Like most stories, ours started in a bar.
John Greiner-Ferris, Max Mondi, and Kevin Mullins each had considered self-production on their own, and over drinks realized they had the same dream. So let's just do it, came the mildly inebriated cheer. Sometimes it's best to just jump in, feet first.
While we've said we're based on 13P, we soon realized we weren't Rob Handel, Anne Washburn, Young Jean Lee, et. al. at the beginning of a new century. We are a group of playwrights in Boston bucking against our own particular obstacles that Boston presents, just as 13P was fighting the New York theater world during its tenure. In reality, we used 13P as a departure point, and quickly morphed their model into our own, one that emphasizes DIY in all the forms that evolved during the first decade of the 21st century. When 13P started, there was no social media, robust web development technologies like Weebly, SquareSpace, and Tumblr, email marketing services like Mail Chimp and Constant Contact, crowd-sourcing like Indiegogo and Kickstarter, or art administrative services like Fractured Atlas. Today, for the willing playwright, the producing tools exist to take control of their artistic work, and our real purpose is to show other playwrights that, if you really want your play produced and you're willing to do a lot of hard work, you can easily bypass the traditional route to production and do it yourself, while scoring some incredible intellectual gains and artistic experience along the way.
So we evolved--and continue to evolve--into the group we are today because of our unique problems and situations: It's a DIY world and we're doing it ourselves. We don't have a full-time producer like 13P's Maria Goyanes. Nor do we have a marketing staff or an associate anything. We are it. We are trying to accomplish in three seasons what 13P did in 10 years. In everything we do we try to utilize some of the major tenets of what academia deems the skill set of the 21st century: critical thinking and problem solving where we question everything in an information glut, collaboration, of which a main component is communication, adaptability because change is constant, initiative in an economy where you have to make your own opportunities, analysis for clear decision-making, and curiosity. We ask a lot out of our playwrights in terms of sharing resources, time commitment, and sweat equity because what we have set out to do is daunting. And each time we accomplish something, it seems we've raised the bar even higher for ourselves. We are laying track, we like to say, in front of an oncoming locomotive.
We started with three playwrights, then Max moved to New York, which made us two. At one point there were 10 of us. Life encroached on some of us, some decided on another direction, or that Boston Public Works just wasn't their thing. But during each of their time with Boston Public Works, each playwright left his or her own indelible mark on the group, just like the actors, directors, designers, and dramaturges will be leaving their imprint on our original work. Our goal is to produce plays, disband, and leave a roadmap that can be followed by other playwrights in order to make Boston a DIY theater world where artists aren't afraid to produce their own exciting theater.
While we've said we're based on 13P, we soon realized we weren't Rob Handel, Anne Washburn, Young Jean Lee, et. al. at the beginning of a new century. We are a group of playwrights in Boston bucking against our own particular obstacles that Boston presents, just as 13P was fighting the New York theater world during its tenure. In reality, we used 13P as a departure point, and quickly morphed their model into our own, one that emphasizes DIY in all the forms that evolved during the first decade of the 21st century. When 13P started, there was no social media, robust web development technologies like Weebly, SquareSpace, and Tumblr, email marketing services like Mail Chimp and Constant Contact, crowd-sourcing like Indiegogo and Kickstarter, or art administrative services like Fractured Atlas. Today, for the willing playwright, the producing tools exist to take control of their artistic work, and our real purpose is to show other playwrights that, if you really want your play produced and you're willing to do a lot of hard work, you can easily bypass the traditional route to production and do it yourself, while scoring some incredible intellectual gains and artistic experience along the way.
So we evolved--and continue to evolve--into the group we are today because of our unique problems and situations: It's a DIY world and we're doing it ourselves. We don't have a full-time producer like 13P's Maria Goyanes. Nor do we have a marketing staff or an associate anything. We are it. We are trying to accomplish in three seasons what 13P did in 10 years. In everything we do we try to utilize some of the major tenets of what academia deems the skill set of the 21st century: critical thinking and problem solving where we question everything in an information glut, collaboration, of which a main component is communication, adaptability because change is constant, initiative in an economy where you have to make your own opportunities, analysis for clear decision-making, and curiosity. We ask a lot out of our playwrights in terms of sharing resources, time commitment, and sweat equity because what we have set out to do is daunting. And each time we accomplish something, it seems we've raised the bar even higher for ourselves. We are laying track, we like to say, in front of an oncoming locomotive.
We started with three playwrights, then Max moved to New York, which made us two. At one point there were 10 of us. Life encroached on some of us, some decided on another direction, or that Boston Public Works just wasn't their thing. But during each of their time with Boston Public Works, each playwright left his or her own indelible mark on the group, just like the actors, directors, designers, and dramaturges will be leaving their imprint on our original work. Our goal is to produce plays, disband, and leave a roadmap that can be followed by other playwrights in order to make Boston a DIY theater world where artists aren't afraid to produce their own exciting theater.