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“O gentlemen, the time of life is short!” (Henry IV, Part 2) William Shakespeare died at the age of 52, but the lifetime of his work is now 400 years and counting. We celebrated that anniversary not a fortnight ago in St Louis during the city’s Shake 38 Festival. It seemed poignant to discuss this year’s programming plans and member initiatives for St Louis Guild members during the annual marathon celebration of Shakespeare’s 38 plays.

This year’s regional programming for Kansas City also kicked off last month and included a thrilling workshop and master class event featuring the highly awarded, wonderfully talented and charming playwright Lauren Yee. I was proud of our Kansas City Dramatists Guild members’ enthusiasm and support for this outstanding female playwright—the first Dramatists Guild Fund’s Traveling Master sent to this region.

Our regional programming this year will focus on creating more opportunities for play development, learning more about the development process and expanding the awareness of new work throughout the state of Missouri. Guild members will be able to participate in a roving reader series providing the opportunity for playwrights in one city to have their work read in another city at a venue open to welcoming new work. Seminars addressing business affairs and self-production will be offered in Kansas City and St Louis. Panel discussions with artistic directors from theatres in north, south and central Missouri will be offered to educate us on their process for selecting productions.

This summer, many Dramatists Guild members in this region will showcase their new work in the fringe festivals of Kansas City and St. Louis. We also have playwrights celebrating summer and fall productions in New York City, Washington, San Francisco and Chicago. This fall, mid-Missouri playwrights can take advantage of a new play festival presented by Talking Horse Productions in Columbia. The company, which has been taking on new work for production since 2013, created its Starting Gate New Play Festival to focus on developing the writer. The festival will function more as a workshop process, ultimately producing fully staged plays rather than concert readings. Talking Horse’s inaugural competition took place last November and featured two ten-minute plays each from three commissioned playwrights. Two of the three playwrights were DG members, including Milbre Burch of Columbia.

The imminent death of our art form has been proclaimed time and time again. Yet, audiences in this region love to experience the incomparable thrill of live performance, and seem to genuinely appreciate new work. This means theatre is thriving in this region like never before and the majority of our Guild members are continually producing fresh material for the stage. A large portion of this new material is coming from female voices, and some of our best material is coming from writers of color. Perhaps when you read about The Count in last year’s November/December issue of The Dramatist you were surprised to discover Kansas City was among the top three locations leading the nation in productions of plays by female writers (30 percent); among the top five in productions of plays by writers of color (15.6 percent). Certainly, our playwrights, composers, lyricists and librettists are extremely talented. Such talent gets presented because we have a fair amount of venues committed to not simply producing new work, but paying attention to its voice and diversity. While we can be pleased our region is at the top of the pack, we can’t deny how disappointing these percentages are overall. We are first and foremost a community of artists, and as artists we owe it to one another to help us all succeed. Together we can develop programming and partnerships capable of moving us toward the goal of hearing the entire chorus.

The time of life may be short, but as writers of the stage we have much life to give. Please let me know what I can do to help.

hwright@dramatistsguild.com

Playwright Lauren Yee – photo courtesy DGF Traveling Masters Program