Mr. Gray. While large publishers flood bookstores with advance copies, he says it can become difficult to pick out all of the good ones, especially from smaller presses. However, you are likely to find them at Northshire Books because Mr. Gray helped bring a display of independent presses into the store.

For any writers out there, make a note, Bob Gray could save your book from becoming an orphan– think of him as a literary Daddy Warbucks. Figuring out how to market books to individuals and pairing people with good books is Mr. Gray’s favorite part of his job at Northshire. This hands-on approach to selling is what makes independent bookstores great. It’s nice to hear that a book is good from a good reader rather than from a marketing executive. “Well written and poorly written books can have equal marketing,” says Mr. Gray. On the other hand, he also says marketing people are swamped, and sometimes they just have to send books out the door. Even if it is a great book, they don’t have time to make sure it will do well. He says it’s independent booksellers and devoted book groups that help save lesser known books from falling through the cracks.

So if you’re in Vermont, stop by Northshire Book Store and let Bob Gray set you up with a good book, but if not, stop by your local independent bookstore and introduce yourself– you might be fortunate enough to meet someone as knowledgable as Bob Gray.

Check out http://www.indiebound.org/indie-bookstore-finder to find your nearest independent book.

New Playwrights: Master the Short Form First

Before you start trying to write the next Tony Award Winning play, stop, and consider mastering something smaller first. I understand that the natural instinct for new playwrights is to jump right in head first, that’s great, but you can save yourself a whole lot of time and frustration if you try your hand at the short form first.

 

One acts and ten-minute plays are traditionally thought of as openers. A lot of theaters used to show them before full-length plays, as a warm-up for the main event. Now theaters are producing whole evenings of one acts or ten-minute plays, and with the way people’s attention spans are slowly becoming shorter, it’s no wonder playwrights like David Ives have made their entire careers writing ten-minute plays. 

 

That is not to say ten-minute plays are easier to write — they aren’t. In fact, many playwrights claim they are more difficult to write because they have less space to fit everything a full-length play needs — without the luxury of extra time to warm up. So why am I telling beginning playwrights to start with ten-minute plays? Because if you can squeeze everything a play needs into ten minutes, you will have no problem doing it in two hours. Not to mention the fact that full length plays can take months and years to write and edit. The first draft of a ten minute play can be written in one sitting. They can be edited and revised fifteen or twenty times over the course of a month. An industrious playwright could write and polish twelve ten-minute plays a year.

 

Let’s face it though, twelve plays a year is a bit of a stretch, and that is my whole point. As a beginning playwright, you may find it difficult to sit down and write for at least thirty minutes a day– much less the hours a day it would take to complete twelve ten-minute plays. Twelve ten-minute plays are the equivalent of one two hour play, and the odds of a new playwright putting in the amount of quality time it takes to produce that much work in one year is unlikely, but you can write four or five ten-minute plays a year. 

 

If you have just got to go out and write that full length play then do it – I did, and it’s bad. That idea for the full length play will serve you better if you put it on the back burner, develop the idea, and learn what it will take to see it realized.

Good News

I got news today that my ten minute play Louisville Swinger is going to be published in a volume with two other plays by One Act Play Depot.
One Act Play Depot is a small play press that is publishing a lot of new work. Check them out:

http://oneactplays.net/

Ten-Minute Play Festivals: Easier To Produce Than You Think

Last year marked the inaugural run of the Longwood Ten-Minute Play Festival. Over four hundred submissions reviewed, five winners picked, and three packed performances later, I can honestly say producing a ten-minute play festival is easier than you would probably think. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a lot of planning, a whole lot of reading, and just as much work as any theatrical endeavor, but ten-minute play festivals are a great way to cheaply produce a lot of new work.

 

When I started talking out the idea, for a play festival with fellow co-founders Mary Carroll-Hackett and Brett Hursey, I had some reservations. I wondered how we would get the money to build sets. I worried about the quality of the scripts we would receive, and I really wasn’t sure anyone would send anything in. We had a good idea, no money and endless reservations, but we did it anyway.

 

Now that the air has settled and plans are being made for the next festival, a number of people have approached me about starting their own festivals. My response has been the same: it’s easier than you think. So I’ve put together a plan for producing a ten-minute play festival.

