Drama Queens, a five-star arts journal focusing on female artists

PLAYFUL SUBSTANCE IS BACK! 

Bree O’Connor and her team of performance artists have been working all through the pandemic to create new opportunities and projects so that when the doors begin to open (as rumor has it they are now entertaining the notion), they are ready to expand minds and open hearts to what’s going on around us through the powerful medium of theatre.

The first project on their agenda is The PS Writers’ Room, a collaborative writing workshop is now in a pilot-testing phase where writers get practical experience pitching and choosing projects and building a successful writers room of their own including navigating the culture of the room, organizing work flow, setting goals, brainstorming, managing expectations and meeting goals. This collaborative, peer-to-peer learning environment is sponsored by Final Draft. Final Draft, A Cast & Crew Company, has published Final Draft® software –the number one screenwriting application in the world –- for 30 years. Final Draft automatically paginates and formats your script to industry standards, allowing writers to focus on what they do best – writing scripts. Used by such industry giants as J.J. Abrams, James Cameron and Aaron Sorkin, Final Draft software is the professional’s choice and the entertainment industry standard. In addition to its flagship software product, Final Draft offers the annual Big Break® Contest, a screenwriting competition that launches careers and awards over $100,000 in cash and prizes. Final Draft also offers Final Draft Mobile for iPhone and iPad, making creativity truly portable. To learn more about Final Draft and its products and services, visit www.finaldraft.com. 

Following that is the PS Writers’ Groups, which has spent this past year fostering developmental readings of Mr. & Mrs. Garbo by Raphael Perahia, Barometric Pressure by Bree O’Connor, Passing and Failing in Paradise by Tori Barron, Setting the Sky on Fire by Niki Hatzidis, and currently, Lauren Lindsey White’s new play CAM (which will be having a reading later this spring) is expanding. Writers’ Groups are currently operating online but will slowly phase in a hybrid model of online and IRL sessions to accommodate playwrights and screenwriters outside of NYC.

Congratulations to Writers’ Group Member, Jacqueline Reason for her essay “House Parties,” receiving First Prize in the Writing Black Joy competition in celebration of Boston’s Black Joy Day.

One-on-one writing/project development coaching is also available, providing practical and artistic assistance to creators putting up their own work. Whether you are writing a novel, screenplay, play or a solo project, our facilitators can help you with everything from organizing your material to going deeper with your character work to helping you find and strengthen your unique voice. 

PS will also be sponsoring Zoom performances and readings; the return of their writer’s networking event, Pithy Party, a series of collaborative projects with Infinite Variety Productions, and other classes, workshops, and a new residency project all coming this fall.

For all of these groups and projects, please contact artisticdirector@playfulsubstance.com for further details. 

To arrange interviews or articles with the company of Playful Substance, contact jmcommnet@gmail.com. 

The honorable Cristina Garcia, Associate Court Attorney for Kings County Criminal Court, and a member of Playful Substance offered up her excitement at the new chapter in the life of this important company.

SO, PLAYFUL SUBSTANCE IS BACK! WHAT MADE YOU CHOOSE NOW TO RETURN?

We would have been out here sooner but we had to wait until it was safe to return. Now that infection rates are going down and people are getting vaccinated it feels safe to share with the world what we’ve been writing, planning and creating before and during the shut down. We miss our audience. We have so much to share with you!

WHAT IS THE OVERALL MISSION OF PLAYFUL SUBSTANCE?

Playful Substance is a safe space to nurture your ideas and be creative with other like-minded people. We are all about making sure that all voices are heard, all points of view respected, and that everyone gets a chance to play.

HOW HAVE YOU -AND YOUR MEMBERS- FARED DURING LOCK-DOWN AND PANDEMIC?

It has been tough not seeing my Playful Substance peeps in person. Rehearsing and sharing new work with them in person is always amazingly inspiring and just plain fun. However, our writer’s groups have stayed active during the pandemic (We’ve got a lot of new and exciting work that came out of all the heartbreak and all the loss that we’ve suffered this past year) and we’ve jumped on every chance to collaborate with each other and other companies via Zoom. We may not have been in physical contact but we’ve still been sharing our work, our thoughts and ideas. I’m excited about putting that out there for our audience to see. Not to toot our own horn, but we’ve got a lot of talent in this company.

WHAT CAN WE EXPECT TO SEE IN THE FUTURE?

In the future, you can expect to see the debut of Lauren White’s Tell Me. We were in the middle of rehearsals when the city shut down. I can’t wait to get back to it. We don’t have a date set just yet but we’ll be sharing this amazing work with you as soon as we can. I’m hoping for a Pithy Party where we can share works in progress with our audience. Those are always a blast! And I’m looking forward to more opportunities for the company to come together and just play (brainstorm, share ideas, etc.). Beautiful things happen when our company comes together.

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE NEW ARTISTIC CLIMATE WILL BE POST-COVID?

I’m not sure exactly what to expect. That’s part of what makes our return so exciting. Socially distanced theater audiences? More Zoom readings? I don’t know. What I do know is that both artists and audience are eager for a creative space to process the isolation, the loss, the social upheaval, movements for justice, elections, disappointments, etc. that we all experienced this past year. Artists in general, and this company in particular, have a way of expressing the ups and the downs of life in ways that are uplifting and inspiring. Whatever the new artistic climate will be, it will not be lacking in beauty and creativity.