The authors note, “Separate from economics, playwrights consider commissions a mixed bag. They appreciate the money; they almost always need it. Commissions are a vote of confidence for many.” But the amount of money attached to commissions varies wildly across theatres and is generally not enough to live on, and there are no set standards for how long a theatre can sit on a commissioned script before deciding if they’re going to produce it or not. For playwrights who are focused on first and subsequent productions (and the royalties those productions bring in), that time lag can be a real source of frustration and cause them to think of the commissioning theatres as taking a dog-in-the-manger approach to their work.

For theatres, commissions represent a way to make a commitment to a writer without necessarily making a commitment to a final production, though all the literary managers and artistic directors I spoke with stressed that final productions are always the goal. Tanya Palmer, literary manager of the Goodman Theatre since 2005, sees the purpose of commissions as being “to support the artists that we feel passionate about.

“It’s a risk on our part, but we want playwrights to keep writing plays and one of the ways to do that is to give them the means, and the sense that they have a place they are writing for.”

There is a trickle-down benefit with commissions as well. Many larger theatres commission work that later ends up in world premieres with smaller companies that can’t afford commissions—or at least not in the same dollar amount—as the regional houses. Recent examples include Melanie Marnich’s These Shining Lives, which Rivendell Theatre Ensemble produced twice in 2009, and which was originally commissioned through Northlight Theatre ; and Tanya Saracho’s Our Lady of the Underpass, which received the Goodman’s Ofner Prize (a $5,000 commission for emerging writers) and went on to a world premiere last spring with Teatro Vista . (It’s being remounted later this spring at 16th Street Theater .)

Even defining the terms of what makes a commission can be sticky. In an e-mail, David H. Faux, the director of business affairs for the Dramatists Guild of America, says that in general, “A commissioning theatre will pay a couple thousand dollars for the author’s work. This commission fee sometimes, but by no means always, serves double duty as, or towards, an advance for the performance license. Assuming the theatre has paid all amounts due the author and is not otherwise in material breach of the commission agreement, the theatre will receive the following benefits: premiere rights at their own theatre, revival rights, and permanent billing as the commissioning party.”

Most commissions are paid in three parts: at the initial signing, when the first draft is handed in, and when the second draft arrives. Most of the theatres I spoke with said that, while it varies depending upon the complexity of the project, most playwrights are expected to turn in first drafts within a year or 18 months of signing the contract. A notable recent exception is Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Ruined, which took four years from inception to production at the Goodman, but which also involved complicated research and interviews with women refugees from the civil war in the Congo, conducted by Nottage and director Kate Whoriskey.

But for some theatres, a more informal financial arrangement can be in place. Sandy Shinner, associate artistic director for Victory Gardens , says that “until recently, we did no commissioning, because [artistic director] Dennis [Zacek] didn’t necessarily think it was mutually beneficial for the playwright and the theatre. We tried to get money in the hands of playwrights in other ways with residencies and grants.” Shinner adds, “What we’ve done is that if one of our [playwrights’] ensemble members are in the process of writing a play, and they need money to finish it, we give them the money. It’s not the traditional commissioning process where they come in and pitch an idea and we pick it.”

Smaller theatres that lack a formal commissioning program will also try to help direct funds toward playwrights. Randall Colburn, whose Pretty Penny is up with Right Brain Project currently, has a commission with Infusion Theatre that, while it provides no upfront cash, will reimburse him for in-kind costs—transportation, supplies, etc. Colburn also has a more formal commission with Writers’ Theatre, where he is developing There’s a Body in the Water. For Colburn, the Writers’ commission, though it certainly doesn’t provide enough dough to quit his day job, does give him a chance to develop his voice.

“What they’ve been so wonderful about is that I’m a young [Colburn is 28] confused writer and I bring them a first draft that was very different from what I pitched. They are allowing me to find the play.”

The Wallace Foundation has recently stepped in with money for formal commissions of new and diverse writers at Victory Gardens —including a $5,000 commission for Aaron Carter, who is also the company literary manager. Carter says, “Specifically, when Sandy and Dennis came to me with the Wallace commission, they made it really clear that I should write what I was focused on and excited about, without a lot of consideration if it was, ‘ Victory Gardens material.’ We all feel that writing to spec that way doesn’t produce the most vibrant work.”

But playwrights who have been in the game awhile caution that it’s important to know ahead of time what theatres are looking for in a commission, even if they say they are not prescriptive. The local branch of the Dramatists Guild dedicated its December meeting to the pros and cons of commissioning. Composer and playwright Cheri Coons noted that, while commissions are supposed to involve collaboration, she had one bad experience where a producer ended up exerting the kind of creative control one might expect on a “work for hire” writing project, such as a screenplay.

