Acorn Productions Seeks New Plays for Maine Playwright Festival

Acorn Productions, producers of the annual Maine Playwrights Festival, announces that they have begun accepting scripts for this year's sixteenth edition of the state's most vibrant incubator for new plays by local playwrights. Anybody living in Maine is eligible to submit a new play between 8 and 30 minutes in length for consideration in the festival. The deadline for submissions is December 2nd.

"At the Maine Playwrights Festival, we take a consciously playwright-centric approach to producing new writing," says Daniel Burson, the festival's Artistic Director. "For 15 years our emphasis has been, and continues to be, on providing playwrights with the opportunity to hear their words come to life in a rehearsal process and to rewrite and develop their script with a professional director and actors."

For the 2017 festival, which will be held in Portland from April 27 through May 6, 2017, Acorn anticipates selecting 5 to 8 plays for production. The selected playwrights will receive extensive support revising their pieces during a workshop phase before the plays go into rehearsals. In addition to the festival productions, several playwrights whose work is not selected for inclusion in the full festival will be offered the opportunity to workshop their plays and have them shared in an evening of dramatic readings just prior to the festival week. Writers who are interested in submitting a new play for consideration should visit Acorn's website at www. acornproductionsportland.wordpress.com for complete guidelines and to download a script submission form.

The Maine Playwrights Festival has evolved through the years from a set of dramatic readings at Acorn's old studio on Congress Street to a full series of high-profile performances by some of Maine's best-known playwrights. Each year, playwrights from across Maine submit between 50 and 75 scripts to the festival, and a committee of local theater professionals reads them and selects a small group of plays for production. These scripts are then presented in a series of public performances in the late spring. Over the years, the festival has showcased dozens of Maine playwrights, many of whom have subsequently had their work produced at theater festivals all over the country.

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