This
is the first installment of the blog Submitting
Like A Man (SLAM), created by writer Mya
Kagan. The project examines what happens when Mya resubmits scripts to
previously rejected opportunities, this time using a man’s name. For more on
SLAM, check out submittinglikeaman.com
and follow @theSLAMblog and @Mya_Mya.

Strap on your balls and grow some
chest hair: For the next year, I will be submitting like a man — resubmitting
every script I have written, but under a man’s name.

Let me explain. 

From the day I graduated NYU nine
years ago with a shiny new BFA in Dramatic Writing, I started submitting plays.
There are many ways one can build a resume as a playwright, and submitting to
calls for scripts was the one I chose. A few months in, I started keeping a
list of all the submissions I was doing. Part organization, part paranoia — I
wanted to have a record of where I’d sent my stuff.

Fast forward to today, and that list
is 117 entries long.
The majority is submissions to theatres, theatre companies, and festivals. A
handful (especially recently) is submissions to TV networks’ writing programs.
All of them are submissions sent in response to open calls for scripts; none of
them are works I sent unsolicited, and it doesn’t count anything sent to
someone I know or a friend-of-a-friend who was looking for plays.

Here are the results: About 10% of
the scripts on the list have been accepted, 5% have been semi-finalists or
“almosts,” and 85% were rejections. That may sound grim, but this business is a
numbers game. 

Or so I’ve always assumed.

Over the past few years, I have been
increasingly disheartened by the statistics on women in theatre and TV. The
exact number varies from study to study, but they all come in around 20%.
That’s right — 51% of the population in the US is women, but only about
20% of our writers in theatre and TV are female. Wanna see the data for
yourself? Read The Count from
the Dramatists Guild, or American
Theatre’s article that aptly likens statistics on women writers
to the old “Really?!?” bit from "SNL’s" Weekend Update. And if those aren’t
enough to convince you, Women in Arts & Media Coalition has a whole list of depressing studies,
as does WomenArts.

With all these numbers reminding me
that my industry sees and treats me as inferior to my male counterpart, I
started wondering what my career would be like if I had an indiscernible name.
What if I was a Jordan or a Morgan? Or what if I was an unfamiliar foreign
name, like Sizwe or Hideyoshi? Would I have been more successful if my
gender was uncertain? Or better yet — would I have been more successful if
people straight-up thought I was a dude? 

Enter “Submitting Like a Man” — one
year in which I take all the rejected scripts on my list, and resubmit them
using a man’s name.

For convenience’s sake, we’ll call my
new male self Max Kines. That’s not the name I’m actually using (the real name,
of course, will have to be kept secret), but it’s in the same vein as the name
of choice, by which I mean, the name keeps me in the same demographic
as my real self (white and Jewish) with the exception, of course, of
gender.

Everything else about Max is the same
as me. Max is 31
years old, and a New Yorker of 13 years. Like mine, Max’s work is
presented with adjectives like smart, lively, and deliciously absurd. Max
went to NYU, has a professional website akin to my own, has a Twitter handle,
and has the same resume as me. For the sake of tricking Google, the titles of
each script have been changed, but the content of each script — the actual words
on the page — remain the same. Oh, and Max loves summer, hates grapefruit and is
definitely a Democrat.

There is more to all of this — rules
and guidelines I’ve set up for how it will work — which I’ll elaborate on at
greater length in a forthcoming post. Of course, despite all the structure I
have given to this project, I do acknowledge this experiment is far
from scientific. Although I am submitting the scripts to the same places, I
can’t control for pretty much anything else at all — I will be amongst a
different applicant pool, at a time when any given organization will be looking
for different things than before, and in all likelihood will be evaluated by a
different set of readers. There is nothing in this that will “prove”
anything; it’s just a project that I am conducting out of curiosity.

I know there are many more questions
that I’ve not yet addressed. What do I hope to gain? What will I do if Max is
accepted? What’s in a name, anyway? Stay with me, and I
promise they’ll be answered.

Originally published by Howlround.

Mya Kagan is a writer based in New York (ahem, Brooklyn) whose work is known for being a spiky blend of smart, lively, deliciously absurd and wildly entertaining. Favorite shows include "Play Chunks!" in Ars Nova’s ANT Fest and "Puppet Love" at the American Globe (Festival Finalist & Honorable Mention for Best Show), as well as readings and workshops with New Dramatists, FRESH PRODUCE’d, Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab, Dixon Place, and more. In 2012, Mya participated in the 10×10 Professional Development Series, where she was selected for development by Big Beach Films (the producers of "Little Miss Sunshine"). In 2014, she spent a day in the window at Drama Book Shop in New York City as part of Write Out Front, an installation of working writers. Mya also performs improv and works as a freelancer and has been hired to write everything from webisodes to online dating profiles (really).