Apparently, the critics at the Austin Film Festival like our play, Sleepy Hollow: Hex of the Headless Horsemen. Our play made the cut and is a “Second Rounder”! What does that mean, you may ask? The AFF critics like it enough to try and convince us to buy a $375 conference badge and other add-ons, like a $25 raffle ticket to pitch our script, a $100 luncheon ticket, and other money grabs. Sure seems like the vanity publishing industry is thriving… and throwing festivals.

In case you don’t know the pay scale for stageplays, our experience has been that it is rare for original pieces to make more than $100 a run in the current market (and often much less than that). Also – even for final round playwright award winners at the AFF, the prize was a staged reading —not monetary compensation. These up-sell attempts from the AFF are something else. Next level, even. Let’s say that I’m choosing to be amused & impressed in a Max Bialystock fashion rather than waste any anger. But, that $20 early entry fee is money well spent – now we can slap “2022 AFF Second Rounder” on all our promotional posters, right?

See, they told us (and, one would reasonably assume, no more than 50% of the other entrants) that our script was in the top 20% of all entries! So, we can be proud of that. To a limited degree. It kinda feels like coming in 2nd place in a World’s Biggest Loser contest.

So, come and see a play that the Austin Film Festival is happy to give a lukewarm thumbs-up! We’re doing a staged reading without any help from them on October 30th, to build momentum for a full production of #Hex in the future. And the actual full name of our play is Sleepy Hollow: Hex of the Headless Horseman.