Spreading the word

greetings all, i'm just after some advice more than anything. i am a playwright with a selection of various works from 1 act to full length stage plays, in various genre, available for performance. i am based in Geraldton WA and have had some of my work performed locally but until now have not pursued a wider audience. i am interested in finding the best avenue to market my work for either amateur or professional performance and would like to hear from anyone who can suggest the best ways to get my work out there. Many thanks!

It's an interesting problem. I'm a playwrite I've got a website of my own I publish my own plays and I'm involved with at least two groups in Adelaide that promote new work, I don't know if there is anywhere like that in Perth. Most of the Script centres actually require you to have managed a professional production of your work before they'll even look at it. The only thing I can suggest is plug away. You could do worse than preparing an e-mail list of companies from this web site and sending all of them an e document listing and synopsising each play. Need to know stuff like size of casts and complexity of sets. You would also need to give some idea of your royalty charges. Good Luck Life's too short to stuff a mushroom www.tonymoore.id.au

two words - Writers' guild. Join it.

If you're a WA-based playwright, I expect you may find you're looking for one word rather than two:

Stages - The Western Australian Playwrights' Consortium

The leading professional organisation, supporting, advocating and promoting the development of Western Australian playwrights and performance writing.

Cheers
Grant

--
Director, actor and administrator of this website

Grant, That site is not running at the moment. I can also discern from the address, that it is located at the Writers' Guild branch of Western Australia (what a coincidence). If you are serious about getting your plays produced by other companies, you should join them. Not only will they assist you in this, they will also cover other important aspects like royalites and copywrite concerns.

Daniel Kershaw wrote:
> That site is not running at the moment.

http://www.stageswa.com/ includes contact details for reaching the office of Stages: The Western Australian Playwrights' Consortium

> I can also discern from the address,
> that it is located at the Writers' Guild branch of Western Australia (what a
> coincidence).

They've been sharing premises for at least ten years; long before they moved to Leederville. 

> If you are serious about getting your plays produced by other
> companies, you should join them. Not only will they assist you in this, they will
> also cover other important aspects like royalites and copywrite concerns.

AWG encompasses much of the breadth of writing. Stages is specifically for playwrights.

By all means, get in touch with AWG and if you're a playwright based in WA you'll probably find that you're referred to Stages. Like it says on the Stages website:

The leading professional organisation, supporting, advocating and promoting the development of Western Australian playwrights and performance writing.

Cheers
Grant

--
Director, actor and administrator of this website

Copyright... The Prompt Copy Networking emerging theatre professionals www.thepromptcopy.com Sticky Apple Legs http://stickyapplelegs.artsblogs.com Puppets in Melbourne www.freewebs.com/puppetsinmelbourne

I am a greta beliver in self promotion and doing it yourself. Not getting others to do it for you. That is not to say that these organisations may not be right for you, I may simply have had some bad experiences. Life's too short to stuff a mushroom www.tonymoore.id.au

Gero? Go Brigades! Anyway, here I am in Melbourne, a Gero boy nearing the end of directing a season of a play set in Perth (The Return by Reg Cribb), and tonight ended up chatting with an audience member who'd lived in Gero. Isn't life a rich tapestry? So, to try help answer your question, maybe get in touch with www.ozscript.org They might put it in their collection. Not sure of the criteria. It's where my company's found almost half the plays we've done. Good luck and I hope to hear about a good play set in sunny, windy Geraldton soon! Dan

Greetings...and thank you, Logos, Dan K, Grant, Labrug, Na and of course, local boy, Dan W!!! Your advice is most helpful and appreciated. i have taken notes of all sites and organisations mentioned and will contact them accordingly. My work is varied, i don't like getting caught in any one area...like to push myself into the unknown at times and see what comes out the other side. I do have a rather large funny bone so there's almost always a touch of humor im my work...but also like to add the odd moral or two. Very much write as an Australian as we have have so much to write about. My local theatre involvement showed me what a glut of English and to a smaller degree, American work is performed in these arenas...which i believe is a great shame considering the quality of Australian work...but often these theatres are driven by people who may live in this Colony but are yet to leave the 'mother country'...and it appears a vast majority of audience are drawn to the same formats year in year out...so as we know, bums on seats dictates a fair amount of what can be performed. Anyway, i will pursue some avenues and see what happens. I have recently completed an interpretation of Hamlet...modernised the language somewhat but hopefully have not lost the essence...and have added some humor and given it an Aussie attitude. Feedback from thos ewho have read it, is impressive...so a good result from many hours of interpretation. Dan W, you may be interested to know that the QPT - Queens Park Theatre celebrates 25 years in 2007...so we are expecting a good calendar of performance next year...maybe you should bring a show to town! I have had some preliminary talks with the City about performing my 'Hamlet' there next year...will keep you posted if it gets off the ground. Thanks again to you all for the advice and suggestions! Now i simply need to extract the digit! ps, Still windy as always Dan W! And if you haven't been here for a while...you will notice a huge difference... Gero is boom town! All we need here now is a QPT based theatre company and we'll be laughing!