building relationships with theatres (without feeling transactional)

Theatres are not vending machines. You do not insert a script, pull a lever, and wait for a production to fall out.

And yet playwrights are constantly advised to “build relationships” with artistic directors, literary managers, and producers. The phrase can make ordinary human contact sound like a sales strategy — as though every conversation must eventually produce something.

That is precisely what makes networking so uncomfortable.

A genuine relationship begins when you stop treating the person across from you as a possible opportunity. Go to their theatre because you are interested in the work. See the obscure play on a rainy Thursday, not only the opening-night production everyone is talking about. Stay afterward. Send a short note when something truly moves you.

Not a note that says, “I loved your production — and, incidentally, here is my play.”

Just the first part.

Become familiar with a theatre’s actual identity. Every company has a mission statement, but its programming tells you what it truly values. What subjects keep returning? What kinds of theatrical language excite its artists? Does it take aesthetic risks, political risks, financial risks — or none at all?

Then ask whether your work belongs in that conversation.

This is different from asking whether the theatre can do something for you. You are considering whether there is a genuine artistic connection. Sometimes there will not be. Recognizing that can save everyone time, including you.

When you do introduce your work, specificity matters. “I’m a playwright, and I’d love to send you something” places the burden on the recipient. “I saw your production of X, and its treatment of faith and spectacle made me think my play about Aimee Semple McPherson might interest you” begins a real conversation.

You are not pretending the relationship has no professional dimension. You are simply giving it a human one.

It also helps to participate in the life of the theatre beyond submitting scripts. Attend readings. Join post-show discussions. Recommend an actor. Share a production announcement. Congratulate someone when there is nothing to gain from doing so. Be present without constantly requiring attention.

And remember that people move. Today’s literary associate may run a theatre five years from now. The director of your workshop may become an artistic director — or leave the field altogether. If your connection exists only because of someone’s title, it was never much of a connection.

None of this guarantees a production. Relationships are not a workaround for artistic taste, limited budgets, crowded seasons, or bad timing. Nor should friendship create an obligation to produce your play.

What a real relationship can create is familiarity. Trust. The sense that you understand one another’s work. It may lead to a production, a reading, a recommendation, or nothing immediately visible.

That last possibility is the test.

If you would still want the conversation even if it never advanced your career, you are probably building a relationship.

If not, you are making a pitch.

There is nothing wrong with making a pitch. Just don’t confuse it with friendship.