Our mantra at Virginia Playwrights Forum has been, “No production before it’s time.” It took a while for us to get to this position because every writer for the stage wants to sit in the dark and see the lights go up on their baby.

A few in-house missteps taught us a lesson. Unless a piece is presented as a work-in-progress, that this is a workshop production, and, the admission fee is low or pay what you will, audiences can be unforgiving when it flops and a fledgling playwright may be crushed – neither is good for a new play development organization or winning friends and fans for new works for the stage in general – but especially for ones written by local writers.

In effect, it reinforces the mantra so often adopted in areas not recognized as hot cultural/art centers that – “What’s local is yokel.”  What really drove our group to adopt our mantra was when a member of our group took a play, we had presented twice as staged public readings and both times it was pointed out to the writer that it still needed work, to another theater and they produced it, charged an audience for it and it flopped. Our group’s directors got calls for two weeks from theater folks and educators who had seen the play – complaining, “How could you let that piece go up? What’s happened to your judgment?”

For years I had a proven play about Nat Turner and I had no intention of tinkering with it. But an experience with an audience caused me to tinker and try to take it further, wider and deeper.*

Eight months later it was, and the response was overwhelming and particularly gratifying because this time, for the first time, some leading members of the black artistic and theatre community attended the last performance. How that came to be I never tried to find out – but there they were, and I was a bit nervous. But the cast, the music, the techie and the story were doing their thing, weaving a magical spell over all in that room – me included, the nervousness melted. I was actually looking forward to the talkback.

Longer discussions were begging to be had but we had to end the talkback, get out of the theatre and get to the cast party. Since I knew we had plenty of food and drink at the house, and I could call in for pizzas, we invited all who wanted to attend to come on over to the party where the discussions could take their time to unfold. We had a good crowd, many discussions and a really rewarding good time.

Later, the piece received a powerful literary review:

Not once was there any question or negative comments about the writer’s or the director’s color of skin – at the theatre, during the talkback, the discussions at the cast party, or in any part of the review, from which the excerpts above are from. But those questions and comments were to come . . .

*See blog posts on Havescripts : The Power of Art and an Angry Black Audience, and, [Sometimes You Have to Follow the Whisperer in Your Mind -] where is that article?

ACTION – check this review with the author http://thinkingdogreviews.blogspot.com/2011/08/