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Greetings Playwrights and Playwriting teachers; Hope you're all writing and getting ready to submit your plays to KCACTF. This is another thrilling year for playwrights because of all of the new opportunities for our student and faculty playwrights. I am including a Playwriting Cheat Sheet LINK on the website so that you can better understand all of the playwriting opportunities for students and faculty. I'm also including a description of the newly created David L. Shelton full-length student play project, which is an exclusively Region IV creation. The deadline for all submissions (except for the David Shelton) to the National Playwriting Program chair is October 30. I must have your plays, submitted electronically, by that date. We have very little turn-around time to send them to another region for blind readings and rankings and get them back by late November. The David Shelton full-length is due by November 30! After the blind readings and rankings I will contact you to let you know if your play has been chosen for the Regional Festival. We will be choosing six one-act plays and six ten-minute plays to be read at the festival. Student directors who are assisted by a faculty mentor and a stage manager will direct the ten minute plays. We will carefully choose and train student directors and give them rehearsal space, actors, dramaturgs and reading schedules during the first day of the festival. Playwrights whose one-act plays are selected to be read at Festival must ensure that their home school will bring a concert reading to the regional festival in Daytona Beach, in February 2011. To be able to be selected as one of the two finalists in the Regional One-Act Play competition you will need to make sure your school can bring a fully staged production back to the festival for performance in 2012. This does not mean that you can't be entered in the national John Cauble One-Act Play competition. All of the One-Act Plays submitted will be read for this competition but let me know if your school is unable to mount a production. The SIX that are read at the festival and the two chosen for production for next year are a regional competition only. So remember - submit your plays electronically by October 30 to rpaolino@uga.edu. Please include two cover sheets (see DOWNLOADS below) - one with all of the necessary information, i.e., name, name of play, school, email address, etc., and one with just the name of the play. This is essential for the blind reading! Please go to the Kennedy Center website for the different playwriting competitions - look for the new competitions and for the script format page. REMEMBER: The deadline for play submission for both the THE MINUTE PLAYS AND THE Cauble Award is October 30, 2010. THE SUBMISSION DEADLINE FOR THE SHELTON FULL-LENGTH PLAY AWARD IS NOVEMBER 30! Notification of Cauble participants will be December 7; Notification for Shelton Award winner will be December 15! Regional Awards Remember we have our David L. Shelton Full-length Student Playwriting Project. If your students have written full-length plays PLEASE send them to me to be considered for this new award. The play chosen will have a staged reading at the 2011 Festival and be brought back (even if you can't mount it) to the 2012 Festival for a participating production! The David L. Shelton is for students only! You must be a current student or have graduated within the last year. The play can have had a reading or a production as a work-in-progress. ONE ACT PLAY AWARD: two SELECTED ONE ACT PLAYS read at the festival are brought back the next year as fully supported participating productions. The David L. Shelton play will be invited as a participating production the next year after mentoring and rewrites and will be seen and considered by the National Selection Team. Staged readings as well as full productions of new works can be entered as associate productions. These associate staged readings or full productions will be responded to by Region IV NPP representatives and eligible for national playwriting awards. Only full productions can be entered as participating productions. Deadline October 30, 2010 Program The running time of a one-act play is under 60 minutes; when typed in standard format, a one-act play is approximately 10-45 pages in length; there is no intermission in a one-act play. Up to six plays will be selected as finalists by readers outside the region and will be given readings at the Region IV Festival. In order to be selected a finalist for the KCACTF national John Cauble One-Act Play Award, a one-act must be invited to the regional festival as either a participating full production or for a staged reading. If selected as a finalist, you will be asked to send a copy of your script by email attachment to the Kennedy Center. We ask finalists and their home schools to bring a rehearsed concert reading of the script(s) to the festival. If a playwright cannot ensure that her/his home school will bring a reading of the play, please contact the NPP chair, Ray Paolino, rpaolino@uga.edu immediately. As a finalist, if you cannot attend the Region IV festival your play(s) will still be eligible for the national John Cauble Short Play Awards Program provided they have each been given a reading in front of an audience at their home school or at the regional festival (either is acceptable). Submission For KCACTF, a one-act play is more