Interview With Rachel Rubin Ladutke
Interview by Jenna Glatzer

Rachel is a New York-based playwright, and former theatrical director and producer. Her historical drama, THE BELLES OF THE MILL, was a Stageplay Finalist at the Moondance International Film Festival.  She is currently working on adapting THE BELLES OF THE MILL into a musical.

How did you get your start as a playwright?

I wrote my first play in my junior year of college. I was studying at the O’Neill Theater Center, in a program they run called the National Theatre Institute, and I had to take a playwriting class as part of the program. I couldn’t come up with anything I liked or that was any good, and finally I wrote a play about the Beatles as teenagers. I wrote it in an all-nighter the night before we had to turn in our final projects. It was one of the plays chosen for a staged reading. I later developed that into my first full-length play, LENNON, A LIFE.

I didn’t really seriously begin to focus on writing, though, until after I’d had my own theatre group in NY for five years. When I burned out on producing, I began to focus on my directing. I was offered a slot in a women directors festival, and I decided I’d like to try to write something for it. I wrote a 50 minute play called SOWING THE SEEDS, which became the second act of my play GRACE NOTES. I directed it in the festival in March, 1998.

Where did you learn about the playwriting craft? 

I am basically self-taught as a playwright. I’ve been directing since college in the late 1980s, so I have a pretty good sense of what I feel works. I’ve also read a lot of really crummy scripts so I have a pretty good sense of what I feel doesn’t work. When I see a play, I try to think about why something works or doesn’t work, and how I might have done it differently. Playwrights have to learn to think analytically and analyze things, just as directors do. I did have an opportunity to study with a prominent playwright when I was in graduate school. I ultimately decided against it because I felt I needed to develop my own voice.

Where do you get ideas for plays?

They come from all over – someone I meet on the street, an incident I read about, historical events. My overarching project will be a series of plays about the Jewish experience, each set in a different decade of the twentieth century, in a different location. I’ve completed one of those so far, CLARY’S EXODUS, which is about a fast-living, black blues singer in 1920’s Harlem who decides to convert to Judaism.

I also want to do a cycle of plays based on Irish mythology and history. GRACE NOTES was based on my grandmother’s life. THE BELLES OF THE MILL is about a textile strike in New England, and it’s loosely based on the Greek comedy LYSISTRATA. I’m currently adapting that into a musical.

When I finished GRACE NOTES, I thought I’d never have another idea. Now I’ve got so many I sometimes have trouble deciding what to work on next. If I feel uninspired or dry, I just read and think. You never know what will bite you!

Submit, submit, submit! Even then, it’s unusual to get productions unless you have a personal contact with someone or you’re very lucky. Good material is important, but then you have to carefully target places which are looking for exactly what you’ve written. When I was marketing my first full-length play, GRACE NOTES, I wasted lots of time and money sending out over three hundred letters in a period of two years, before getting a production. Part of that was my fault for not being more selective with my query letters.

Well, here goes: the submission process is at least as time-consuming as the writing. Sometimes I wish I could hire someone to do this part for me, but nobody can sell your play like you can, right? Once you get your act together, it’s really not so painful.

When you feel you have your play in the best possible shape it can be, prepare a one-page synopsis which lays out the plot in a paragraph or two, and lists the production requirements. My first synopses were three pages long… again, I didn’t know any better. I went through several theatre directories – the Dramatists’ Guild’s RESOURCE DIRECTORY which all members get every year, and the DRAMATIST’S SOURCEBOOK put out by Theatre Communications Group, and I highlight and make notes on the theatres which might be interested in my stuff. Take the guidelines seriously: if they say they won’t do plays with more than five characters, believe them. They know their limitations, and there’s no point in wasting your money and their time. There are plenty of opportunities out there, whatever the material.

Always keep your résumé up to date. You never know when someone will ask you for it. If you haven’t had productions yet, lay out the plays you’ve written in a line or two and put your education at the bottom. The main thing is to show you’re serious about your work. You’ll have readings and productions to list soon enough.

What to send: Some theatres say they’ll accept unsolicited scripts, but I’m personally loath to send them unless they’ve been requested. If it’s a contest, though, you have to take the risk. Some contests charge entry fees now; whether or not to pay them is a very personal decision.

When sending materials to a theatre, I much prefer to send a query letter and (sometimes) ten pages of sample dialogue. Usually they want your "best ten pages" – choose carefully! Sometimes they say they want the first ten, because if you don’t grab ‘em by then, they’re gone. Include a self-addressed, stamped postcard on which the theatre can just check off whether they want to see sample dialogue or a full script. I also have a space for them to check "It doesn’t sound right for us, but please send us more material in the future," and a place for them to write any added comments they might have.

If this sounds a little time consuming… well, it is. But theatres appreciate anything you can do to make it easier for them. If they have to write a letter in order to request the script or sample dialogue, I assure you, it’ll take much longer for you to hear back from them, assuming they even remember to write. And including an SASP is cheaper than an SASE – 14 cents difference may not sound like much, but it adds up quickly. I print my postcards as needed, four to a page, on regular cardstock you can get in any office supply store.

Make sure you write the theatre’s name and address on the back of the card also, or devise a coding system; what a drag it would be to get a request for a script and not know where to send it! And find some way of tracking things easily. What I do is print an extra copy of each query letter and chart them on my laptop. I have a file for dead letters and one for submissions which are still active, and I staple everything from the same theatre together as well.

Once a theatre has a script, it doesn’t hurt to follow up on it IF the deadline has passed and you still haven’t heard anything. But don’t make a nudge of yourself. Stay positive and keep pursuing other opportunities. Keep writing, too!

