Maine Playwrights Festival 2020 Calls For Scripts

They have begun accepting scripts for this year's nineteenth edition of the state's long-running 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 November 26th.

"One of the Maine Playwrights Festival's goals is to welcome writers of all levels of experience and help them expand how they tell their stories through theater," says Daniel Burson, the festival's Artistic Director. "We have workshops and performances of scripts by high school students, playwriting classes led by professional writers, and fully staged productions of exceptional new plays-all combining so that Maine's playwrights can participate and be showcased at every stage of their lives as writers."

The 2020 Maine Playwrights Festival will be comprised of two weekends of fully staged performances of short plays, to be performed at the Studio Theater at Portland Stage (25 Forest Avenue) in Portland, April 23 to May 3, 2020. The Festival anticipates selecting 5 to 7 plays for production this year. 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 not selected for the full festival will also get the opportunity to workshop their plays with this year's professional playwright-in-residence (to be announced in September). Acorn is also offering a class this fall for playwrights of all experience levels starting on October 8, giving writers a forum to polish their scripts for submission. Playwrights who are interested in submitting a new play for consideration or registering for the class should visit Acorn's website at www.acorn-productions.org for complete information 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 performances by some of Maine's best-known playwrights. Each year, playwrights from across Maine submit between 50 and 70 scripts to the festival, and a committee of local theater professionals reads them and selects a small group of plays for production at public performances in the late spring. Over the years, the festival has showcased over 100 Maine playwrights, many of whom have subsequently had their work produced at theater festivals all over the country.

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