Amy Peterson (writing plays under the pen name Ash Sanborn) aspires to be a playwright and has e-published her play, along with other writings.  She explains her varied and unique approach to networking and marketing.

1. Pretend for a moment I’m a director or producer looking for my next play.  Pitch me one of your plays in five to ten sentences.

The Feast of Jovi Bono (known to friends as TFOJB) is a new play, a challenge to actors to tell their stories in slam poetry/spoken word art.  It’s the story of forgiveness between mothers and daughters, exes, the life-beaten and the life that beat them.  What if a tent city moved next door to your house?  You’re just one person – what can one person do to help create life from destruction?

Most plays in this century do not have a narrator, but ours has a snarky chef to make us laugh and tie the feast together.  There’s a rugby game, cake getting all over, an expanding table that Malcolm (Jovi’s best friend) keeps tripping over, padparadsha oranges, and stories that light up the night.

2. What motivated you to become a playwright?

TJOJB has not had the usual development process mostly because of the slam poetry.  First I did send it to the developmental readers at my local theater (Spencer Community Theater in Iowa) and of the three readers, two of them had very helpful feedback.  I took many of their suggestions.  The next step would have been a staged reading in which I would have found a partner-director, assembled the cast (which usually consists of whoever shows up) and had one or at most two rehearsals.  The reading would be in front of an invited audience who would then provide further feedback.  This is where the process broke down: the slam poetry is actually quite a challenge to the actors and would require more than a rehearsal or two for any one to effectively perform it.  A cold reading would create the effect the early readers feared: that it would be a group of actors standing around reciting poetry.  If that’s the case, what on earth are we doing?

From there I sent the script to a few publishers, all of whom said it was not for them, but to please consider sending them any future plays.  They weren’t getting it.  The slam poetry cannot be confined to the page.  Then I received an email from Stageplays.com.  They were dipping their toes into e-publishing plays – a very new concept – and for a very reasonable price, I could partner with them to get the script out there, available to directors, along with my contact information so I could work with them on staging it.  TFOJB will have its premiere Labor Day weekend.  It is my hope that video and other promotional material uploaded on Stageplay’s website will help artistic directors and performance committees from theaters throughout the nation decide this is something they need to do for their theaters and for their communities.

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