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Monday, November 7, 2011

Premiere Stages 2012 Play Festival

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Premiere Stages is committed to supporting emerging playwrights by developing and producing new plays. Through our Play Festival script competition, Premiere Stages offers developmental opportunities to four playwrights. We provide playwrights with an encouraging and focused environment in which they can develop their work through discussions, rehearsals, sit-down readings, staged readings, and fully-produced Equity productions.

Beginning October 15, 2011 through January 15, 2012 Premiere Stages will accept submissions of unproduced new plays from playwrights born or currently residing in the greater metropolitan area (New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania). There is no fee to enter. All plays submitted to the festival are evaluated by a professional panel of theatre producers, dramaturgs, playwrights, scholars and publishers.

Four of the submitted plays will be selected for staged readings with equity casts in March of 2012 and awarded cash prizes. Following the March readings, the winner of Play Festival is selected for a full production during the 2012 Premiere Stages Main Stage Season and awarded $2000; a second play will be selected for a 29 hour Staged Reading and be awarded $750, and the two other finalist writers will be awarded $500.
At Premiere Stages, we pride ourselves on a uniquely accelerated process, in which plays we find particularly promising are developed and fully produced within a year of submission. In many professional theatres the time span between meeting a writer, staging a reading and producing the play can be years. At Premiere Stages, immediately following the Spring Readings, two plays enter an intensive development phase. Playwrights work with a director, dramaturg, and design team to develop the play for a staged workshop or full production only a few months later. When we find a writer we believe in, our play festival process allows Premiere Stages to fully commit the time, talent, and resources necessary to share their work with a broad regional audience.
Premiere Stages’ productions offer playwrights the chance to see their work fully realized on stage. We hope, however, that the plays developed at Premiere will go on to subsequent productions throughout the country. Because of this, playwrights whose scripts we produce retain the coveted “World Premiere” brand on their plays. Premiere Stages also strives to facilitate relationships between playwrights and other theatre professionals who we think will respond to their work.

Premiere Stages will accept full scripts from literary agents or theatre professionals familiar with our work. All other writers are required to submit an 8-page script sample and synopsis. Please review full submission requirements and guidelines below.
2012 Premiere Play Festival Submission Guidelines Plays must be full-length and have a cast size of no more than eight.

Plays submitted must be unpublished and must be works that have not been previously produced (readings, workshops, showcases are okay).
Plays must be written by playwrights who were born or reside in the greater metropolitan area (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania).

Playwrights of color are highly encouraged to submit their work.

Preferred submissions will explore or address contemporary issues. If you would like the script/synopsis returned, please include a SASE DEADLINE for postmark of scripts/synopses is January 15, 2012.

Plays and synopses will be evaluated by a panel of arts professionals. The panel will submit their recommendations to the producing artistic director and resident dramaturg.
Playwrights (non-agent submissions) Playwrights submitting without an agent must include:

A brief synopsis of the play (no more than half a page).

A character breakdown.

A history of the play’s development (if any).

The playwright’s professional bio.

A script sample from the play (no more than 8 pages).

The panel will request full scripts from synopses of interest. Playwrights who are asked to submit full scripts, including those not selected for expanded development, will receive an evaluation of the submitted play from the panel upon request.

Agent submissions

Full scripts will be accepted from legitimate literary agencies and by professional recommendation of someone with an affiliation to Premiere Stages. Agents may submit electronically (PDF format only).

The schedule for the Premiere Play Festival is as follows:
October 15, 2011: Premiere Stages begins accepting submissions

Jan. 15, 2012: Deadline for submission to festival (Post mark deadline)

March 1: Scripts are reduced to four finalists

Mid-March: Readings of four plays

March 31, 2012: Festival winner and runner-up are selected for expanded development

April to July: Development of scripts continues

Late June 2012: 29 hour Staged Reading of Runner-up

July or September, 2012: Full Production of Festival Winner

Send all submissions to:

John Wooten, Producing Artistic Director Premiere Stages at Kean University 1000 Morris Avenue Hutchinson Hall, 2nd Floor Union, NJ 07083

For more information about the Premiere Play Festival, please visit our website at www.kean.edu/premierestages

For any questions regarding the submission guidelines please email us at premiere@kean.edu.

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