 

• Hone the details of the festival. Will you have a special topic or theme? Will you offer a prize for the finalists? Will you charge a submission fee? With our festival we decided not to have a theme. We offered a DVD as a prize for the winners, and we did not charge a submission fee.

 

A note about submission fees: Many playwrights will not submit to your festival if you charge a fee, and many forums will not post a call for submissions with a fee attached.

 

• Write up a call for submissions. For an example go here:

 http://www.stageplays-forum.com/view_topic.php?id=1847&forum_id=10&highlight=Longwood

Post the call for submissions on various playwrighting forums. This is a cheap and very effective way to get your festival noticed. Here are some good forums:

 

 

http://www.stageplays-forum.com/

 

http://enavantplaywrights.yuku.com/

 

http://www.aact.org/cgi-bin/webdata_contests.pl?cgifunction=Search

 

• Make a list of the plays you receive and the dates they are received. Should a playwright call wondering if their script arrived, you can say “yes, it came on this date.”

 

• Establish readers who will reject or accept the scripts. This process is called slushing. The readers will eventually narrow the choices down to the best fifteen or twenty scripts. Give yourself at least a month to do this.

 

• A final judge narrows down the set number of winners. (In our case we choose five.)

 

• Cast the plays accordingly and rehearse them.

 

The Longwood Ten-Minute Play Festival ran all five plays back to back for three evenings. The production was a huge success. Some of the playwrights involved were extremely grateful, and many of the audience members commented that they did not know theatre like that existed.

 

In the end it took us four months, and three hundred dollars to produce five new plays – three of which were world premiers – and we filled roughly ninety percent of our seating capacity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who Says You Can’t Produce New Work?

The trend, it seems, is professional theatre companies producing well known plays and musicals in hopes of a more commercial success, and Universities producing obscure, important works like Ubu Roi. (A play I love, but typically leaves audience scratching their heads and wishing they had stayed home to catch “Flavor of Love” which, ironically, has a very similar protagonist.)

 

So where is the middle ground? What falls between the important classics and the commercial plot-less wonder? Why can’t I get Six Feet Under on stage?

 

It’s because new work is being ignored. Great playwrights like Martin McDonagh, Connor McPherson, and David Auburn have answered my call for the “Middle Ground” of theatre, but their work has only been noticed because it was picked up on Broadway. Unfortunately, there is only room for about four new dramas on Broadway each year.

 

Don’t wait to be the first theater in your area to reproduce this work. Dig up your own gem. Yes, some of your patrons will be weary to pay full price to see something they don’t already know. Guess what, new work is cheap – or even better, free. Playwrights are dying to get their work produced, and they may very well let you produce it for nothing more than a playbill and a free seat.

 

Sure, theatre production is expensive– so cut the production costs, get back to basics and explore simple representational design. (The bare bones designs of Ming Choe Lee are some of the most influential scenic designs in the American theatre to date.) Seek out plays with small casts that don’t require much. The less money you put in, the less you need to get back out– the margin for profit is higher, too.

 

Hopefully, your theater has produced a quality of work that the audience trusts. Consider yourself a brand name. Don’t forget what got you going, but remember to put out new products. It is the direction that theatre has to move toward, so you might as well help start the new trend.

What’s Next For the American Stage?

With rising gas prices, and an economy in decline, Americans are being forced to pinch pennies, and the fate of the American stage looks dim. Theatres across the country might be concerned that their loyal patrons won’t be able to spend precious gas and dish out thirty dollars to kick back and watch their favorite musicals.But are these their favorite musicals, and haven’t they seen that one already, and most importantly do they even like musicals? What age group is coming to the theatre? It’s the generation that grew up watching variety shows, a generation that just wants more of Ed Sullivan’s brand of wholesome singing, dancing entertainment. Sure they are the retired generate with extra money to spend, and with the economy and the price of gas people are cutting back, but are they really?

The price of television has increased about twenty dollars a month since the advent of HD TV, and if you pay an extra twenty you can get the basic movie channels. Another twenty will buy you the extra movie channels, and if you are willing to give up your first born you get to have a TiVo and nine hundred channels. So with gas prices and the economy what it is, why do I still know people that pay hundreds of dollars a month for television who have never stepped foot inside a theatre?

If the American theatre can’t beat reality television, then it really is doomed, but I don’t think it’s a fight theatre can’t win. If theatre companies want to start filling seats again they are going to have to stop producing tired, old musicals and start looking to newer work that appeals to younger generations.