Maine Playwrights Festival Calls For Scripts

Acorn Productions, producers of the annual Maine Playwrights Festival, announces that they have begun accepting scripts for this year's eighteenth 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.

"At the Maine Playwrights Festival, we're excited to not only to showcase local playwrights' work, but also to provide ways for writers at lots of different levels to develop their craft as playwrights," says Daniel Burson, the festival's Artistic Director. "At this year's festival, we'll be adding workshops and performances of scripts by area high school students alongside our regular slate of productions, staged-readings, and playwriting classes."

The 2019 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 25 to May 4, 2019. The Festival anticipates selecting 5 to 8 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 inclusion in the full festival will also be offered the opportunity to workshop their plays with professional playwright-in-residence Michael Kimball. Acorn is also offering a playwriting class for writers of all experience levels starting on October 13, giving playwrights a forum to polish their scripts for submission. Writers 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 75 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 scores of Maine playwrights, many of whom have subsequently had their work produced at theater festivals all over the country.