Starpants

For anyone who's either going through rejections this time around (which I did for years and years) or can't do it because of finances, I'd check out any writers groups where you live. Particularly in New York where we have Youngblood at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, P73's writers group, Ars Nova Playgroup, or the Working Farm on SPACE on Ryder Farm. They're somewhat similar to MFA programs in that you meet with other writers every week or so over the course of a year and write 1-2 plays. It's also great because you form lasting relationships with the theaters that sponsor the writers groups. And best of all, it's free.

Yeah I can definitely give some insight into the agenting world! And I didn't mean to denigrate anyone choosing to go to one of these amazing MFA programs by taking out loans. Being one of like 3 people to get into these places is extremely difficult and each institution has a whole list of alumni working in the field, so if you choose to take money out to go there because you want to be a working playwright, I totally get it. But at the agency I would see playwrights have what I would say is a dream season where they would have one play produced at Lincoln Center and another produced in Chicago at the Goodman. That's like, the dream to me. But financially they only made 3-4k on each of those productions? And spent 1-2 months in rehearsals for those shows. So at the end of the year after your best year as a playwright you only make like 8k tops. Now of course there are some people who will have a play come out that explodes and gets produced all over America and will get a publication advance for 100k. But That's a once in a lifetime thing that you can never count on. And I've only seen that once. You might as play the lotto. The playwrights I've seen that make the most consistent money are people who have been in the game for a loooong time. Who have built up connections and working relationships with many theaters across the country so that once they have a new play they send it out to all their friends and then boom, there's 7 productions next year. That's why you're right, TV is the only real sustainable way to make money in this field. Which, I've seen first hand how TV and Film people obsess over playwrights. They see playwrights as wild unicorns who can create magical stories that TV writers simply can't. I've seen playwrights jump the hierarchy in TV world and become show creators / show runners without ever having staffed. So there's definitely a leg up in TV if you're coming at it from the playwriting world. My original point though was just to be aware what you're getting in to if you take loans out. Because it's not like a production at Playwrights Horizons is going to make any dent in them.

Yo, just my 2 cents here, but I do not think taking out loans to go to graduate school for playwriting is worth it. Like, financially? You're never going to make enough money from playwriting to pay that shit off. I used to work at a talent agency representing playwrights, and the best year that anyone ever had was making maybe 50k, and that was after having the most produced play in America. No other year ever came close to that for them. Or anyone else.

Maybe this isn't the right time to ask this since we're in the interview / rejection part of the season, but I'm curious why y'all applied to the programs you did? What are y'all interested in at NYU or Brown or Carnegie Mellon, etc.?

Juilliard does do interviews. They generally get to a list of like 18 semifinalists that they interview, mostly to see whether you're a cool person or not. This generally happens around April-May I believe. Then they pick around 12 finalists and send their plays to the heads of the program David Lindsay-Abaire and Tanya Barfield to read. Then pick around 4-5 people for the program (although it's only been 4 for the last several years).