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“If we don’t break the copy machine every week in the summer people
aren’t working hard enough.” — Amy Mueller
ations that are purely interested in the
development of writers for the sake of
developing writers, because, ultimately, theatres
have to ultimately be interested in
productions and making money,” explains
Jeni Mahoney, artistic director of the Seven
Devils Playwrights Conference.
Over the next couple of months I’ll take a
closer look at some of the festivals out there,
diving into what makes them unique, and
what you can expect if you get accepted.
I’ll start this month with a look at
the Bay Area Playwrights Festival in San
Francisco, Calif., and the Seven Devils
Playwrights Conference in McCall, Idaho.
The Playwrights Foundation
The Playwrights Foundation in San
Francisco, Calif., has many programs to help
writers develop their plays and their career,
but the centerpiece of their mission is the
Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Founded in
1976 by Robert Woodruff, the Festival was
started as a way to popularize Bay Area
playwrights who were experiencing success
internationally but less here in the States.
“Robert was working with Sam Shepard
at the time and Sam Shepard couldn’t get a
phone call back,” says Mueller, current artistic
director of the program. “So, Robert identified
him and several other writers who lived
here as extraordinary voices and talents, and
decided to create a festival of new plays that
would help to both get those plays up on
their feet and created, and premiered, and
also to shine a light on those writers to the
larger theatre community.”
For the first years of the Fest it was a full
producing organization—Woodruff would
bring in writers, directors, actors and designers,
sometimes with a script, sometimes with
just an idea for a show, and the artists would
collaborate to create a show during the
Fest. After 10 years, though, the main funding
organization, which was based in Marin
County, north of San Francisco, stopped
funding the Fest because it didn’t actually
produce in Marin County. They were forced
to radically change, and decided to “really
focus on the writing and on the most essential
ingredients of a production, which is the
actor and director. The Bay Area Playwrights
Festival morphed into a staged reading festival
of brand new plays,” says Mueller.
The idea of collaboration still takes centerstage
at BAPF, though, as they focus on
the collaborative process of getting a play
on its feet as the next step in the writing of
the play. They spend a great deal of energy
and thought matching playwrights with the
right directors, dramaturgs and actors to
bring the work to life.
“They’re there to illuminate the play,
every moment of the play, so that the playwright
can feel it, see it, hear it and also get
direct feedback,” says Mueller.
To augment this the process at the
BAPF starts with a three-day retreat with all
the staff. The play gets read out loud and
discussed in this artistic think tank. Next
comes a week of rehearsals and a public
reading. This is followed by another week
of rehearsal with time for re-writing. A lot
of re-writing.
“If we don’t break the copy machine
every week in the summer people aren’t
www.stage-directions.com • November 2009 29