It’s 11:51 p.m. Sweat beads your forehead. You reach for the bottle of kombucha on your desk, forgetting that it’s empty. Your eyes glaze over as you stare at the webpage on your computer screen. You haven’t moved in five hours. Checking your artist statement one last time for punctuation errors, you exhale into the hot/humid/cool/freezing January/April/June/August evening and shakily click, “Submit.” Just like that, you’ve applied to a writers group, a residency or fellowship.
But, what happens after that? Who is on the other side of the “Submit” button? What are they looking for? What would they want writers (and artists in general) to know?
I turned to Resident Dramaturg and R&D Program Coordinator Phoebe Corde to get some clarity on the process from her perspective. The following tips are mostly for newer writers who might feel overwhelmed, but hopefully can provide encouragement for all of us who dare to make things and show them to people.
Know your voice. As Corde puts it, “Theater is the ultimate attempt at communication.” As such, it’s important when you send in your sample, to send pieces that are reflective of your unique perspective in the world. This will sound self-explanatory to most people, but the sneaky part of having a voice, is having control over it. The category here is: craft. On this subject, Corde offers that when reading applications, she looks for someone whose “writing feels very specific, who has a handle on each of their characters voices. I’m looking at the craft when I read the sample because I’m basically looking for proof that they can do it again.” This gets us into questions of writing, rather than questions of applying, but I think it’s equally interesting to think of applications as a culmination of one’s process, a way of inviting institutions into your world. And, the best way to do that is by understanding your world—and having some handle on how it works.
Understand your “audience.” In the case of R&D, Corde tells me that with certain applications, it’s clear that “the research is almost an afterthought. Or, this is a project that they thought up and then… They looked at the R&D application, which called for more [of a] research angle. And so, they looked at their project and focused in on the researching in a way that they might not have on a different application.” Shopping work around to various theaters is part of the writer’s life. But, it is important to think about authenticity and whether a project is truly in alignment with the goals of the program in question. The main reason for this is not about weird gatekeeping, but because if you’re not genuinely passionate about
Sample –><– Statement. This will also sound pretty obvious, but bears saying explicitly: the sample and the statement need to work together. The primary reason for this is that both need to “give us a clearer picture of what you what’s going on in your head,” Corde says. She goes on to explain that she’s not just looking for “the subject matter that [people would] like to write their next show about. I’m also looking for passion and what brings them to that subject and what kind of creative avenues they’re thinking that they want to take while engaging with it. And [that] the story feels like it needs to be told right now.”
Her advice:
When choosing your sample, choose something that you feel expresses both your voice and the way that you like to handle a narrative and like to handle your characters. It’s especially useful if [the sample] feels in line with the project that you’re proposing. If you submit something for young audiences and you’re writing something that’s a totally different genre and something that has a completely different vibe from what you’re thinking you’re [going to] go for with this project, it makes it hard to understand exactly what you’re planning to create, even if you do feel like it’s your best work. It’s really helpful if you’re able to [have] as clear an idea as you can about what your project is going to look like… Obviously, you’re at the beginning stages of a process if you’re applying for something like this. And your process might be finding the plot as you go. But having a clear starting point and an idea of where you would like it to go or like an understanding of what characters you’d like to start with [is really helpful].
Keep hope alive! Yes, rejection feels terrible, especially when the stakes feel so high. Applying for residencies is about asking to have your work supported, but it can also be about feeling legitimate as an artist, wanting permission to do what we want to do, needing to be paid for our artistry so we can survive, and a whole lot of other prickly things (i.e., the side effects of living in a capitalist culture that barely values or funds the arts, but we digress). With that in mind, I want to share two final points that Corde and I chatted about.
One, is that the people who read your work are, by and large, rooting for you. Corde says that reading applications every year always reminds her that there are “so many people out there making incredible art that just haven’t made their way onto your screen yet, who haven’t made it onto a stage yet… Even the ones that don’t make it into the group. I remember so many of the names and just keep tabs on them.” Being remembered is perhaps cold comfort, but the remedy for that might be this second proposal: start your own writers group. Saying this is not meant to dismiss the very real reasons that people apply for writers groups, residencies etc. We all desire (and deserve!) money and support. However, for people who have just started writing, being in community with your peers can give you space to explore your craft and build relationships that will serve you in the long run.
And who knows? Maybe one day, people will be applying to receive a grant from you.
