State of Play(wright): 4/1 - 4/7

Spring break is next week and I have straight up forgotten what day it is! Can my artistic practice save my sanity?

I’ve been busy busy busy! As a teacher, the week or two before spring break is…a slog. I sure am feeling it! As I walked into work today I made a comment to my colleague about it being halfway through the week, and she told me with pity in her eyes, “Brynn…it’s Tuesday.”

Hoo boy. At least there’s only three school days left!

What did I manage to get done amongst the chaos?

Submissions

I did two submissions this week!

1. Del Shores Foundation Writer’s Search (only for writers living in Southern states of the US)

2. Parity Development Award (closes April 16th, open to all non-men identified playwrights)

I found both of these opportunities through Play Submissions Helper, which I honestly recommend.

This week, I spent $11.25 on submissions. Not too bad! Though I have now spent over $100 on submissions so far this year…so…yikes. However, I am way ahead of my submission goals! I’ve submitted to 26 opportunities total, and we’re only on week 15 of this year. If I keep this up, I’m on track to submit much more than my goal of 52 submissions. According to my math, I’m currently on track to submit to approximately 87 opportunities this year (WOW).

I made a Note here a few days ago about how I used lines of regression and past submission data of mine to estimate how many affirmative (yes, semi-finalist, finalist) responses I would get depending on the amount of submissions I apply for. According to the graphs I created, if I submit to my goal of 52 I can expect about 6 affirmative responses. If I do the crazy thing and submit to 87, I can expect around 10. Yeah. TEN.

All I can say is, let’s hope I’m good at math!

Projects

This week I mainly worked on two projects:

• Wolf Woman, a one act I put down about a year ago and recently picked up again.

• My solo show, The Bisexual 20-Something’s Guide to Divorce

Words Written

Most of the words I wrote were for Wolf Woman, though in total I think I did about 3500.

Miscellaneous

Okay, I did a lot of random stuff this week.

For one, I spent a whole three hours recording foley sounds for FKT’s production of wht big teeth u have by Eliza Jaye Kuperschmid. Please dear god give it a listen when it comes out because I am being so extra. This was in addition to my usual duties of meetings and the Weekly Roundup email.

I did a lot of reading this week, which is continuing into this one, because I decided to do an NPX recommendation exchange with some playwrights I met on r/playwriting (I know, I know, I’m a redditor, I’m hanging my head in shame—). It was super fun meeting new people and talking about our work together, and I’m definitely going to do it again. I probably spent three or four hours doing this, as I read the plays and wrote recommendations. I also gave veeeery detailed feedback to one particular playwright who is new to the craft and wanted some critique on a first draft. Honestly a very fulfilling use of time.

(Actually, let me know if any of you would like to participate in an NPX rec exchange— that could be a fun community activity!)

I skipped drama club this week because the very sudden summer weather here down south made my body absolutely hate me! Changing seasons are neeeever a good time in chronic illness/pain land.

Finally, I went to my local April 5th protest! In addition to making my voice heard, this event also served as a great way to support my community. I got sunburned to hell but it was worth it. I met some other teachers there and we ended up sticking together. It felt really impactful, and I’m hoping my town has a protest on April 19th as well, since that is the next date of nationwide protest.

What have you all gotten up to this week? Let me know in the comments!

Happy theatre-making!

~Brynn