Exiled Tongues Artist-in-Residence

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APPLY FOR EXILED TONGUES 2020 ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCY PROGRAM

APPLY HERE: https://forms.gle/taDvBCN4njUmHEPR7

In order to support emerging artists of color, Exiled Tongues is providing $200 microgrants to artists of color who articulate a new, inclusive path forward for American theater in 2021 and beyond. Grants are unrestricted and can be used for anything. Artists must only comply with residency goals.

ABOUT US

Exiled Tongues is a theater collective that provides financial, artistic, and collaborative support to artists who center diasporic consciousness. We realize that mainstream American theater suffers from a severe lack of representation and deserves serious discussion on colonization and the legacy of post-colonialism especially within the American context. Our productions showcase the complex stories of BIPOC and acknowledge intersectional identities. We use our intersectional identities as a form of theatrical empowerment and seek to make change beyond theater and into our communities.

KC Melting Pot Theatre's 2nd Annual New Play Development Festival

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Deadline: December 31, 2020 or first 50 submissions


KC Melting Pot Theatre is looking for new full-length plays by Black playwrights. 

The play should have no production history (readings are acceptable). 

There are no restrictions on content nor themes except we are not accepting musicals, one-person shows or children shows at this time. 

To submit, please email your script in Word or Pdf format to newplays.kcmpt@gmail.com. 

Scripts should include playwright contact info on title page, character/cast requirements and a 3-5 sentence synopsis. Plays should be typed in 12pt font in Times New Roman or Courier. Our reading panel will select three finalists who will receive fully staged readings in our New Play Festival over the July 9 – 11, 2021 weekend. 

One winner will then be selected and will receive a $500 stipend and will receive a workshop production in 2022. This is a development opportunity and the winning play will have their play read by professional actors for at least two table readings followed by Q&A with director, cast and crew. Playwright will have time to revise and complete a final draft of play and then the workshop production will be fully staged with audience talkbacks.

Finalists will be notified no later than May 1st, 2021. The winning piece will be selected July 11, 2021 after the completion of our New Play Festival.

Livermore Shakespeare Festival commission seeks playwright of color

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Deadline:

Up to $6,000 playwright commission (full length play) with Livermore Shakespeare Festival (LSF).

This commission is for a playwright of color to celebrate scientists of color while exploring a current science theme. The selected playwright will be tasked with writing an original play which includes a component about scientific research currently pursued by our local Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL). Many possibilities include using supercomputers to identify a COVID-19 vaccine and treatment candidates. We will partner the selected playwright with advisory support from scientists at the LLNL and/or Sandia National Laboratory.

Here is a link to the request for qualifications (RFQ) as well as the details of the commission. www.Livermoreshakes.org/ScienceAtPlay . There you will see our program called “Science At Play” under which this commission falls. The RFQ goes into much greater detail about the commission. Please know that you MUST follow the submission guidelines. Failure to adhere to submission guidelines will disqualify you from the commission opportunity.

Thank you to all who submit according to the guidelines.

Specific details about this commission: www.Livermoreshakes.org/ScienceAtPlay

Type of Opportunity: Semi-staged reading with possibility of full production

Restrictions: 

• Person of color, US citizen only, must have a B.A. or B.S. 
• Must have completed at least one full length script, on any subject, that has been produced in a festival, by a professional theatre, writers foundation or as a series of developmental readings with a professional theatre company or playwright's foundation. Self-production does not fit these guidelines. 
• If you are in an MFA playwright program, please feel free to email if you have not had a play produced.

Submission guidelines:

1. Playwright must submit a 10 page writing sample in pdf format (Do not send more than 10 pages directing us to pages you wish us to consider).

2. Resume (theatrical) in pdf format

3. Letter of interest (3 page maximum, 11-12 point font, in Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana or Calibri) addressing the following questions 4 questions A - D: (in pdf format)

A. Why are you attracted to a science play? And/or what is your connection to science?

B. Have you had a writing project where you collaborated with a dramaturg or an advisor? If so, describe the process and the value you received from said process.

C. Are you willing to work with a dramaturg and/or science advisors? What do you imagine that process would look like?

D. Would you be comfortable with a remote working situation where interactions will take place over the computer and phone?

4. File naming convention for your 3 documents (in .pdf format) must be as follows:

-YourLastname_10Pages_SAP. (Ex. Williams_ 10Pages_SAP.pdf)

-YourLastName_Resume_SAP (Ex. Williams_Resume_SAP.pdf)

-YourLastName_LOI_SAP (Ex. Williams_LOI_SAP.pdf)

5. Deadline: 9/26/2020 One submission per playwright only. No fee.

6. Submit via email to Michael Wayne Rice, Resident Director: Michael@LivermoreShakes.org

The L.B. Williams Playwriting Contest for BIPOC Writers

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Deadline: November 1, 2020

NYC

In furthering the company’s mission to, in part, “foster diversity and parity,” on August 1, 2020 we announced a new play contest for playwrights of color (including Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, etc.) This contest is different from many out there in that we are seeking not so much new plays as potential new members of our company who wish to work with us continuously in the future to develop their new plays.