“Make sure you’re on the same page before you start,” she cautioned.

DG regional rep Douglas Post emphasized that with every commission “you are writing something for somebody else’s needs and aesthetics,” though the trade-off can be that the finished script gets a lot more attention than a through-the-transom offering or even an agent submission. “Literary managers will go to war for something they love and have paid for,” said Post.

Chicago playwright Laura Jacqmin has no current commissions on the horizon, but she has received several in the past, including one from Victory Gardens for And When We Awoke There Was Light and Light. (With 10 characters, the play has yet to find a full production in these budget-conscious times.) “With most commissions, you sign the contract and then you have a year to present a first draft,” says Jacqmin. “Sometimes you have six months for a second draft, or a year. And then the theatre may have a year or 18 months after that to decide if they want to produce it. If you’re putting two years into a play and then waiting another two years, it can get frustrating.”

From the playwright’s perspective, notes Jacqmin, a lot of the mixed-bag nature of commissions “would be greatly improved if everyone were a lot more honest with each other. You should write a play that you feel is right for that space—not the one that you’ve been thinking about for three and a half years and you didn’t get the grants you wanted for it. On the theatre’s side, after the first year is up and you do the first reading, if this is a play that doesn’t immediately give you a boner and make you want to produce it right away, then you should probably tell the playwright that right away. If you don’t think it’s ever going to be right for the space or that the artistic director isn’t interested in it, then everyone should write their final checks and go their separate ways.”

What playwrights emphasized in “Outrageous Fortune” is that a theatre that has produced them once is more likely to produce them again. Steppenwolf Theatre is in essence hoping to build a multi-play relationship with a handful of writers through a new initiative underwritten by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The $600,000 grant, spread over three years, provides two commissions each to four writers (the names hadn’t been finalized as of deadline).

Polly Carl, who has been the director of artistic development at Steppenwolf since fall of 2009, says, “For Steppenwolf, because the ensemble is so important for anything that goes on the mainstage, [the Mellon grant] gives playwrights a chance to work with the ensemble over a period of time to develop something. Key to the kind of writers that [Steppenwolf] is commissioning, and I cannot stress this enough, is that they are writing plays that are actorly and have good roles for actors. There are playwrights who are more driven by image, or maybe more by multimedia.” Those would not be Steppenwolf playwrights.

One interesting discovery noted in “Outrageous Fortune” is that playwrights and theatres have very different ideas about what makes a work most likely to be produced—or not produced. Theatres cited cast size, expense, and technical demands as the three major obstacles to production, while playwrights cited expectations about audience reception and interest, cast size, and disagreement among artistic staff about the merits of a play as the key factors preventing a full production. In fact, disagreement among artistic staff ranked among the bottom three potential obstacles cited by the theatres themselves. This dissonance speaks to Jacqmin’s concerns that theatres and playwrights need to do a better job of being honest with each other about what they expect in new play development. If a play ends up being too expensive to produce, it’s probably better to tell the writer that straight up, rather than leaving them to stew about who it was on the staff that hated their final script.

Another perception expressed by some playwrights in the book is that theatre boards are naturally more conservative when it comes to pushing new work, which is widely seen as a money-losing proposition. However, the experiences of some Chicago companies go against that conventional wisdom—they have found board members eager to pay for developing new work.

Northlight Theatre artistic director B.J. Jones points to funding procured through a board member as instrumental in setting up Northlight’s Interplay staged reading series, which has led to plays that have been hits for Northlight, such as Craig Wright’s Lady (which also went off-Broadway) and Larry Gelbart’s last play, Better Late.

“Part of the money is small stipends that we try to give to nascent playwrights,” says Jones—many of them playwrights who started their careers locally. Brett Neveu (now based in L.A., but frequently produced here) was commissioned by Northlight through the Interplay program for Gas for Less, which ultimately went up in 2008 at the Goodman’s Owen space. Lisa Dillman’s Ground, which just opened at the Humana Festival at Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, was also an Interplay commission.

“We had always wanted to do a reading series,” says Jones. “We didn’t have the budget. It is not inexpensive.” But when a board member said he was interested in giving money directly to artists, Jones presented the Interplay proposal and the Sullivan Family Foundation funding came together. For Jones, the advantage with Interplay isn’t just in cultivating new work—it’s also about growing new audiences and giving existing audiences an appetite for new work.

