Behind the Scenes: Literary Manager

Marco Ramirez

Name:  Marco Ramirez

Occupation:  Literary Manager, City Theatre Miami / Writer

City of Birth:  Miami

City of Residence:  Miami

Credits and Awards:  Two Kennedy Center commissions, youngARTS Presidential Scholar, NYU graduate, Heideman Award from Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville, and I think I’m Abuela’s favorite.

What does a literary manager do?
It depends on the theatre company he/she works for. At City Theatre, I read 10-minute
plays, sort through all levels of writing in order to find 14-16 to produce in our Summer
Shorts Festival.

How does one become a literary manager?
Lots of lit managers are also writers, but not all. Some are dramaturges, others are also
directors, etc. It’s not a glamorous job. You don’t get to bow. How do you become the one
who sorts through new play submissions in order to find the stuff you think is worth
producing? I think you have to get mad first. You have to sit in a theatre at some point and
think, “Who’s picking these? I can do better” and you go from there.

As literary manager at City Theatre, how many plays would you say you read over the course of a year?
Over 700. At least.

Have you seen themes and trends emerge among the plays?
The 9/11 play was popular for a while. People seemed to wanna cash in on loss, throw a
captivating event into the middle of not-captivating plays. That was devastating.

What is the submission project like at City Theatre?
Mail. 444 Brickell Ave. St. 229, Miami FL, 33131. No cover letters, nothing fancy, just send
stuff.

What are you looking for when reading submissions?
Is “good” too broad? Personally, I look for theatricality. I read a lot of plays that can/should
be TV episodes. I tend to toss those aside. I don’t read a lot of plays that absolutely have to
be plays.

What are some of the biggest and most common mistakes playwrights make with their submissions?
Sending, like, 12 plays at a time is always a bad idea. No one’s that prolific; you’re probably
just bored. Send us two, max. Oh, and also, a lot of people put tons of money into SASE and
postage stuff. Don’t do that. We’re not sending it back.  We hardly have the time.

What advice would you give to playwrights who are thinking about submitting to a theatre or festival?
Don’t take rejection hard. There are a lot of reasons plays don’t get produced. If a festival
(not just ours, any festival) is looking at two plays that are thematically too similar, they
might not always go with the better one. They might go with the one for an older actress
as opposed to the other one just because they don’t have enough roles for their older
actress. Stuff like that. There are a lot of logistics that go into it.

How do you balance being a playwright with your job as literary manager?
When I submit to the theatre I work for, I always put a pen name on it, fake address, the
works. If the artistic directors want to produce one of my plays, I then get this “voila!”
moment and reveal myself as the man behind the curtain. A reviewer recently made a joke
about one of my plays being part of Summer Shorts. It really bothered me. I think that,
A: he made the joke in stupidly bad taste, and B: he should know it’s something that’s
always on my mind as well.

Have you ever had anything rejected by them?
Yes. Twice. One made it pretty far but then one of our readers said, “Well isn’t this just a
load o’ crap” and I nodded. Both plays have since gotten produced elsewhere. And no, I
don’t think they were crap.

You probably read many more plays than the average playwright because of your job.  How does all that reading influence your writing?
It’s rough. As a writer, I found that after reading 700+ ten-minute plays, I’d sit and couldn’t
write anything that wasn’t in a ten-minute format. Sometimes I wish I was a cook or a
mechanic just because then I’d be able to separate my work from my work.

Your play I Am Not Batman, which appears in Summer Shorts, won the Heideman
Award at the Humana Festival in Louisville.  What was that like for you?
It was great. They’re the most welcoming, friendly, accommodating people at Actors Theatre.
It was fun to see my Hialeah play onstage in a national kind of spotlight.

What is your ultimate goal?
Um… Beating my Tetris high score? Seriously.  Being considered an “emerging” artist here in American theatre. Getting produced. Making Hialeah famous. Writing for comics, even, oh
and that other medium, film. I hear that pays well.

What’s the best thing about working in South Florida theatre?
It’s a small community, literally about 19 people wide, and you can meet them all in a
matter of weeks, and you can climb ladders tons faster than in that big theatre city up
across from New Jersey.

Upcoming Projects:
I just finished a commission for the Kennedy Center. They’re doing a multicultural Christmas
piece in the spirit of A Christmas Carol. My piece there is called “Carlos Dickens and the
Snow Globe Princess”. I’m also in the middle of writing two full-length plays. One is going to
open the season at MadCat Theatre Company in late October. Paul Tei will direct. It’s about
a werewolf.