Original Works: Producing and Promoting Original Plays

If you are a director or producer who has shied away from doing a new play, cast aside your doubts, pick a new script, and get ready. Award-winning playwright and director Chris Mackowski shares the experiences and advice of more than 50 theatre professionals whose practical and insightful suggestions will help you raise the curtain on new and exciting plays and lower it to thundering applause.

Producers and directors will find tips on:

• searching for and evaluating original scripts
• determining the best way to fit an original play into their overall season
• sponsoring a contest, hosting a festival, or conducting readings for new plays
• hosting a playwriting group or a playwright-in-residence.

• find the right hook to promote a show
• use original shows to define their theatre's niche
• market themselves to audiences.

Not only does Mackowski take you from promotion through post-production, he also provides example financial reports, a timeline of events for conducting a new play contest, and a link to an exclusive website where you can download annotated models of press releases, specialized budgets, and other forms that can help any theater putting on original plays.

Feed your artistic impulse and stop shying away from new plays. Read Chris Mackowski and let Original Works work for you!

By day, Chris Mackowski is a professor at the Russell J. Jandoli School of Journalism and Mass Communication of St. Bonaventure University; by night, he is by his own definition a "crazed theatre madman" - a produced playwright and a member of the Dramatists Guild, Inc. He's also an award-winning radio newscaster, writer, and PR professional who has worked with numerous nonprofit arts groups across the Northeast.