Re: RAT Re: Jeff Jones info.

[InTheLime@aol.com]

>>Now that it's so easy through the Web, the public part of
PUBLICation is a new and scary thing.  Playwrights aren't quite sure if
they want their scripts so easily available to be read by everyone.  I have
a sense that the RAT Playwrights Database needs to define who is reading as
much as who is presenting the scripts. 

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?<<

It's a hard call.  For 95% of my work, I just want someone to be reading it
other than myself.  But for 5%, keep your hands of you dirty ... oh...uhm.
But I don't have to make that 5% available, now do I?  Hoopla.

If we don't have our plays readily available for the read...and we WANT to
make some money from them (recalling a debate of long ago where we discussed
production without royalties and it became a joyous shouting match)...then how
will anyone know whether they want to produce them.  The blessing from my
perspective of scripts available on the web is that I am now getting to read
things that I NEVER would have heard about with all ten of the play catalogues
that come to me via the snail.  Even with snail catalogues, I don't read
everything in them!

Example:  I asked about Jeff's plays because I had not heard of them until he
(you Jeff...first person) spoke of Joyce and I fell instantly in love with
his(your) words.  I doubt I would have met those words unless I were here on
the web...or unless Jeff Jones' plays come to Philadelphia and I get a
postcard.  I think the playwright database is a phenomenal idea.  I think
having to be a registered reader is a good idea.  I think care in spreading
passwords is an even better idea (I blanched a bit myself when I read that)...

I do need to make my work readily available, as the many of this world grow
lazy and give up easily on even the simplest dreams (such as reading a Jeff
Jones play).  I certainly am "unpublished" - so my only way of spreading the
word is to shove my script in someone's face (apologies to everyone's who's
been suffering through the infant BANGING WALLS this week, and thank you for
your generous feed back - the muse has struck hard).   

Web tracking is good...this web technology does exist.  But Rat Packing is an
even more pervasive tool...I see that a Rat's work is being produced here-
abouts, I could say "congrats" via email.  If the playwright or his
representative was unaware that his work was being produced...well, more pity
to the fool who knows not the power of rats...I mean, we all know that no
theatre would ever produce a work without paying the appropriate fee (humor,
humor, weapons down fellows).  But just in case...I have eyes and ears (yes,
yes...and a big, big mouth), and I will certainly use them in defense of
fellows.

(I know, I know...tattle tale, tattle tale...but if you hear tell that my
plays are being produced somewhere...I would like to hear about it...so I'm
merely doing unto others...)
 
Aileen McCulloch
The Vagabond Acting Troupe