We were lucky to catch up with Peter Fenton recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Peter, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
I would characterize my resilience as coming from anger, actually, which is rather funny because I consider myself a peaceful person. I would say when I get knocked down at something I know I can and will succeed at, it motivates me to get back up and throw everything I have at proving the people who left me out wrong. I submitted writing pieces to my undergrad’s literary magazine every single semester and every single semester, I got rejected. I know I have a story to tell and I kept digging in and wanting to prove those gatekeepers wrong—and I now have a play premiered Off-Broadway and I’ve been building a career as a writer and producer. Writing, for me, is an inherent vocation of creating opportunities and building relationships. The most significant barrier in the industry is gaining access to decision-makers. When I cannot find a way into that room, I create one. If I wanted my words to only live on the page, I would have become a novelist. To lead productions in a supercharged community filled with diverse actors and creatives where my stories become sharper and more impactful through every step of the development process is my ultimate goal.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Sure thing! I’m a writer and producer of film and theater. My dark comedy/drama play, Abandon All Hope, premiered Off-Broadway as part of the 2023 Rogue Theater Festival. As a screenwriter and film producer, I’ve won awards for both producing and co-writing Night Voices (2023) through Dadley Productions and I recently made my film directorial debut with a drama short, Inherently Special (2023). I’m generally most interested in creating quick-witted satire, redemption arcs, and retellings of well-known stories—Philly is my home city, but I also enjoy working in New York and anywhere else my work takes me. I’m a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and I’m an alum of the apprenticeship program at Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, and at the time of this interview, I have four productions lined up: a professional regional production of Abandon All Hope reuniting the original Off-Broadway creative team in my hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania; a community theater production of my brand-new teen comedy, Coronation; and both an Off-Broadway reading and a high school production of my dark comedy remix on the Peter Pan story, I Think We’re Lost.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Oh, good question. I’d say the three qualities that have gotten me to where I am today would be (1) my insatiable need to improve what I see in the world, (2) the audacity to believe I can be the change I want to see, and (3) the unwavering support of friends and mentors who take me seriously. I think it all starts with support from friends and mentors. You can’t change the world if you can’t change your world—and who is in your world? It’s your community. It’s your friends, it’s your teachers. I began writing when I was fourteen years old, as a cast member in the middle school play. We were performing this insultingly simple script meant for children, so I said to my teacher, “Mrs. Fisher, this play sucks. I can write better than this.” She challenged me, “Go write me a better play.” That’s what I did. I went home and wrote up a storm. One year later, my middle school performed Good Knight and Goodbye. My basic writing process was born: I had channeled my fury and frustration into fuel to realize the world I saw in my mind’s eye—this one had a better middle school play.
The best way, I’ve found, to build support from your community in you is to give support to others. Trade favors, listen to people, build genuine friendships. In my industry, I can count on one hand the number of opportunities I’ve had that I blindly submitted to and got in only on the strength of an application as a disembodied creative. I wouldn’t have nearly enough fingers to count the opportunities that have come about as a result of talking to people in person and online with no agenda at hand but building connections and knowing people in the industry. Pass along opportunities you know your friends will appreciate. It won’t always be 1:1, but I’ve learned paying it forward helps people remember me and think of me fondly when things come their way I could be a good fit for.
What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?
Insecurity does creep in from time to time because most of my work has been self-produced and not given the greenlight from a stranger, so I sometimes do find myself having the thought—with my mountain of rejection letters—”is anything I’ve ever written actually good or am I just a hard worker who’s gotten lucky?” And obviously, I know that’s not true. I am a good writer and I have people in my life who can be honest with me when they like or don’t like something I’ve written.
I’ve been in therapy and I have supportive family and friends to keep me grounded. A “No” from one person (or any number of one persons) doesn’t mean “No” to you or “No” to the piece from everyone forever. February was a really tough month for me of “No”s from various opportunities I had submitted my scripts to. And sometimes you can’t help, when you throw so much of yourself into any given script, feeling like the “No” on your script is a “No” to you as a person, when rationally—I know, as a producer—decisions are rarely personal on the other end of submissions.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.byPeterFenton.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peterfent/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-fenton-681573b3/
- Other: New Play Exchange: https://newplayexchange.org/users/24181/peter-fenton
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7333590/
Image Credits
Laura Colee, Brendan John Jones
