failsafe

hmmm...i much prefer letts, although kushner is no doubt a genius. but then why did he have to make a statement about the palestine/israeli conflict in the final monologue of "angels"? it felt like that moment on crime shows when the serial killer makes a mistake that enables the cops to break the case.

in years past, it seems that NYU has notified finalists in early-ish March and sent out rejections mid-to-late March, and Brooklyn College is on about the same timeline. but Yale was two weeks early this year, so who really knows... BTW based on the recommendations of the forum, this past week I read "The Sound of a Voice" (LOVE LOVE LOVED it, @longwalk!) and "The Subject Was Roses" (liked it--but it felt dated to me) (and also "A Moon For the Misbegotten" which I just had and hadn't read, which is great)--and i am totally excited for this huge cargo of plays I ordered from Amazon (i had a giftcard from christmas that has gone to a great cause) arriving on monday! i wonder if albee/o'neill fans are kind of like beatles/stones fans, like generally you're either one or the other? b/c if so i am definitely on the o'neill/stones side(s).

now i kind of wish i applied to brown so i could share in this with you all!

@k-hotspur - BC can be a huge pain. Last year they lost my application, so I had to rush them a new one, then they found my old one anyway so then they had two and I felt like a moron--that said, the woman helping me through it all (I think she might be gone now) was very nice. And all that just to get flat out rejected, anyway (via e-mail on March 21, but had already gotten confirmation from the dept a week before that that all finalists and waitlisted people had been notified). This year I sent everything with delivery confirmation well in advance of the deadline, and haven't had any problems (or communication, except an e-mail last week saying my application had been forwarded to the department). btw I applied on a whim to Juilliard two years ago, and got to the semifinalist round--which although super disappointing at the time, it was really what gave me the courage to pursue my writing "officially". (from what i've heard, last year Juilliard was a mess--they didn't get enough applications, so extended the deadline by two months, which I guess extended notifications, too.)

No, I e-mailed their graduate admissions coordinator, and she responded (very nicely, btw--they are classy!) that finalists had all been notified, and they were waiting for the OK from the chair to release letters to the other applicants.

woo-hoo! that's AWESOME, congratulations! i'm still keeping the fire burning for tisch and brooklyn college...but i am loving the good juju of this forum!

oh and @longwalk -- WRITE THAT PLAY!

oh and @eccentricdreamer--i haven't been submitting lately, either (except to NYFA in mid-january). i still feel like i'm recovering from finishing the play i submitted to grad schools (it was pretty dark/emotionally intense). but i just started a new writing class last night and am fumbling my way through the first draft of a new play. i think it ebbs and flows. ideally i'll have a well-oiled machine in place where i'm constantly both writing and submitting, but i'm still a few life hurdles (mainly my full-time day job) away from being able to maintain that level of output and so i'm giving myself a break about it!

For what it's worth, I did get official word from Yale yesterday that all finalists have now been notified...@teethwax will have to carry the torch for the rest of us! =)

Congratulations, teethwax!! Of course I am hoping (with a sinking feeling in my stomach, of course) that they did not call all of the interviewees at once...when is it?

Sorry, @teethwax, but 23 different editors cannot be wrong! But better late than never, right? For my next play I am going to try to focus on "emotions played big" as well as some angering moments.

Thanks for sharing, @EccentricDreamer! Although you can do a search for playwriting and it's pretty grim. Fingers crossed this will be a banner year! Here's something pretty hilarious if you haven't seen it yet: http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Play How is everyone doing out there? Okay? This week has been the roughest for me yet, but I'm chugging through...

Yep, I got it too. Did yours also have a line that said "You should know, however, that all of our 15 graduate departments are in the process of finalizing their decisions and that you are being looked at very carefully." ? That was the line that threw me. Ahh.

By the way THANK YOU all for playing along!! I'm definitely going to read all of these plays! =)

Some of my all-time favorites besides August: Osage County (meaning, at the time that I read them they really rocked my socks off)--some are duplicates to others' lists: The Glass Menagerie by T. Williams Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegria Hudes Betrayal by Harold Pinter A Doll's House by Ibsen The Dreamer Examines his Pillow/Danny and the Deep Blue Sea by JP Shanley (And Doubt, obviously!) Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage (really prefer this one to Ruined, somehow) The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl Buicks by Julian Sheppard Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune by Terrence McNally Hay Fever and Private Lives by Noel Coward (Private Lives I thought was the better play, but Hay Fever is HILARIOUS! Although I didn't much care for Blithe Spirit, oddly) I have to agree with EccentricDreamer, not a terribly huge fan of Albee--I was gifted the complete set of his plays and go back and read another one every so often, but it often feels a bit too much like homework. Two plays I recently read that I thought were really good but somehow didn't *love* were A Bright New Boise by Sam Hunter and After the Revolution by Amy Herzog. I just read Other Desert Cities yesterday and absolutely HATED, loathed, despised it...but am wondering if that's actually the sign of a great play? Or a terrible one? (I can't deal with characters just standing around explicitly stating their perspectives while giving the audience a lecture of what constitutes "good" and "bad" politics).

thanks for the info, vonnegrunt! and GOOD LUCK janesays! @eccentric dreamer: i've been playwriting for 8 years as well (and playwriting well for at least the last 3 of those), was never an actor (except very badly in a few middle school choruses). i always knew i was a writer, at least by 4th grade or so, but it's taken quite a while to build a life that can sustain me to actually be able to DO it. i started writing in college with poetry, then short stories, then attempted novels/screenplays/teleplays until i finally returned to what really was my earliest love, but the financial prospects had just scared me too much to really go for it. something i'm always interested in finding out: what are everyone's favorite plays? i love reading new plays and there are so many wonderful ones out there i would never know to look at. please, forum, tell me what i should be reading! mine is perhaps a bit obvious, but i recently read "August: Osage County" by Tracy Letts and I seriously wanted to put it down and start clapping meaningfully and saying "Bravo" at the end.

