Every year American Theatre magazine compiles its Top-10 list of the most frequently performed plays for the current producing season at Theatre Communication Group’s constituent members across the country. These data always provide a fascinating snapshot of the collective mindset of decision makers at the nation’s established not-for-profits. For example, between 2006-2010 John Patrick Shanley was the undisputed King of the Playwriting Hill, with close to 50 productions of Doubt going up during that time. David Lindsey Abaire was second with 33 productions of Rabbit Hole, and while none of her individual plays racked up anywhere near those numbers, Sarah Ruhl ruled L.O.R.T. She made the list each of the past three years with a total of 31 productions of three plays. 

And then there’s Tennessee Williams—apparently the Wingfields of St. Louis haven’t smashed that crystal unicorn for the last time just yet, as The Glass Menagerie has received nearly 20 productions since 2006.

While in some respects the lemming-like mind-meld of the administrators at our nation’s larger theatres is deeply depressing (although, I suspect, the fortunate few playwrights and their agents feel differently), for indy theatre producers, this cookie-cutter programming represents an opportunity to differentiate ourselves from our big brothers and sisters.

One dependable source for the intrepid producer to find interesting, quality new work that nobody else in town (or likely your region) is doing is the Plays and Playwrights anthology, published annually since 2000 by The New York Theatre Experience. This month the organization is coming out with the 2010 edition, and to mark the occasion, I sat down to chat with editor Martin Denton.

What led you to want to take on this kind of project, Martin?

The real story is that we saw a show called Are We There Yet? written by Garth Wingfield and produced by a company called New World Stages. As we were leaving, I said to my mother Rochelle, “That was a really great play, and someone ought to publish it because if no one does, it’s going to disappear after 16 performances, and no one will ever know it happened.”

What was it about that particular play that gave you the idea for the book?

It’s a lovely play about a woman who’s in her early thirties who finds out she has breast cancer. It’s a very funny play, not a sad play. Very heartfelt with beautiful characters you really like, and there’s wisdom in it. So at the end of the year, I said to Rochelle, “Remember when I said someone ought to publish that play? We should publish a book of plays.” And instead of saying the sensible thing like, “Why? Are you crazy? We’ve never published anything before!” She said, “Okay.” So we did, without having any idea how to do that. And the impetus, besides this particular play, was that I knew that we knew enough plays at that point that deserved to be in this book, and we were starting to know some playwrights and how to get to them. But beyond that was the fact that in 1999, the only books featuring new American plays were those written by famous people. It turned out to be very successful for what it was. And every play in the anthology had at least one—and some many—subsequent productions because of it.

What playwrights/companies will be included in the 2010 edition?

This year we’re publishing The Talking Band for the first time—Flip Side by Ellen Maddow. We put it on the list sort of whimsically, and then we were going through it and saying “Well, surely she’s been published, and so we can cross this off,” but we researched and checked, and she’s NEVER been published. Brian Parks [Arts and Culture Editor at The Village Voice] is another person who’s surprisingly never been published. His play The Invitation is probably the best thing he’s ever written. It’s about the greed that caused the recent economic collapse, except it premiered in September ‘08, so it was very prescient. Then we’ve got Nat Cassidy’s play Any Day Now, which is a lighthearted, three-act family drama-comedy like August: Osage County, only the characters are zombies. And we have Gyda Arber’s Suspicious Package, an interactive play on the iPod. It’s the most interesting use of this technology I’ve seen in the theatre.

What other resources would you recommend to producers seeking new work?