Many will say that writing a play, not to mention a story or a novel, takes a lot - and it does. It takes talent, focus and inspiration, and maybe some other things too boring to mention here. But for anyone who has been writing plays for a while, and I admittedly have, the most challenging element is the aftermath of a play's composition. Yes, you have it written and maybe can put up a staged reading, as I often do with my indy theatre company in NYC - but then what? That is the perpetual rub of a playwright. Where can this thing that has taken months to write live as a produced work for a paying audience? Cutting through the subjectivity of theatre company interns, literary managers and artistic directors, the latter who decide what gets produced, is one of the greatest and most seemingly arbitrary challenges a playwright can face. In the end, as much pride as one may take in their work, it rarely seems to translate to ubiquitous productions - not because a work isn't deserving, but more often simply through a lack of good fortune.

Now of course bad luck can sound reductive, I understand, but when you think of the process a play goes through, and the various pairs of eyes that must read it, it becomes clear (at least after years of doing this) that it really does take a certain amount of divinity - the right play getting before the right set of eyes that manages to read a play past 10 pages (even making it to the end), who then passes it on to another who manages to get past 10 pages (even making it to the end), all the way to the mountaintop, that of an artistic director's greenlight. For a play to make it through this circuitous route at the average theatre company, culminating in a production, is certainly a more impressive feat than the act of simply writing a play - because if a tree falls in an empty forest, who will hear?

Of the three plays contained in PLAYS BY DANIEL DAMIANO, my first play collection, only one was actually a cold submission which resulted in a mainstage World Premiere within a year of my submission. Yes, this is indeed rare. The second play, THE GOLDEN YEAR was produced through a company I was a member at, in which case I got to present it as a reading , which generated fairly quick interest. In other words, there was no submitting the play cold to anyone and the risk of a reader's subjectivity. THE DISHONORABLE DISCHARGE OF PRIVATE PITTS was, with a certain pride that I am happy to take, a production from my own company which I would go on to establish a year prior with my wife. It of course involved raising money and taking the reins as a producer to empower myself as a playwright, especially when I was feeling that this was the time to produce such a play, and not wanting to wait further for its acceptance elsewhere.

As of this writing, and its Sept 5th, 2022 publication, these three plays have each had a sole production, which admittedly disappoints me. But at the same time, I know that I just haven't had the good fortune of getting these plays in front of the right eyes at the right time beyond the houses of their World Premieres.

On the upside, I am thrilled to have this first collection of produced work to share, not only for my posterity as a playwright, but with hope that with its existence in published form, it will incur further interest and, most especially, future productions. But, of course, that's out of my hands. I don't want to produce every play that I write, and I shouldn't have to. I instead choose to believe, and to hope, that for as long as Theatre exists, and admittedly its long-term existence often now strikes me as tenous, that there are actors, young and old, women and men, and of varying cultural backgrounds, who would love to bring these plays to life.

For now, I simply hope that you enjoy reading them.