started reading submissions. twenty-seven "no thank-you's" and seven "you've made it past round one's". there are two pieces that i'm actually really excited about and apparently neither have been produced so far. lucky me, i guess. one is just really well written and the other is just really out there, completely different from every submission i've read so far.

what amazes me, though, is how so many of the playwrights have just blatantly ignored the submission guidelines and left their names and contact info on their submissions. and its not just first-time playwrights: i've found some by people involved last year who sent me un-blind submissions. it doesn't take a lot of effort to follow the guidelines and it makes me ever so much more happy.

i still can't get over one of my round one accepted pieces. it really is just so amazingly different and i can't say how without really giving it away to the playwright who wrote it. i just find it refreshing to read something which isn't about a man and a woman talking about a romantic relationship while they're at a bar/in their apartment/out in the park/etc. not that there's anything wrong with that set-up and situation, its just that the majority of submissions (this year, last year, and the first year) seem to be of that paradigm and the majority of them really don't get much further than: "I'm right!", "No, I'M right!", "No, I'm RIGHT!", etc. and so forth. I know its hard in a 10 - 15 minute piece, but I'm still looking for character development and plot and just that extra uniqueness of voice which counts for so much. and so far, i feel i've found that in seven submissions. just sixty-four more to go through ... for now ...