The contest is named to honor the memory of L.B. Williams, an actor in our company who passed away in 2017. He loved working on new plays, whether as an actor, or in his wise critiques, and regularly attended our Monday night readings to do so.

Our development process includes a reading of new plays at company meetings on Monday nights, followed by a developmental workshop with a director and cast, and finally, an Equity Showcase production of the play in our small theatre space on West 44th St in New York City upon approval of the Leadership team. The goal and focus are to allow the playwright to achieve the best possible version of their script.

For this particular contest, the following rules apply:

1. Plays should be suitable for or even specifically written to be performed over Zoom or equivalent digital technology. (We hope to produce the plays live in our performance space in 2021 should health conditions permit.)

2. Plays should run no longer than 10-minutes.

3. Plays may be on any theme and in any style, but should not rely on complicated production values to make them work.

4. No musicals, children’s shows, or adaptations accepted.

5. New work only that has not been produced (staged-readings okay).

6. Deadline: November 1, 2020. Plays should be sent via email as a PDF only to nctcsubmissions@gmail.com, with the writer’s last name and L.B. Contest in the subject line. (Ex: “Smith L.B. Contest”). Winners will be announced in January.

7. Winning plays selected for production will result in a royalty payment to the writer of $100. Writers maintain full copyright of their work.
8. Winning plays will follow our development process: a Monday night reading, followed by a workshop, followed by production. During the COVID-19 pandemic, that process will be online. By submitting your play, you agree to participate actively in that process.

9. Questions regarding the contest should be sent to the email address in #6 above.

non-linear 2.0: works-in-progress by black lgbtq artists

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Deadline: August 27, 2020

Saturday, September 26th at 5:30pm EST
Online!

Curated & Produced by Briyana D. Clarel

non-linear is back again for Free Fringe Philly 2020! This year’s showcase featuring works-in-progress by Black lgbtq artists is going virtual. Send your drafts and your half-finished scripts. Send your choreopoems, TV pilots, dramatic monologues, poems, one acts, sketches, ten minute musicals, screenplays, performance art, and solo shows.

The Process:

Step One: Submit your wonderful work.

Step Two: Keep creating your piece! Work with Briyana to schedule a rehearsal with any actors you may need.

Step Three: See your work come to life at the showcase! Works-in-progress can be presented as on-book staged readings. This is an opportunity to hear your work aloud, receive feedback, and make new connections.

To submit, fill out the form below by Thursday, August 27th.
submit your work

In the spirit of Free Fringe Philly, this show is free to the public. Artists involved will receive a stipend. To support this project financially, you can donate here or via Patreon.

Questions? Email contact@thestarfruitproject.com.

Abingdon Theatre Company Fall Festival of Short Plays

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Deadline: August 17, 2020

NYC

In this time for change, Abingdon Theatre Company is recommitting to creating opportunities for all voices to be heard. With this in mind, we are delighted to announce our Fall Festival of Short Plays! 

This will be a 2-week virtual festival shedding light on stories by people of color. 

We will be taking submissions later in the summer and our diverse panel of judges, theatre professionals who are BIPOC, will select 6 pieces created, and to be performed and directed by people of color.

BIPOC Playwrights:

To be considered to participate in our Virtual Festival of Short Plays please submit the following to Beatriz Cavalieri: bcavalieri@abingdontheatre.org

-A Short Play Max 60 Pgs. (60 mins long) Excerpt of a play also welcome. All genres are welcome.

-Headshot and Resume

-The 6 chosen plays will be invited to participate in the two-week Virtual Festival.

-The winner of the festival will receive a stipend to be used to support further exploration of their piece and will be invited to become an Artist in Residence at Abingdon Theatre Company. Abingdon will then also commit to producing the winning piece as part of our Around the Table free reading series. Through the outreach, online readings and finally the staged reading of the winning piece, we hope to engage around 1500 people of color and create a more diverse environment at Abingdon.

Four Walls Theater call for scripts

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Deadline: August 7, 2020

Four Walls Theater is a grass roots socially responsible theater that produces new plays through online readings, working with diverse artists from around the country. Four Walls Theater honors people of all backgrounds and works to create a safe and supportive community for our artists and audiences.

