Re: RAT Playwriting Opportunities & Dramaturgs

[nick <nick@nickspix.com>]

"soliciting submissions"

I always liked the ambiguity of the phrase. The image of the writer on bent
knee, the king's sword placed on the knighted shoulder.   But
simultaneously also the image of a more worldly seduction and ambition, the
writer on bent knee, but now engaged in some unimaginable illicit carnality
with the Reader on "the casting agent's couch." 

Who are these knighted Readers sitting at their Round Table soliciting
submissions? Could they be the Peer Panel we've heard so much about?  But
they look less like knights and more like bureaucrats shuffling stacks of
paper amongst themselves. Perhaps they are the Council?  But they look less
like knights and more like circle jerk patrons at some strip club.  Each
script is one more table dancer with dead eyes, shaking the money maker.

All the entrance ramps to the toll roads are crowded with hitchhikers now.
Each night they retreat to collect new resources to spend on the next day's
hopes for some long ride.   A ride to where?   They don't really know.  And
the only suggestion the dramaturgs and agents at the entrance ramps can
ever offer is to get a new head shot of your Thumb-in-the-Air.

History explains that the success of the automobile was the result of Henry
Ford making the Model T affordable to the workers he hired to make it.
RAT theater is that Model T.    Traveling the freeways, or perhaps
backroading down some scenic route.  And although RAT never needs to travel
the toll roads, it sometimes cruises those entrance ramps trying to seduce
the more intrepid spirits from the queues of hitchhikers.  

"soliciting submissions"

It's a life, not a career.  You submit to a career; you affirm a life.  And
a new Model T autonomy costs less than another new head shot of your
Thumb-in-the-Air.

--nick