Risk is This...
The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival starts on Friday!

I thought I’d take a moment to share why I started Risk is This… and how it got its name. I started Risk is This… in 2002 as a way to help develop new plays that were experimental. After being involved with a number of playwrighting festivals, I felt that they did a wonderful job developing realistic work, but often were not the right model for supporting plays with a non-naturalistic vision. The collaborative nature of the feedback sessions always tended to guide the play towards the common language of realism. A play that started out as Waiting for Godot could easily be turned into an episode of “Friends”.

The goal of Risk is This… is not to have a lot of people giving the playwright feedback on how to rewrite his or her play, but rather to have a team of actors and designers giving the play a week's worth of work in earnest towards the playwrights vision, often a vision of a new kind of theater we are all just discovering. At the end of that week, designers present conceptual drawings of what the perfect designs for a full production might be. The actors present a staged reading showing some of the work they have done on the acting style that best fits the playwright’s vision.

At the end of the reading, the audience is invited to imagine what the realization of this vision might be. It is an invitation to enter the world of the play and to face its challenges rather than encouraging the playwright to make those challenges easier. I hope you can join us.

How Risk Got its Name

When I was in eighth grade, my French teacher told us a story that at the time I believed to be true, but I now think is apocryphal. Madame Bardy told us all about the extreme difficulty of the French Baccalauréat (the test taken at the end of secondary school) and how a 20 out of 20 (the highest score possible) was almost never given. With this dramatic build up, she regaled us with one of the most extraordinary moments in French test-taking history.

The test for Philosophy consisted of one question each year. For example, “What is beauty?” “What is truth?” Students were given four hours for the test and the assumption was that the student would use the time to walk through the definitions philosophers from Socrates to Sartre had given in demonstration of the student’s intensive year of study. One year the question was “Define Risk.” All of the students took the full four hours analyzing the history of philosophical thought regarding risk. One student, however, wrote a single sentence on the paper and turned it in: “Risk is this…” The professors debated for hours on what grade to give it. Should it be a 1 (the lowest grade) or is this the purest definition of risk possible. In the end, the professors decided to give it a 20, for most of them it was the only time in their careers they had given the highest mark possible.

I have always loved this story. For me, Risk is This . . .is the perfect name for a playwriting festival that challenges us to explore new vistas in the world of theater.

-Rob Melrose
Artistic Director

Risk is This . . . was made possible in part by Grants for the Arts / San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, Mental Insight Foundation, and the San Francisco Arts Commission