For our next show which will be in October, 2020, we would like to boost voices of playwrights who are BIPOC and/or who are members of the LGBTQ+ community. If you do not fall in these categories, please do not send work at this time. As we are performing a reading virtually, we have learned to ask for a few things with our scripts technically:

-Between 60-75 pages (no more than 75 pages)
-Between 4-7 actors (can be double cast)

-Diversity in the actors 

-Realistic capabilities for virtual readings

-Trans visibility/rights -weird illness
-health stories
-human rights

As a socially responsible theater, each show that we do chooses its own charity or non-profit that it will spotlight. A portion of all donations from the show will go to support that charity or non-profit. As a result, the topics that we are looking for are rather relevant to today’s world and we ask that playwrights consider this carefully:

- Trans visibility/rights

- political rights

- immigration/ICE

- weird illness

- unemployment

- education reform

- health stories

- gun control

- human rights

- voting rights

We are open to other stories as well but you have to make sure that we will think it is relevant to what audiences will be interested in hearing today as we traverse our current upside down world and barrel towards an election. We are open to biography, drama, comedy, dark comedy, fantasy, magical realism, adventure, historical drama, etc.

Here are a few things to avoid:

-horror
-a lot of violence
-scripts that require a lot of physicality
-TYA scripts
-scripts that require people to be talking simultaneously

To date, Four Walls Theater, founded in March, 2020, amidst the corona virus crisis, has produced three shows: Ageless by Bridgette Dutta Portman, Ghosts of Bogota by Diana Burbano, and Rights of Passage by Michelle Tyrene Johnson.
Submit your play by Friday, August 7 2020 to fourwallstheater@gmail.com. Put “Script Submission” with the title of your play in the subject of your email.

Gallery Players 24th Annual Black Box New

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Deadline: August 15, 2020

The Gallery Players in Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York, is seeking plays for its 24th Annual Black Box New Play Festival to be held in January 2021.

We are specificallv seeking plays from the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) playwriting community.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic the upcoming festival will be performed over Zoom. Accordingly we are seeking plays that have been specifically written for the Zoom format. Each play selected will be performed with non-equity actors. Playwrights must be available for rehearsals and use this as an opportunity to continue work on their play.

THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: POST MARKED BY August 15th, 2020.

Submission guidelines:

• Plays must be un-produced in any format (readings are ok).

• Length may be from 10 minutes to 15 minutes MAXIMUM. Longer plays will not be considered.

• You may submit a maximum of 2 plays. 

• Pages must be numbered

• A cover page with Title of the play and the playwright’s contact information is required, along with a plot synopsis of the play, a character breakdown and a copy of your resume

• Send two copies of your play(s), along with your resume, to: 

The Gallery Players
Black Box New Play Festival
199 14th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11215.

We will only contact you if your play has been accepted into the Festival. If you want confirmation that your mailing was received by us, please include a self-addressed stamped return postcard. We do not accept email submissions. We do not return scripts. Any scripts not chosen for the Festival will be destroyed to protect the copyright.

Dragonfly Arts NJ seeks plays by women and POC

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NJ community theater company is looking for short plays for our Zoom reading series. We really want comedies and prefer works by women and POC. The plays should be 10-20 minutes long and must have female characters. Email DragonflyArtsNJ@gmail.com.

Charles Rowan Beye NEW PLAY COMMISSION

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Deadline: July 31, 2020
Presented by Urbanite Theatre
​
In honor of one of the earliest, most impactful and devoted Urbanite supporters, we are dedicating an annual new play commission to our dear friend Charlie Beye, who passed away earlier this year.

Along with his husband Richard Deppe, Charlie adored new work, provocative themes and challenging humor. He had a talent for illuminating the social and cultural importance of each production, and regularly wrote Urbanite blisteringly funny, poignant responses to each production, which staff members anticipated as much as reviews from critics.

To celebrate his legacy, we invite early to mid-career playwrights to apply for a $2000 commission for a new work. There will be two proposals selected.

Questions? Email us at submissions@urbanitetheatre.com

For our inaugural commission, submissions for this award are open only to writers of color.

Commissions:

Two proposals will be awarded commissions of $2000 each.
To apply, a playwright must submit:
• A one-page play proposal for a new, full-length, unwritten work
• A one-page resume
• One of your finished plays, for reference only

Free-form proposals for new plays must:

• Investigate a pressing social or cultural issue
• Utilize four performers or fewer
• Explain the use of singular, flexible or representational scenic demands
• Demonstrate how the use of humor will play a role in your script
=

Eligibility Rules:

• Submissions may only be from playwrights of color
• Playwrights must reside in the United States
• One submission per playwright

Interested playwrights are encouraged to read Urbanite’s mission statement and look at our production history to get an idea of the type of work we produce.


CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION

(Must have a Google Account to submit - it's free)

Commission contracts will be offered in August, 2020, and will be announced upon signing.

The Crossroads Project: The 2021 Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative

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Deadline: August 15, 2020

Bloomington-Normal IL

The 2021 Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative welcomes submissions for full-length, unproduced plays by playwrights of color in accordance with the mission statement of the Crossroads Project (see below). A diverse panel of judges comprising faculty, staff, and students will select one playwright as the winner of the contest.

