BARBARA SAMUELS lighting design + producing

What Was 13P?

Obie Award winning Thirteen Playwrights (13P) was a collective of 13 mid- career playwrights who rejected the system of endless readings and play development. They took matters into their own hands with the mission to produce one play by each member playwright, and then end the company. Warmly referred to as P#1-P#13, these playwrights served as Artistic Director during the time their play was being produced (while administrative staff were continuous across productions).

Every Thursday at 8:30am the administrative staff, as well as one or two of the playwrights, met at the Starbucks in Astor Place, checking in as needed for short and long term planning.

My Role

I joined 13P in 2009 during pre-production for P#9, Lucy Thurber's Monstrosity. As General Manager for 13P I oversaw finances for the company, built show budgets, and worked with the executive producer, Maria Goyanes, to dream into longer term plans for accomplishing the project of producing all 13 plays.

Cashflow As the company matured, I collaborated with the Executive Producer on a cashflow document to help us understandand project how money was coming in and going out of the bank for the short term and long term. Itwas a living document that changed and evolved as we needed to expand and clarify theconversation about how we were thinking about money in a big picture way.

Show Budgets In order to project spending of specific productions, we broke down each month and each budgetline in order to plan and allow for the finances for each Playwright's production to be as to be focused as needed.

In addition to developing the budgets, I provided producing support for
• five productions
• one major fundraising party (grossing over $10,000)
• three end of year giving campaigns (each grossing about $4,000)
• a book of the complete thirteen plays
• a documentary film
• company archival website (13p.org).