Re: RAT Re: Jeff Jones info.

[nick <nick@nickspix.com>]

At 12:22 PM 1/20/99 EST, Btmsdream@aol.com wrote:

>(head hanging a wee bit) Mitchell
>

Forget that, Mitchell.  Your enthusiasm in promoting RAT playwrights is
unique and invaluable.  The password question was directed at Jeff as much
as you.  We're all in the same room here.  

I think the model for the Playwrights Database should try to extend that
sense of all being in the same room.  How do we do that?
 
One of the great things that happened at the NY Conference was that we were
all in the same room with a playwright one evening.  You were there Mitch,
even though you had flown back to LA a few days before.  In a kind of joint
production of Thieves, Bottom's, and Parenthetical, you had directed
Gabriele and Amber in a reading of a Jeffrey Jones' 3 minute play.  If I
had to choose in that Chili Cook-Off of five brands, my blue ribbon would
go to the independent Jonny Pascoe, who directed the whole room in a Press
Conference reading, but there were no losers that night.  A most pleasant
indulgence of  five recipes for Chili using the same Carne. And your
direction of the Kennedy boys with breasts and ties talking about Marilyn
was a most memorable experience.

Part of the idea behind the 3 minute play festival was to put together a
kind of introduction and exchange of playwrights.  Not scripts so much, but
playwrights. I think the distinction is very important.  The RAT
Playwrights Database should be a place that one goes to meet playwrights,
not read scripts.  Or perhaps, to read scripts in a new way. The manifold
"readings" of Jeff's script was what made the room that night important.
So how do we create a database with a representation of these "readings"?   

The password to production of a script belongs to the playwright.
Sometimes that password is surrendered to a degree in the PUBLCation.  If
the publisher has a stake in the productions of the script, most anyone
with a fee can do it.  Now that publication and distribution is no longer
an economic factor in the digital world, I think playwrights will begin to
enter into a new relationship with their work. The RAT Playwrights Database
would try to present a model for this new relationship.  How?

Best,
Nick