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Part 5: Productions – Getting Productions
Working with an Agent
By Dale Griffiths Stamos
April 2012
"What kind of agencies should you approach?" —STAMOS
What kind of agencies should you approach? If you are strictly a playwright, then what you want is a dramatic agency - one that deals exclusively with playwrights and theaters. Most of these agents are still located in New York City. If you also write screenplays, or want your plays to be considered for adaptations into film, then you want an agency that has a screenwriting arm, or that is experienced in optioning theatre scripts to film production companies. In other words, do your research, find out exactly what an agency does before you approach them. Also, find out who they represent, and how many sales of plays they have had and to whom.
You need, of course, to have established a strong track record on your own before you seek out representation. You should have had at least two productions of full length plays, accompanied by good reveiws. You need to show an agent that you are not a one-trick pony. Agencies want clients with whom they can develop a relationship. They seldom want to represent one play, they are looking to represent all of your work.
". . . agents want to believe in your work creatively, but it is above all their goal to find viable homes for your plays" —STAMOS
Remember, agents want to believe in your work creatively, but it is above all their goal to find viable homes for your plays. So they are looking at such aspects in your work as marketability, strong, compelling storytelling, and originality. They are, after all, looking to make some money! So they will not take you on if they don't feel they can sell your work. (Though this is no guarantee that they will.) A factor, as well, is the relationships that they have with theaters, and with the people at those theatres. Agents have developed these relationships over many years, and have a strong sense of what certain theaters are looking for.
As such, they are looking for a good match with both their creative demands and their practical ones. So, just like when you are trying to find that match with a theatre, you may need to submit your work to many agents before you find one.
"If you are lucky enough to land an agent, do not fall into the trap of thinking you no longer have to market yourself." —STAMOS
If you are lucky enough to land an agent, do not fall into the trap of thinking you no longer have to market yourself. WRONG. An agent is there to aid, to get you into certain doors that you can't open yourself, to negotiate contracts, to give you advice, sometimes just to hold your hand through a stressful production. But they are not, nor should be, the only ones out there doing everything possible to find productions! As the theatrical market is getting tighter and tighter due to tough economic times, and theaters are taking fewer and fewer risks with new work, solely relying on an agent is unwise.
Having an agent DOES mean the theaters they send to will usually read your work, rather than relegating it to the slush pile. Of course, it allows you to submit to numerous theaters that only take agented work. And it certainly gives you an extra element of "cred" on your resume. But as I said, when beginning this section on getting productions, you must practice a mult-prong approach, and having and working with an agent is only one of those prongs.
In the next column I will being my final section of The Play's the Thing - in which I discuss the process of being in production with a play.
About the Author
Dale Griffiths Stamos is an award-winning playwright whose work has been produced and published in the United States and abroad. She is on the faculty of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, and has been a guest workshop instructor at Cal Arts. Her newest full length play, One White Crow, had its world premiere this year at Arena Players Repertory Theatre, Long Island, New York. An evening of her one acts entitled Thicker Than Water, starring Barbara Bain, was produced in May at Promenade Playhouse in Santa Monica, CA. For more information on Dale’s work, go to her website at: www.dalegriffithsstamos.com. For information on Dale’s private consulting (all genres), go to: www.manuscriptconsultant.com.
