NPR: When COVID-19 hit, Chicago playwright and actor Terry Guest was furloughed for two weeks from the coffee shop where he worked.
"And I thought, when will I ever get two weeks off of work again? Never. So I'm going to write a play," Guest said. "And there was very little pressure at the time. So I just sat down and wrote whatever was on my heart. It ended up taking a little bit longer than two weeks, because I ended up having a little more time than I anticipated."
2 comments:
It makes sense that playwrights would turn to TV. There’s more money in it and a wider range of job opportunities, so you could get your foot in the door maybe working on an episode, whereas in playwriting your piece stands on its own. I wish the Humana Festival would continue on, or other opportunities like it, because the fact of the matter is that it’s hard for new playwrights to necessarily get produced in a way that’s going to help their play survive. More privileged or well-off playwrights may have more access, which means less and less new work produced by queer playwrights or POC. That’s why it’s so meaningful to see when regional theaters make a real investment in new works. I remember having friends who would write plays for our thespian district competitions, and it’s probably one of the hardest categories because it takes so much stamina and courage to have your work be read and evaluated by a panel like that. It’s an incredibly personal thing, writing a play.
As much as people love the classics and love to see revivals of plays, we can not keep producing the same plays over and over. So hearing that some regional theaters are putting money into fully producing new works and not just workshopping them is amazing. Personally, I am a very big fan of seeing and working on new works that have not been fully produced before. There is just something about knowing that this is the first time that a play is getting full set, costume, sound, lighting, etc. that can not be beat. It is just a really cool experience all the way around. It is not even cool just because it is fun to see new works. It is also cool because new works are the future of theater and the fact that regional theaters are giving these works space and funds to be produced is awesome.
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