Sean Abley with Lauren Emily Whalen

“Write your play in Palm Springs, CA” entreats Desert Playwrights’ Retreat’s website. The first writing retreat only for LGBTQ+ playwrights—from published and acclaimed to just starting out—Desert Playwrights’ Retreat, established in 2018, celebrates Pride Month’s core tenets of queer creativity and community all year round. Even better, participants have all expenses paid for an unforgettable week of writing, sharing, and fellowship among their chosen family. The Brooklyn Rail spoke with founder and retreat director Sean Abley about the importance of accessible all-LGBTQ+ spaces (and spaces within those spaces) and how prospective applicants can put themselves at the forefront.

Lauren Emily Whalen (Rail): We love an origin story; tell me about Desert Playwrights’ Retreat.

Sean Abley: I had been going to Palm Springs on my own to write for years. I just love it there because everything moves a little bit slower. It’s very gay.

My friend Daniel “Rover” Singer, one of the co-writers of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), caught wind of what I was doing. So we both went out and spent all day writing, then we would share our work and give each other feedback. And I’m like, there needs to be more of us doing this.

I consulted with my friend Chris Bogia, one of the cofounders of the Fire Island Artist Residency, the world’s first LGBTQ+ artist residency. And he’s like, just rent a house, so I did.

Rail: Desert Playwrights’ Retreat is the first writing retreat only for LGBTQ+ playwrights. Why do you feel this kind of retreat is important?

Abley: I’ve been to a lot of retreats and intensives. And you’re mixed in with the general population. And often you don’t get necessarily the feedback that you’re looking for, because people are either being too careful, or just don’t understand the cultural significance of certain things or the context.

The other reason: most playwriting opportunities are in the Midwest or on the East Coast. I wanted something out here, not necessarily just for West Coast playwrights, but a little more easily accessible. Also, it was my intention to have queer people grouped together by identity. And so we have a gay cohort, a lesbian cohort, and a transgender cohort.

Rail: How did the specific cohorts come about?

Abley: The intention is that even though we’re all under the queer umbrella, sometimes it’s nice just to have a more focused group of people together. So they can have those conversations that they can only have when it’s just them. And it’s been working great.

We label the cohorts pretty specifically, so people understand what they’re coming into. But say there’s a trans gay man. He would have his choice of where he felt the most comfortable.

Rail: The retreat was established in 2018, and as of 2021, it’s all expenses paid for participants. What was the rationale behind this decision, and how is it made possible?

Abley: In the very first cohort, I picked a group of playwrights that I thought would be good together. But there was one playwright who couldn’t afford to come, so I paid for them. And it was at that moment I realized: oh, right, playwrights don’t have money.

Ever since then, I’ve raised the money. So we pay for their flights, we pay for their food, and we pay for the lodging. Part of our core mission is removing the barrier of money to participation.

Rail: What kind of work has come out of the retreat?

Abley: The interesting thing is we don’t require people to have a specific thing that they’re working on when they come to the retreat.

We now have a compulsory writing assignment at the beginning. We use Paula Vogel’s “Bake Off” [a written exercise with an assigned theme completed within forty-eight hours] as a model, and on the first day, everyone has to write a ten-minute play. We’ve had people come in that are doing their final draft, we’ve had people come in that are starting from scratch. We’ve had performance pieces, standard plays, and solo work. And not all of it queer.

Rail: You host up to twenty-four LGBTQ+ playwrights twice a year, in April and October. Tell me about what a day at the retreat looks like for a participant.

Abley: The first day, everybody gets in early enough to meet at a Jewish deli for what we call family dinner.

Monday is family dinner, Tuesday’s the writing assignment. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday: basically quiet writing during the day, hanging out in the evenings. And we share work on Fridays and Saturdays. Everybody gets thirty minutes, and they can do with it what they will. Most people present pages and get feedback, but you can also just read something. Sunday we all head back home.

Rail: What are you looking for in a retreat participant?

Abley: First and foremost is a passion for the art form. We ask people to tell us about themselves. We want to make sure that they’re dedicated theater artists, but they don’t have to be a produced or published playwright to be part of the retreat.

Rail: What does the application process entail?

Abley: It’s pretty simple: just go to the website! We have application windows for our April and October retreats. The best thing to do is sign up for our newsletter, because that’s when we announce when the application windows are open.

Rail: Any other tips and tricks for those who’d like to apply?

Abley: Well, to be quite frank, we do a lot of referrals. It’s a pretty specific vibe out there, right? Can you be productive, generous, and kind for a week in a house full of people you’ve never met?

So with that in mind, get to know other playwrights that have been through the retreat—the list is on the website. Get to know me and the other staff and the board. We have people that reach out to us on social media all the time. That’s cool. You can send an email through the website, just introducing yourself. I would say that 80 percent of the people that have come through have been through recommendations.