365 Days / 365 Plays

PARTICIPANT INFORMATON FOR THE DC-AREA 365 DAYS / 365 PLAYS FESTIVAL

Suzan-Lori Parks’ 365 DAYS/365 PLAYS is coming to Washington, DC. The council of theatres coordinating this event includes The Studio Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Round House Theatre, Signature Theatre. Every producing organization in the region is invited to participate in this exciting and groundbreaking event!

Beginning November 13, 2002, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks committed herself to writing one play per day for an entire year. These plays comprise the play cycle 365 DAYS/365 PLAYS. The world premiere of this play cycle will be performed as a year-long national festival in cities and communities around the country. From November 13, 2006 to November 12, 2007, over 600 theatres in cities across the Unites States will create the largest theatre collaboration in U.S. history.

If you have any questions not answered here, send them to 365PlaysDC@gmail.com, or contact Danielle Mages Amato, Literary Manager of The Studio Theatre, at (202) 232-7267.

FAQs

What are my responsibilities as a participant in the festival?

As a participant, you are responsible for producing one week of the cycle (seven short plays). The plays may be produced in any way that the organization sees fit: as a full production, a staged reading, a pre-show lobby event before a regularly scheduled production, or a site-specific theatre piece in a public location.

One of the seven plays may be done every day for a week, or they can all be combined into one single event, or any way in between.

NOTE: Seven plays of the cycle constitute approximately 30-45 minutes of material. Most of the plays are 5-7 minutes long. They may be performed in conjunction with scheduled productions, and do not require their own separate slot in your season.

When will the plays be available?

The full 365-play cycle is set to be published on November 12, 2006. At this time, we will be able to make your week of plays available to you directly. If you would like to receive a preliminary copy of your week's plays before this date, contact 365PlaysDC@gmail.com.

Will Suzan-Lori Parks be available to consult on the script if we have questions?

Unfortunately, no. As the project is occurring simultaneously with hundreds of theatre companies, the demands on Suzan-Lori's time as a co-producer are quite high. The National Festival coordinators are interested in company-specific interpretations and visions of the work.

Will participation in 365 Days/365 Plays cost us anything?

You are financially responsible for producing and marketing your week's worth of plays.  should that include design elements, actor fees, etc. There are no stipulations on the size of budget necessary to produce the work -- it can be as little or as much as you can manage.

Beyond the financial commitment you choose to make for your week's worth of plays, you will have one further financial responsibility if your company is selected to participate: you will have to pay a $7 licensing fee to the National Festival -- $1 per play. Like many other cities organizing 365, we are also asking for a $50 donation to go toward direct administrative costs and marketing. Any remainder at the end of the year will be donated to a local charity. If any group feels that the $50 donation would be a financial barrier to their participation, they should contact us at 365PlaysDC@gmail.com.
 
What about ticket costs?

The national festival has set the ground rules for admission, and promotes two models. (1) All performances of the piece are free to the public. (2) Theatres may have "Pay What You Can" performances. ALL production expenses are yours and likewise, any money collected is yours to keep.

Are there any restrictions on how we stage and produce our week?

The only restrictions on how you stage, produce and market your week's worth of plays are those you place on yourself. Production values can be as simple or elaborate as fits with your vision of the plays and your company's mission and history.

FESTIVAL BIOS

SUZAN-LORI PARKS is a playwright, screenwriter and novelist whose plays include Topdog/Underdog, Fucking A, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, The America Play, Venus, The Death Of The Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, and In The Blood, among others. Her work is the subject of the PBS Film “The Topdog/Underdog Diaries.” She is an alumnae of New Dramatists, and has been awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She was also the recipient of a Lila-Wallace Reader's Digest Award, a CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts (Drama) for 1996 and a Guggenheim Foundation Grant. A recipient of a MacArthur Foundaton “Genius” Award, Parks received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Topdog/Underdog.

BONNIE METZGAR is a playwright, director and producer who has collaborated with Suzan-Lori Parks since 1989. Metzgar served for eight years as Associate Producer at the Public Theater under George C. Wolfe and was the Founding Producer of Joe’s Pub. Previously, Metzgar produced Parks’ early plays at the award-winning BACA Downtown where she was Artistic Director. Metzgar is currently Associate Artistic Director of the Curious Theatre Company in Denver, and teaches in the Brown Graduate Playwriting Program.