First of all, EVERY playwright should be a member of the Dramatists Guild. If you’re just starting out, you can become an Associate Member simply by sending them one or two scripts you’ve written. This costs $75 a year and allows you nearly every benefit that full members enjoy, including legal advice and the opportunity to purchase sample contracts and attend seminars.

Once you have an actual production offer, you can go to the Dramatists Guild and they will look over your contract with you and offer advice.

If you don’t have an agent (most beginning playwrights don’t), an attorney can negotiate for you. Even if you do have one, don’t think you can sit back and let them do all the pushing of your scripts. They can submit for you when places only take repped scripts, but it’s still your job to sniff these out. Sometimes an agent may even be willing to negotiate a contract with you even though they don’t rep you… they still get a percentage so it’s worth their time. Always get a contract, even if there’s no money changing hands.

Usually, if there is money involved, it will be an advance against a cut of the box office on a new play. Once a play is published, there will be royalties set for performance based on the level of production (Off-Broadway, regional, community, etc.)

Not really. For the most part, I’ve been involved in them, but when GRACE NOTES premiered in Pittsburgh, I had only phone contact with the director and then flew out for the weekend of shows. I had some quibbles with the blocking and a couple of actors, but generally I was pretty pleased. The audience reaction was very positive as well. When GRACE NOTES was done here in New York, last winter, I was involved in the casting and I also was welcomed at run-throughs. The directors (there were several) were very receptive to my suggestions.

I wouldn’t call it a mistake, more a lesson to be learned: try not to be defensive about criticism. There are two possibilities: either people are really trying to help you, or they’re not seeing the play you’re trying to write. Learn to sift through commentary and take it for what it’s worth. If people who critique you seem to be getting emotional about the material, or telling you how you should rewrite the play, rather than stating what they didn’t understand, they may not be the best people to listen to. But if a consensus is given that a line or scene is confusing, it probably is.

Is there a special structure plays must adhere to?

I don’t believe that. I tend to write linear plays, myself, but there’s a lot of room out there for more experimental structures and styles. I do believe if you want to do something new, you first need to understand the history of drama, and the precedents that have been set before. If you want to reject something, fine, but know your context. What you want to do may not be as revolutionary as you thought – that’s OK, too! Maybe looking at similar work will help you solve some of the problems.

The same person is doing both, which I much prefer – the fewer egos, the better! (Grin.)

I placed advertisements on Playbill On Line (a free job board), the Dramatists Guild bulletin board (another membership benefit; many lyricists and librettists also belong); and in the ASCAP newsletter. When people contacted me, I asked them to read through at least the first act and do "song spotting" – i.e., tell me where they saw songs might be placed and what sort of songs they would be. I had done this myself, so it helped me see if the applicants were on the same page as me. Then I asked them to send me a sample tape, either of previous work or (preferably) one song for BELLES that they wanted to take a crack at. About four people went this far, and I was partial to Jill Marshall-Work’s submission. We met and talked through the script for about an hour, and we agreed to collaborate on it. That was back in September. We’ve nearly got a completed first draft now. We’re hoping to workshop the script this summer, and meanwhile we’ve come up with a few other projects we may collaborate on down the road.

How is the market for one-acts different from full-length plays?

In some ways it’s easier to get a production for a one-act play than for your full-length play. Lots of places are doing one-act festivals now; they bring in more actors, hence more audience, and if the play isn’t that strong, it’ll be over soon and something else will go up which may be better! So I would say there are excellent opportunities for both one-act and full-length plays.

Ten-minute plays are very much in vogue now, too. Although I’ve personally written seven of them, they can be very tricky. You have to know what you’re trying to say and get to the point. I see lots of these that are actually twenty-minute plays, or a three-minute play which is drawn out to the death. However, they’re a great exercise, especially for beginning writers: you can write ‘em in one sitting and revise ‘em in one sitting.

Not as much as I should, obviously…my first draft of THE BELLES OF THE MILL which I marketed to theatres, required fifteen actors! I’ve got it down to ten now, which isn’t beyond the pale. Even the musical version will only have fourteen (plus an optional chorus).

Ultimately, I think you need to trust your instincts about what the piece requires. BELLES is, after all, an epic historical piece. The eleven characters that are now used (one actress doubles) each serve a very specific function, and each have an emotional arc. Think about what the play really needs, and don’t be afraid to write big if you must. There still are theatres that actively seek large cast plays, believe it or not. And as of this writing, while BELLES has had a number of public readings, the subsequent play, CLARY’S EXODUS, which has only five characters and one set, has yet to get one, though it’s much more polished than BELLES was when I began sending it out. So there’s really no figuring these things.

On the other hand, there’s reportedly a trend among young writers in playwriting classes to write cinematically, calling for real car crashes on stage, dissolves, that sort of thing. You have to develop a stage sense, which isn’t only the number of actors and sets, but also what events can be effectively presented (or represented).

How important it is to present yourself and your work professionally, and also not to let anyone instill doubt in you. It’s easy enough for you to discourage yourself, but you can’t listen to other nay-sayers or you’ll never muster up the courage to send out your work.

Anything else you'd like to add?

I can’t stress enough how important it is to find people whose opinion you trust, who are interested in collaborating with you. In addition to Jill, I’ve been fortunate enough to find a director, Arlene Schulman, who’s really in sync with my work. She’s had loads of experience working with new plays and she really GETS my material. We’ve worked together on my last two scripts.

Before I met Arlene, I used to direct all my own stuff (remember, I started out as a director), mainly because I felt I could give it the best staging. Now, it’s really nice to put the play in someone’s hands, and just sit back and listen. It helps me see what’s working and what’s not working, rather than just hearing what I think I wrote in my head.

You can visit Rachel's website at http://www.geocities.com/darling1967, or e-mail her at darling67@theatermail.net.  She welcomes comments from readers.

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