PLAYWRITING

FACULTY & STUDENTS

Welcome back to the new academic year and to the second half of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival's 37th year. Attached you will find two announcements outlining the guidelines for new play awards and opportunities for the rest of the year 200.

The first is a checklist for entering original works for the numerous Michael Kanin Playwriting Awards. It gives you a quick overview of the various awards and how to go about submitting your plays for them.

The second attached sheet refers to our regional Ten-Minute Play Festival, the 5x10s, which will take place at Fitchburg State College, Fitchburg, MA in January of 2009. Please note that the deadline for these is November 1, 2008.

The national festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. this past April was a stimulating and productive one for our region's playwrights. During the week they had seminars with Lee Blessing and a playwriting caucus with producers from many major theatres devoted to producing new works, including the Playwrights Center, Minneapolis, Woolly Mammoth, the Signature Theatre, Arena Stage, Sundance Theatre Lab, ASK, Mark Taper Forum, and Boston Playwrights. Greg Mozgala of Boston University won the John Cauble Short Play Award that included production of the play, $1000, publication by Samuel French, membership in the Dramatists Guild, and a fellowship to PlayLabs. Stephen Karam of Brown University received the Musical Theatre Award with a $4000 prize, and his musical Emma, which was produced at the festival, gathered interest and initial inquiries from a number of the producers present. Lindsay Joy of the University of New Hampshire, Durham, was the national Ten Minute Play Award winner, receiving a prize of $1000, plus production at the festival. Boston University's Matthew Dryden Roland was the 2nd place winner for the Mark Twain Comedy Playwriting Award which includes a prize worth $2000.

Other playwriting award winners received additional prestigious opportunities such as fellowships to the Sundance Theatre Lab, internships at the National Playwrights' Conference at the O'Neill Center, fellowships to the ASK Common Ground Festival, and publication by Dramatic Publishing. There are wonderful opportunities out there for you to take advantage of, so…Keep Writing

Best wishes,
Patricia Riggin

© Copyright 2008. KCACTF Region 1