Congratulations!

For those of you keeping track, Anthology #1 is closed, but if you have a holiday play that you'd like to submit, the deadline is midnight PST, Monday the 16th.

We're happy to accept Daniel Munson's play, Point of Adventure, which deals with the power of imagination and how a person can live vicariously through books.

Congrats to Mary Main, with Uncle Jonas and the Birthday Bonus. One element she touches on is books you own, versus books you share. And we're also happy to include JoLyn Brown, whose Halloween play, A Costume for Dad, has been accepted.

If you plan on subbing, write hard this weekend! Good luck!

Congrats!

Congratulations to Mary Main, who will appear in Anthology #1 with Tiana Joins the Circus. Prominent elements include the power of imagination!

Also, congratulations to Sarah V. Richard, whose play Curly Shares in Tradition has been accepted for Anthology #2. This is our second Christmas play, so Aspiring Contributors might begin casting about for ideas of other holidays... Halloween, Thanksgiving, April Fool's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's Day, and the Fourth of July are all obvious ones that haven't been tapped yet.

Best of luck!

Cover Illustrator

There are so many talented artists with so many different styles, finding our cover illustrator was a very daunting project, and lots of fun.

I'm very excited about the illustrator we have lined up. If everything goes well, I should have more information to share in the future. But I'm pretty confident our cover will be all that and a bag of chips. :o)

So if you don't want to write a puppet play because you love the idea of entertaining little kids in libraries across the country, do it because your cover will be the coolest cover on your block, and you want to make everyone in your writing group jealous. :o)

Have a good Columbus Day weekend!

Congrats!

Congratulations to Rachel Greene, whose play, Goodnight, Howie, has been accepted for Anthology #1. One of the key themes is bedtime stories.

Best of luck to everyone!

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Cathy Hall, whose play, Oh, Deer. Oh, Dear was accepted for Anthology #1. Themes include homophones and homonyms. We also look forward to including Curly Reads a Book by Sarah V. Richard. Prominent elements include judging a book by its cover.

We have also accepted a (secular) Christmas-themed puppet play, A December Emergency, by Nikki Loftin, for our holiday anthology.

Q&A!

Q: I'd love to submit a puppet play, but I've never seen an amateur performance. Any hints to keep me from being too ambitious with my stage directions?

A: This ties back into the "rely more on dialogue and less on props" bit of advice. Do you want your puppets to manipulate an object? Do you think you could manipulate that object easily if you had a sock on each hand, your arms up in front of you, craning your neck sideways to read the script? It's possible, but not easy. If you want to use a prop, you might think about it being on the stage from the beginning. Many puppet theaters have a sort of shelf that can accommodate props like that. But also keep in mind that the more complicated your stage scenery is, the harder it is to put on your play. Not all libraries are likely to have a puppet-sized computer, or a rain stick, or a model train locomotive in their prop box. And that means that librarians will have to work harder to perform your play.

Q: So, yeah, dialogue. What kind of voice are you looking for?

A: Can you imagine Bert and Ernie performing your play and sounding natural? How about Lamb Chop and Charlie Horse? (YouTube is great for a refresher.) Think casual, think witty, think tongue-in-cheek. Remember that you're not only entertaining two-year-olds, you're also having to entertain their parents and the librarians. Libraries are great places for information... but they're great places for entertainment, too.

Q: When you say, "Characters should be flexible 'types'", what do you mean?

A: Some libraries have a closet chock-full of puppets. Others get by with a cardboard box. What characters does your play call for? If you craft it properly, the librarian should be able to substitute one puppet for another with a minimum adjustment of dialogue. Maybe your play absolutely, positively needs to have a hippopotamus puppet or else the whole thing falls apart, but such plays will really have to amuse and impress us otherwise.

Q: I'm always nervous about anthologies... I don't want to duplicate someone else's angle.

A: Keep checking for updates. We'll keep a running tally of the plays we accept, along with a few pertinent themes each incorporates, just for this purpose. (Look for the label "acceptance".) Just because you see we already accepted someone else's play about returning library books on time doesn't mean we won't accept a second, but if you see we have three or four plays with that theme, you might cast about for an idea that isn't so well-represented. And if it helps any, we're currently receiving about five general anthology subs for every one holiday anthology sub.

Best of luck, and feel free to query for more clarification!

Congrats!

Congratulations to Nikki Loftin, whose play, Readin' on the Range, was accepted for Anthology #1! For those who are keeping track at home, major themes include cowboys and pondering the question, what are books good for?