Tampa Bay Playwrights Unite!
March 18, 2009 at 5:24 pm by Mark E. Leib
Mark Leib
In a move that could significantly enhance the visibility of Tampa Bay area playwrights, a group of writers met Tuesday night at St. Petersburg’s Studio@620 with a representative of the nationally based Dramatists Guild as well as representatives from Tampa’s Stageworks and Sarasota’s Florida Studio Theatre. The meeting was organized by Bradenton playwright Jack Gilhooley and was limited to members of the Guild in the area from Clearwater south to Venice.
Ten persons, including several whose work has been produced in New York and locally, talked with DG representative Rob Anderson of Orlando about starting a website, organizing play readings, publicizing local playwrights and stimulating local theaters to be more accepting of locally produced work. Following a welcome from the Studio’s artistic director, Bob Devin Jones, the playwrights spoke of the difficulty of getting produced locally and expressed a desire to emulate Miami-area DG members who have recently had success in making themselves more prominent.
A common theme in the discussion was the seeming refusal of local theaters, from St. Pete’s American Stage to Sarasota’s Asolo Rep, to promote and produce the work of their areas’ writers. Playwright/director/actor Jim Wicker did say that Stageworks tended to produce one local playwright every other season, and FST literary manager Kristin Kelly spoke of her theater’s past productions of local writers and of her own choice to treat local and out-of-area submissions without preference. There was some encouraging news in the discussion of efforts by Stageworks and Jobsite Theatre in Tampa and Banyan Theatre in Sarasota to produce staged readings by local authors, but it was also agreed that anything short of a full production is an unsatisfying result for hardworking playwrights.
After the lively and refreshingly honest discussion, the participants were treated to two ten-minute plays by attendees, enacted by invited performers. Finally, it was noted that there are ostensibly 41 members of the Dramatists Guild in the area, and that all are invited to attend the next meeting of the group on April 21 at 7 p.m. at the Studio. If you are a local Guild member and want further information, e-mail Gilhooley at jackgilhooley@tampabay.rr.com.
All in all, the meeting was the most encouraging event for Bay area playwrights in years.
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