than 10 pages and less than one hour playing time. Playwrights of one-act plays should submit TWO DOCUMENTS: 1) the cover sheet completed with all appropriate information and 2) the script in Word or PDF format, which should have a TITLE PAGE but no author or school identification. SUBMIT THE COVER SHEET AND SCRIPT TO THE NPP (NATIONAL PLAYWRITING PROGRAM) CHAIR IN YOUR REGION AND TO THE NATIONAL OFFICE (ghenry@kennedy-center.org). There is a limit of two plays per playwright. Students can submit up to two plays in each category (ten minute, one act, and full length) for a maximum of six plays total. There is no fee for entering the playwriting competition. National Playwriting Program Chair One Act and Full Length 10 Minute Play Submissions David Shelton full length award (students only) David Mark Cohen Award (open to students, faculty, professionals) Cover Sheet Submission Deadline October 30, 2010 10 Minute Playwrights Once again, Region IV's 10 Minute Play Festival will feature staged readings of the six plays selected as finalists in the competition. The plays will be auditioned, rehearsed, developed, and performed, all at the festival. Finalist playwrights (and their scripts!) will be teamed up with selected student directors, student actors, student stage managers, and faculty advisor/mentors from schools throughout the region. Auditions will be held for all roles immediately following the preliminary rounds of the Irene Ryan competition. Any students registered for the festival (except Irene Ryan semi-finalists) may audition for the 10 Minute Play Festival. This exciting collaborative opportunity is focused on the process of working with the playwright to take the original script from "page to stage." The experience allows the entire production team an exciting and educationally stimulating means of "creating" new theatre at the festival as they actively collaborate with students and faculty from other schools. Guidelines
10-Minute play is 10 pages or fewer (12 point font). Playwrights of ten-minute plays should submit TWO DOCUMENTS: 1) the cover sheet completed with all appropriate information and 2) the script in Word or PDF format, which should have a TITLE PAGE but no author or school identification. SUBMIT THE COVER SHEET AND SCRIPT TO THE NPP (NATIONAL PLAYWRITING PROGRAM) CHAIR IN YOUR REGION ONLY. DO NOT SUBMIT 10-MINUTE PLAYS TO THE NATIONAL OFFICE.* There is a limit of two plays per playwright. Students can submit up to two plays in each category (ten minute, one act, and full length) for a maximum of six plays total. There is no fee for entering the playwriting competition. *except for 10-Minute Plays that are a part of a Ken Ludwig Award Entry. National Playwriting Program Chair One Act and Full Length 10 Minute Play Submissions A Brief Note on Ten-Minute Plays by Gary Garrison Executive Director of the Dramatists Guild First Look Theatre Company Goldberg Dept. of Dramatic Writing Tisch School of the Arts, NYU A Ten-Minute play is a play with at least two characters that is not a scene, skit, or sketch. Structurally, it should have a beginning, middle, and end, just like any good one-act or full-length play. Reaching beyond the surface, the text should be enriched with subtext. Since we only have ten minutes to bring the story full circle, a dramatic conflict should be posed as quickly as possible. The resolution of that conflict is what plays out across the remaining pages. The true success of a Ten-Minute play is reliant on the writer's ability to bring an audience through the same cathartic / entertainment experience that a good one-act or full-length play accomplishes; i.e., sympathetic characters with recognizable needs encompassed within a resolvable dramatic conflict. While not wanting to oppress anyone's creativity, recognize that a Ten-Minute Play will undoubtedly be presented in an evening of ten-minute plays. Therefore, elaborate settings, multiple characters, extravagant production values, etc., could conceivably eliminate your play from consideration. Finally, do your readers a favor: ten minutes means eight or nine pages, but certainly no more than ten pages. READ YOUR PLAY OUT LOUD to see how it times out using standard playwriting format and 12 pt. Times New Roman or Courier font. What happens after plays are submitted for the various regional and national playwriting competitions. To ensure fairness and objectivity in the play selection process, student submissions of new plays (10 minute plays, ONE-ACT PLAYS, or full-length plays) are screened and ranked by KCACTF national committee members from a region other than ours (Region IV). Plays from Region IV are sent in November without authors' names or their school affiliation to a screening group somewhere else in the U.S. By December 1, the outside screeners have submitted back to the NPP Chair in Region IV numerical rankings of the scripts. Only then are the names of the playwrights and affiliated schools matched with the titles. The chosen playwrights in Region IV are then notified by Region IV's NPP Chair of their selection as FINALISTS. NPP personnel in Region IV likewise do the same for plays submitted from another region??reading and ranking them anonymously. In this manner, all regions avoid potential conflict of interest or possible bias regarding evaluating student written plays from one's own region. DOWNLOADS (Some links are coming Soon)
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