Mike Mariano

While NC-bound Thanksgiving week, I went through some old script rejections that have been untouched since their receipt. One of the Devil rejections came from the McLaren Memorial Comedy Play Writing Competition, whose staff was kind enough to include the evaluation forms used by the three judges. All playwrights get less feedback than they want (or think they get less, and don’t notice what they should), so this is a golden opportunity. Let’s see what the judges said:

Paula Abdul Not much humor, although I loved the line “Very Brady Human Sacrifice.” Should have more devil and less girlfriend.

Randy Jackson Well written and thought-provoking. Good plot, but I came away with a very dull, empty feeling.

Simon Cowell Too convoluted; not funny.

I can see it.

And from a comedy festival standpoint, I can definitely see it. I Am The Devil was just one more performer at open stand-up night, where everyone else is pulling out their best shots for “the big laugh”, something to knock their socks off. And then there’s Alice Osbourne; like Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock, she brings both joy and pain, sunshine and rain. And while the play is oh so silly, it’s a comedy primarily in the classic sense, when grim tales were considered comedies primarily because no one dies.

My next redesign of this site will likely move the plays into different categories. I want to move the Anthology works that don’t seem to connect with audiences into a section called “Unloved Children.” Plays like Two Men About to be Killed by a Comic Book Supervillain and Over The Fence, will likely find new homes there (sorry, kids), but should I Am The Devil end its life on that page, too?

This month marks three full years since I have completed this play, my last full-length. Within three years, sister show The Bill Show had been published and had come tragically close to a few productions. The Marley Show has had a unique and wonderful life onstage. (Apparently materials related to our recent Tokyo production have arrived at Dean’s mother’s house; I can’t wait to see how our play went across the world and back again.) Meanwhile I Am The Devil has won a contest distinction and some minor interest, but is it too little, too late?

Every time I go back to it, I like it. Maybe too much; maybe the play is something that will die lonely because I love its unprettyness. But Alice is still pretty to me.

With all the gravel and ice on the sidewalks due to the weekend storm, I’ve been sliding around Princeton as if I were Michael Jackson. Passers-by heard a rendition of “Billy Jean” not meant for human ears.

This Saturday Dean and I saw Kean University’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire. It was reasonably well done, but also was very faithful to the text. If you’ve seen the Kazan film (which I haven’t, completely) or even just read Tennessee Williams’s detailed script, Kean’s production added very little. There’s nothing wrong with theatre performed as a rote ritual; in many ways, all theatre is ritual. But a carefully mimeographed production already has its bullseye painted: the original production. Any differences become detractions, and the production can only fail on the other work’s terms. That’s how I felt during this Streetcar.

On these ritualized terms, even the interesting deviations become failures. For example, the play’s Stanley was obviously aiming for Brando, but hitting Bruce Willis. He nailed Willis, though, and that gave the infamous “Stella!” scene (with its slamming doors) a distinct Moonlighting flavor. And Mitch (who, as played by Karl Malden, is the inspiration for Karl Meltzer in I Am The Devil.) directly lifted some of Malden’s mannerisms, but came off not as an awkward love-stricken lug but instead as a chronic masturbator. In scenes that were otherwise the same, I reacted to Malden’s Mitch with “Ha, what a tool!” With Kean’s Mitch it was “Oh my gosh! Look where he’s holding that bottle!” On recollection I think Malden held a beer bottle in his crotch, too, but I didn’t notice it like this.

Kean University probably wasn’t trying to have the audience leave with The Return of Bruno album stuck in their heads, but they gave me at least that. Most of Kean’s Streetcar details have lost a fight against Kazan’s film to take up space in my memory. Ritual can renew or affirm a meaning we associate with a play, but ritual alone doesn’t satisfy.

I’ve been writing a lot of music stuff lately. I already have a Bruce Springsteen parody for the Boring Science Plays, and I’m adding to that some Billy Joel. Now I’ve been fiddling with another faux-Springsteen song along with some AC/DC. Soon I’ll be a regular Diane Warren.

Let’s crunch numbers. Yesterday a copy of I Am The Devil went down to Florida from the idyllic Highmount Post Office. The charge to send the play and to stamp a self-addressed envelope (to return the play after its inevitable rejection) was $9.45.

This was the first time I have used the US Postal Service for a play since their July price increase. Previously, I was paying $3.95 each way; sure, the total increase was only $1.55 more, but it made me confront the fact that I was pushing the ten-dollar mark just to send a play on its way. Binding a play only costs me about six dollars (for paper, document covers, labels, etc.). If I currently pay almost five dollars to get a play returned to me (if they even bother), it’s almost not worth it to send an SASE; I should just keep printing six-dollar plays instead.

No matter how the prices work out, the dead-tree world is losing its glamour. During my absence from the Post Office, I was sending more and more of my work through e-mail. It’s still frustrating, though. So many theatres have websites, but few of them have the capability to receive e-mail submissions. The ones that do often want to be fashionably modern, but don’t quite know what to do with an e-mailed play when it arrives. Postage isn’t getting any cheaper, but e-mail should be making things easier.

So, if you are a literary manager moving into the 20th Century, here is what you need to do:

1. Develop a clear literary submission policy. This is important for both mail and e-mail submissions. Do you accept full plays or only samples? Samples of how many pages? Do you require a resume/biography? Do you only accept submissions during a certain period? And, most importantly for you, how will you process these submissions when they arrive? By making a concrete policy, you will get more managable submissions.
2. Let writers know your accepted file types. Plays can come in an endless number of file formats, and you may not be able to open all of them. Even if you can open a file with a strange extension, the program you use may not display or print it correctly. Sometimes this even happens within the same version of Microsoft Word. To minimize these file differences, let playwrights know what you will and won’t accept. Personally, I recommend playwrights use PDF files; it may be difficult to find a PDF printer (there are free ones, just not from Adobe), but they always display exactly how they will print, on every computer.
3. Know your limits. Your average play doesn’t take up too much disc space, but it can be exponentially larger than your average e-mail. If your company maintains a free Hotmail address, you have 2MB of disc space. Since your average full-length could be anywhere from 250-500K, you’ll need to empty your Inbox after every fourth or fifth play received (and download those plays to your computer). Depending on how often you check your mail, you may not be able to keep up with demand.
4. How will you read the submissions? You can read them on the computer or print them out. If you’re going to print them, though, you’ve just burdened yourself with the cost that formerly belonged to the playwright. If you want a play on paper, why bother with e-mail at all?
5. Respond! Using the Postal Service, most playwrights can expect to be paying for all of their correspondence with a theatre. If they want the play back, they’ll send a big SASE. If they want a response when it’s received, they’ll send a postcard. But with e-mail there’s no postage and no plays need to be returned. You should take the ease of e-mail to reply when a play is received and to follow up when you have accepted or rejected it. It isn’t best to ignore the traditional forms, like sending an e-mail when you were mailed a play with an SASE. But responding to an e-mailed play with e-mail is both acceptable and encouraged. These do not have to be individualized responses, either. Form letters are OK, but be careful. Don’t send a mass-mailed rejection to a random grouping of playwrights. If the e-mail is sent or carbon-copied to everyone, you’ve just publicized every writer’s address. And if you send blind carbon copies, some e-mail filters won’t let the mail through. It’s best to just copy and paste that rejection into individual, separate e-mails.

The most important thing for theatres is to be prepared and be consistent. Playwrights (wise ones) want to be as accomodating as possible, so you should be as clear as possible in stating the best way to get plays to you. It takes work, but all theatre does.