The winning playwright will receive:

• An invitation to Illinois State University in Bloomington-Normal, IL for a one-week new play development workshop, culminating in a public staged reading. The playwright may also be invited to offer guest lectures and colloquia. The Crossroads Project will cover costs for travel, housing, and meals during the workshop.
• An honorarium of $500 for the workshop.

To be eligible to win the contest, a playwright must be available for a one-week workshop in late March 2021 (exact dates TBD). Due to funding limitations, the Crossroads Project can only cover costs for travel within the United States.

The deadline for submissions is August 15, 2020, 11:59 p.m. (central daylight time). There is no entry fee. We only accept electronic submissions in PDF format. Because our staff and resources are limited, we can only consider the first 100 submissions.

Please include in your submission:

• A sample from your play up to 15 pages. This does not have to be the first 15 pages of the play.
• A playwright’s statement (max. 250 words) describing your inspiration for writing the play, as well as how you believe a workshop in a university setting will further your development process.
• A synopsis of the play (max. 250 words).
• A character list with short descriptions for each character (age, ethnicity, gender, occupation, family relationships, etc.)

Please follow the following guidelines when submitting your play:

• A playwright may only submit one play per contest. The writer of the play must submit their own work.
• Plays that have been previously fully produced or published are ineligible for the contest. Plays that have previously had workshops or staged readings are eligible.
• Submissions must be the original work of the playwright, which may include adaptations of fictional or factual material. Translations of other playwrights’ work are not accepted.
• The submitting playwright must either be the owner and controller of the copyright or provide written proof that they have acquired the legal right to use copyrighted material in their work.
• Submissions must be full-length plays.
• Musicals are not accepted. However, plays with limited music requirements are accepted.
• The primary language of the play must be English.

There are no other restrictions in subject matter or style.
The Crossroads Project reserves the right to accept or reject any submitted play for any reason.

We will contact semi-finalists by the end of October 2020 and ask them to submit the full play.

The winning playwright will be notified by mid-January 2021.

Inquiries about the Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative should be directed to:

Kee-Yoon Nahm, D.F.A.
Assistant Professor in Theatre Studies
Chair, The Crossroads Project

Email: knahm@ilstu.edu

Goodly Frame Theatre seeks short Zoom plays from BIPOC

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Deadline: June 28, 2020

Goodly Frame Theatre, a fringe theatre company based in Greensboro, North Carolina, is now accepting short play submissions for Series 2 of the GFT web series, ​Zoom Fest.​ Series 2 is reserved for Black, Indigenous, Person of Color (BIPOC) playwrights, with an emphasis on BIPOC directors and actors.

Goodly Frame Theatre is committed to focusing Series 2 of the ​Zoom Fest​ platform on the immediate need to address our nation’s current situation, as well as to move beyond the typical American theatre’s general statement of solidarity to a specific, intentional step toward becoming a more inclusive influence in the North Carolina theatre community.

We are looking for plays written specifically for the Zoom medium, not stage plays that have been adapted to work on a computer screen.

Rules for Submission:

All plays must be in line with GFT’s mission to model “innovative staging choices that open minds and challenge typical conceptions about the relationships between texts, actors, and audiences” and “encourage sustainable dialogues among the voices of Greensboro, the region, and across ‘this goodly frame,’ the earth.” All plays must contain a complete plot structure that includes a beginning, a middle, and an end.

• All plays must be written with a performance time of 8-12 minutes in mind.
• Characters should be aware that they are online and interacting with other characters on Zoom. As such, stage directions should be limited to what can be done within the Zoom platform.
• Characters may be written to appear together in one Zoom frame with the understanding that they must be cast with actors who live in the same household.
• Preference for script selection for Series 2 will be stories that explore an aspect of the human condition with themes related to today’s social and political climate in relation to race and inequality; however, all themes will be considered.
• Genres may include but are not limited to drama, comedy, tragedy, satire, or farce.
• While mature and sensitive themes are expected, scripts with nudity or excessive profanity will be rejected. There is no limit to the number of plays a playwright may submit, and plays can have prior productions or submissions to additional theatres outside of central North Carolina.
• Playwrights of selected scripts will be required to meet (online) with their script’s director and the season producer for one production meeting to discuss story, characters, intent, and the unique tech involved in the Zoom Fest​ project.

Submission Procedure

Each script should be submitted in a separate email with two attachments:

1. script with no name or contact information
2. headshot

The body of the email should include a reference to ​Zoom Fest​, all contact information, and a bio.
Scripts should be submitted by email to submissions@goodlyframe.org.
No script will be accepted that does not follow the rules and procedures guidelines.

The deadline for submissions is midnight on Sunday, June 28. Selections will be announced on or before Monday, July 13.