Ratso's Ratchet

An expo of nationwide playwrights

A cornicopia of playwrights whetting your appetite and feeding your soul with fast food plays

 

The Synergy of Combustible Collaboration

Theatres need playwrights, want playwrights, desperately search--often unsuccessfully--for playwrights who's work embodies a compatible esthetic. Playwrights do the same--often with even less success--for theatres. There is a communicative chasm between the writers of theatre and the presenters of theatre. Ratso's Ratchet will grout this gap. Multiple playwrights will have the opportunity to work with and get to know people frim multiple theatres. Multiple aesthetics will bounce off of each other in creative fission. We need you playwrights, the theatre needs you, send us a three minute play, Now!

The Directors Company

Ratso's Ratchet will have a directors company comprised of directors affiliated with Rat Theatres. Over the course of the conference, the scripts will be disseminated to these directors who, with actors culled from the Actors Company, will rehearse and present the work in whatever way they see fit: script in hand readings, staged readings, full stagings, deconstructivist variations thereof... This will be a great opportunity to get a hands on sense of how these writers' theatrical languages translate in practice as well as to taste the talents of multiple actors. The seeds of futures growth will be sprouting faster than weeds here. Directors who are interested in getting to know writers and actors from sea to shining sea, should get in touch with us.

The Actors Company

Actors are the living theatre. Their every breath is expressive of vagarious human emotions. Whether they live in New York or LA or not, they are worth more than a dime a dozen. Ratso's Ratchet will have a company of them ready and willing to work on the sly for the good of the future of theatres all over America. Each member of the Actors Company will work with multiple directors to breathe life into numerous plays over the course of the Rat Conference. Interested actors should let us know if they want to be involved.

The Directory of Rat Playwrights

Lubricating the pipeline between playwrights and theatres, The Directory of Rat Playwrights will be a handy, bound--or at least stapled--compendium of all the writers who so graciously have allowed us to play with their three-minute plays during the Rat Conference. With it in your possession, your theatre should never be at a loss for words--or for access to with the time and inclination to spin some words for you. All it will be is a collection of xeroxed resumes, bios, manifestos, short flights of fancy or other creative self-advertisements from the writers themselves, but it will give you a bearing on what is out of the bounds of the usual frenetic phone calls and word-on-the-street references that refer writers to your court. Rat Playwrights should send a page about themselves along with their three-minute play; Rat Theatres need only pick one of these up at the end of the conference (or send an SASE to Joshua Furst or Jonathan Pascoe to have one sent to you.)


Contacts:

Joshua Furst jsessions@giworldwide.com
212-865-1347

Jonathan Pascoe
New York Theatre Workshop
79 East 4th Street
New York, NY 10003