Play Readings as a Marketplace

Every Labor Day weekend in DC, the Kennedy Center becomes the temporary home of a tremendous gathering of new plays. The Page-to-Stage Festival offers about 40 different local theater companies the opportunity to hold staged readings of work they're currently developing. It's a showcase for audiences, and audiences do come. They get to see work-in-progress, contribute to a discussion about its development, and get excited about the eventual full production to come... all for the price of a free ticket. By every measure, the event is a rousing success, year after year.

Of late, however, I've been daydreaming about a slightly different version of the same event: a weekend of readings held by playwrights and directors designed to interest theater companies in their work. The general public would still be invited -- naturally, so that local artistic directors could see how the work would play in front of live bodies -- and audience members would still have the same experience of encountering work-in-progress. The resulting weekend would serve as a kind of marketplace for new plays: a chance for playwrights to really strut their stuff, without having to work super-hard to convince the right people to come to a random reading on a random Monday night.

Assume for the moment that the Kennedy Center only has the ability to offer 40 slots in a long weekend. (Don't worry, though, Kennedy Center: we'll do this one on Memorial Day instead.) Those 40 slots could be doled out first-come, first-serve, or playwrights could enter a lottery for them. Playwrights would be responsible for finding their own directors and casts and putting in as much or as little rehearsal time as they wanted -- but that wouldn't be hard for us to do, would it? No advertising would be necessary, or ticketing, or renting a space -- it would all be handled by the festival.

In time, stories could be told about how such-and-such play was discovered by such-and-such literary manager at, say, the famous 2014 festival where such-and-such playwright made her debut. Or perhaps similar festivals could be held quarterly -- sort of like cattle-call auditions -- and become part of the regular way that theaters choose new plays... not only in DC, but around the country. Audiences would flock to the festivals, I'm sure of it -- and might even be willing to start paying for tickets -- if only for the reality-show element of wondering which plays are going to survive and advance. At least... that's how I imagine it.

My guess, though, is that theaters are going to continue to prefer the less-than-transparent ways in which plays are currently chosen... at least for the time being.