@janesays--do you mind me asking where your interviews this year are? @eccentric dreamer--here's what i can tell you about my experiences applying before and what i've heard from others: Juilliard does rolling interviews at the semi-finalist stage. They read 50 plays, interview 3 people or so, read 50 more, interview 3 more, etc. until they're done. They interview the top 15-18 people, and then they cut it down to the top 10 (this is the brutal cut that applied to me 2 years ago). Marsha & Chris read only the top 10 (see? BRUTAL!) and pick 4. Yale interviews the top 9 in an elaborate 2-day process where they are flown to campus and stay in the Yale hotel (although apparently they don't really meet any of the other finalists during this time). Last year they were called in early March and interviewed in late March. In the interim, I got my rejection letter (w/ an encouraging handwritten note, which was nice!). But last year they sent an e-mail out explaining what would happen and when...this year there is a new department chair and an outgoing associate chair, so who knows? I don't think they have a waitlist, other than people they interviewed who come in 4th or 5th in the final tally (they select 3). I got my Tisch rejection twice last year, first on Feb 29 and second a week later--I think this was unusual, they were trying to get me to go to the (now-defunct) Tisch-Singapore. I think most people got their rejections later, like mid to late March. I heard from a woman who attended several years ago, they called her for an interview when she was in Bangladesh and she asked how she was supposed to interview--they checked and told her don't worry about it, she was accepted. I know that they waitlist people there without interviewing them, but generally interview the finalists. They have 8 spots a year, at least one of them fully funded. Brooklyn College has a waitlist. I actually don't know if they interview or not, but I imagine they do. I got a form rejection via e-mail from them in late March last year. I don't even know how many people they select per class (does anyone out there know?) @longwalktonever - I was in touch with a woman last year who was just out of school (about to turn 23) and she was a finalist EVERYWHERE (Yale, Juilliard, New School, and a few other places)--she wound up getting a full scholarship to Iowa. I don't think you should count yourself out at all! But said woman was into mid-April and still didn't know what was going on, whereas I had my neat little pile of rejections all accounted for for several weeks by then. So that's why I say, you don't WANT to hear from them yet! As if this isn't enough to stress out about, has anybody applied/heard anything from the Bay Area Playwrights Festival or the Lark?

deep breaths, @tjack! i was having total anxiety late last week but now am actually feeling pretty good. a few possible recommendations to stave off panic attacks: -remember that you are planning on getting interviews and being accepted. this takes way longer than getting rejected, so it's not even worth your panic at this point! -remind yourself that february is already, basically, half over. the timeline to getting your answers is shortening by the day. -remind yourself that the worst case scenario is not that bad (plenty of great, successful writers did not go through MFA programs, and likely several who didn't were rejected from them at some point) -pilates (LIFE SAVER! or exercise of your choice, really can't be beat for curbing anxiety) -booze -sex some other strategies that might work: -take up a new hobby (like knitting, for instance) -read a classic novel (perhaps "The Master and Margarita" by Bulgakov) -write a comedy about a main character whose chronic anxiety keeps getting him into hilarious situations and Good Luck! =)

I'm applying to Yale, Brooklyn College and NYU, second time for all. Two years ago I got an interview at Juilliard (only place I applied then/have not reapplied there)--hoping 3rd time is the charm!

Zissou--I and someone else I know are semi-finalists for the O'Neill and were told on the same day about two weeks ago, but also implored not to cause any panic by announcing it publicly as the semi-finalist notification is apparently a rolling process. I think all semi-finalists will be notified by mid-February. Good luck!

Good luck, @TheLiterateGeek! At this point, I'm holding out for Columbia...although very timidly, now. It seems absolutely bizarre (and completely frustrating) to me to get an interview at Juilliard one year and then the next get totally shut out of less competitive programs with the exact same writing sample! Update: Just got a very terse e-mail from theatre@columbia informing me official letters will be sent out within the month. quite sure official letter=rejection letter. I'm out too, @sam757.

more bad news for brooklyn college hopefuls (including myself), from the program coordinator there: "Yes, we have notified all accepted and waitlisted playwriting applicants. All others will be receiving a formal letter in the next weeks. Wishing you the best, Helen "

some potentially bad news, folks...i did a twitter search and it looks like a playwright got called for an interview at Yale on March 7. update: she just confirmed for me it was, in fact, for playwriting. :-/

Okay, I just got a SECOND rejection letter from Tisch, asking me once again to consider Tisch-Asia. The letter said how impressed they were by the strength of my application and creative material. So, um...cool. Why not then, you know, interview me?

I think if you checked "consider me for Tisch-Asia" on your application, you got an interview invite but no NYC rejection. I think for people who didn't want to be considered for that in the first place, they rejected us as "incentive" to consider that program, after all. My strong guess is that Tisch-NYC invites have already gone out, but that they are only sending rejections on an as-needed basis until the end, perhaps due to time constraints on the admissions staff until after the programs are filled.