“We have between 60-100 subscribers who come to Interplay readings,” says Jones. “Some nights we will get 200 people. For a Monday night in Skokie for a new play that nobody has heard of, that’s pretty great.”

A board member has also been instrumental for Court Theatre and its commissioning program. A company focused on classics may not seem the natural place to look for a new-works initiative, but according to artistic director Charles Newell, board member Barbara Franke was enthusiastic about funding new translations and adaptations.

“There is a need to freshen up these plays for new generations every so often,” says Newell.

The first piece commissioned through the Barbara E. Franke Commissioning Program for New Classics was Richard Nelson’s new version of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, which went up at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2009. Newell also cites the addition of resident dramaturg Drew Dir (serving a joint appointment between the University of Chicago and Court) as a sign of Court’s renewed interest in developing work with living playwrights.

Undeniably, many theatres give commissions to writers even when they know they probably won’t produce the final script. Carl says that “if you want to talk about commissions at a generic level, some theatres commission with the insight that they are not going to present that work on a mainstage, but they want to give writers money to write. They put money in writers’ pockets all the time.”

The average commissions at Steppenwolf range from $2,500 to $12,000, a range that encompasses what Carl describes as “we really want to produce this play, vs. we want to help cultivate a voice.” Carl also notes that “Steppenwolf is super-cool in that we don’t take subsidiary rights down the line. That is a great thing for playwrights and it’s exactly what all theatres should be doing.” Goodman also retains only the right of first refusal—if other theatres do the world premiere, they ask only for program credit.

Michael Halberstam, artistic director of Writers’ Theatre, notes that though Writers’ has produced new work since its inception, the company has done more in recent years to commission plays that they fully expect to produce—thus far, the playwrights who have received Writers’ commissions include the ubiquitous Neveu, Chay Yew, and composer Joshua Schmidt (who penned the score for last year’s production of A Minister’s Wife, the first musical produced in Writers’ history, and who is now working under commission for a new musical version of Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat).

“We have two new plays in our season next year,” says Halberstam. “We made it a commitment in our strategic plan to have one new play every year.” According to Halberstam, Writers’ has a “99 percent production rate” with its commissions—one play didn’t get produced because Halberstam says, “Our voices were ultimately not compatible.” Halberstam got to know Colburn’s work because Colburn made a point of visiting Writers’ several times, talking to Halberstam, and ultimately inviting him to see one of his plays in a short-works festival. Says Halberstam, “I felt, ‘Here is somebody who needs encouragement.’ He has a majestic sweeping poetic voice. It’s young right now, but it’s not naïve. It’s our responsibility to take them in and say, ‘Here is someplace you can come and work your craft. We believe in you.’ We do that with actors. We do that with directors and designers.”

Colburn works in a darker vein than might be expected for the Writers’ audience, but Halberstam says “You just can’t do the nice plays. The pressure of building a commercial hit can be so much for a playwright to bear.”

Though Halberstam says that Chicago “is an oasis for the development of new work,” Jacqmin says that the downside of Chicago’s thriving storefront scene is that “everybody is expected to work for free until they die. One of the things I’ve been talking to literary managers and artistic directors about is that there is this culture of fear and hunger in New York, which leads to groups for emerging writers and specific venues for emerging writers, like Ars Nova, Naked Angels, the Public. Younger writers there are being more integrated into the daily lives of the theatre. That is something that I feel is very lacking in Chicago. The regionals here are different animals, but I do wish there was bigger institutional push to show that we’re interested in cultivating these emerging voices.”

Many playwrights in “Outrageous Fortune” cited the New Plays lab at South Coast Repertory as a gold standard for what theatres should be doing in developing playwrights’ work over the long term.

Northlight’s Jones cautions that commissioning is only part of what playwrights need. “We have done a lot of second productions. World premieres are shiny and exciting, but they are harder to sell to an audience. I don’t think that they sell tickets by virtue of their premiere status. Craig Wright will tell you that the second production is more important in the life of the play”—a conclusion echoed by many playwrights in “Outrageous Fortune” who decry “premiere-itis.”

Though it may be an imperfect tool, commissioning remains one way for theatres to work toward building an artistic home for playwrights. Palmer says, “Playwrights often feel, and for good reason, they’re at sea somewhat. They don’t often have a chance to be engaged in an institution. It’s about building a relationship. The goal is to always produce the work, but if it doesn’t work out, we want it to get a home someplace else. We hope it will have a life in the theatre.”