GET WHAT YOU WANT: 7 yrs of lists!!

Get What You Want started seven years ago. It was a list of grant opportunities that I sent out to Freedom Train Production's 4 Black LGBTQ playwrights. I had about 6 contests listed and it was no bigger than half a page. I figured someone might benefit from having a list of opportunities. I was always told that information is power, and sharing information gives people agency. After FTP dissolved in 2011 I kept sending out the GWYW list to about a dozen black playwrights in NYC and storing it on my wordpress blog (now defunct). And then I added a few more writers to the monthly emails and then a few more. When the monthly list hit a hundred subscribers I remember thinking that this far exceeded what I had envisioned. And then it hit 200, 300, 400 people. And then New School started using the list to send to its student, and then Pace, and then a few other institutions picked up the list. I started to keep this list on my very low-tech blog (sixperfections.blogspot.com). I can see how many hits it gets. A few thousand people connect to it every month, which ends up being tens of thousands of links every year. Over the years I have gotten emails from people telling me that GWYW helped them win them a commission or grant. It is surreal. Seven years ago this summer, Get What You Want was a half a page of content sent out to 4 people. We were the outsiders and the artists overlooked in theatre. We were tired of complaining about being mistreated. We wanted to take action. And this small step was the beginning of a strange journey. Happy summer bday GET WHAT YOU WANT.