RED BULL THEATER's SHORT NEW PLAY FESTIVAL 2025 Submissions Now Open

Red Bull Theater has announced that submissions are now open for Red Bull's ANNUAL SHORT NEW PLAY FESTIVAL.

Six brand new 10-minute plays of heightened language and classic themes inspired by this year's theme, “Defiance,” will be selected through an open submission process. These selections will premiere alongside commissions from Will Eno and Anna Ziegler. The deadline for submissions is 12 Noon on Monday March 24th.  Red Bull Theater's 15th annual Short New Play Festival is made possible by the leadership support of The Noël Coward Foundation.

The Short New Play Festival is scheduled to be held on Monday June 23rd at Sheen Center Loreto Theatre (18 Bleecker Street, between Mott and Elizabeth). The premieres will be directed by Evan Yiounoulis and this year's Drama League Directing Fellow, Zoë Adams.

"Happy New Year! Each year for our Short New Play Festival, we look for fresh and exhilarating work with classical inspiration. This year's theme is “Defiance” - as a jumping off point for your creative juices. We hope playwrights from around the world will respond to our mission to revitalize the classics. Writers are encouraged to riff on a classical character, borrow a classical setting, or be inspired to create a brand new style of dramatic verse. Finding inspiration from classics beyond the traditional Western canon is welcome. Through this festival, we cultivate dialogues with classical theater in a multitude of creative and surprising ways. It's a new year - time to write something new!,” exhorts Artistic Director Jesse Berger.

Over the Short New Play Festival's fifteen-year history, Red Bull Theater has cultivated over 4,000 new short plays of classic themes and heightened language, presenting over 100 of them in a one-night-only Festival performance with some of New York's finest actors and directors. The commissioned playwrights have included Larissa FastHorse, Marcus Gardley, Madeleine George, John Guare, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Jeremy O. Harris, David Ives, Craig Lucas, Ellen McLaughlin, Robert O'Hara, Dael Orlandersmith, Heather Raffo, Theresa Rebeck, José Rivera, Anne Washburn, Doug Wright, and winning entries by writers such as Anchuli Felicia King, Patricia Ione Lloyd, Lynn Rosen, and Jen Silverman. Stage Rights has published a 5-volume collection of the plays from the first 10 years of Red Bull Theater's annual Short New Play Festival as Red Bull Shorts. 

OPEN SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

Red Bull Theater is looking for work with classical inspiration. The word “Defiance” is a jumping-off point for creative thematic juices. Review our mission and take a look through our history of Readings and Productions to see the kind of work we have done. Respond to a play we've produced or choose a classic of your own to adapt. You might riff on a classical character, borrow a classical setting, or be inspired to create a brand new style of dramatic verse. Finding inspiration from classics beyond the traditional Western canon is welcome. We hope you will be in dialogue with classical theater in a multitude of creative and surprising ways. Using the theme “Defiance” write a short play that: makes use of heightened language, and/or is in conversation with a classical theme, style, or story from any cultural tradition; is no more than 10 minutes in length; is self-contained with a beginning, middle and end; is an original, unpublished, and never previously produced new work. 

Plays will be selected based on: excellence of the work; relevance to Red Bull Theater's mission; incorporation of the theme “Defiance;” and utilization of the classical conversation/heightened language guideline. There is a $10 submission fee. Submission fees partially offset open submission processing costs, commissioning fees, and other expenses.  Selected playwrights will receive a staged reading of their submission, performed by an ensemble company of some of New York City's finest actors as part of this year's festival, scheduled for Monday June 23rd. Selected playwrights will also receive a commissioning fee of $400; travel reimbursement of up to $400 to attend the festival rehearsal and performance; will be consulted on choices for the shared ensemble cast; will have final script approval.

ABOUT THIS YEAR'S COMMISSIONED WRITERS:

Will Eno recently completed the Residency Five Fellowship at the Signature Theatre, which premiered his play Title and Deed in 2012,  The Open House in 2014, and Wakey, Wakey in 2017. Will's play The Underlying Chris premiered at 2nd Stage Theatre in October 2019, directed by Kenny Leon, and The Plot premiered at Yale Repertory in November 2019, directed by Oliver Butler. The Realistic Joneses appeared on Broadway in 2014, where it won a Drama Desk Award, was named USA Today's “Best Play on Broadway,” topped the The Guardian's 2014 list of American plays, and was included in The New York Times' “Best Theatre of 2014.” The play was recently included in “25 Significant Plays of the last 25 Years,” in The New York Times. The French premiere, Juste Les Jones, will be directed for the Paris stage by documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. The Open House won the 2014 Obie Award, the Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, and a Drama Desk Award, and was included in both the Time Out New York and Time Magazine Top 10 Plays of the Year. Title and Deed was on The New York Times and The New Yorker magazine's Top Ten Plays of 2012. Middletown, winner of the 2011 Horton Foote Award, premiered at the Vineyard Theatre and subsequently at Steppenwolf Theater and many other American Theaters and universities. The Canadian premiere, at The Shaw Festival in 2017, received a rapturous response from critics and audiences and was remounted in 2018 in Toronto.  Thom Pain (based on nothing) was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. It was performed by Michael C. Hall in a sold-out revival at the Signature Theater in the fall of 2018. The L.A. premiere was performed by Rainn Wilson at The Geffen Playhouse in 2016, and a film was made from those performances, directed by Will and Oliver Butler. In spring 2019, Will wrote the book for the hugely successful ad campaign "Skittles Commercial: The Broadway Musical," which also starred Michael C. Hall.

Anna Ziegler is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. In film, Anna is adapting her play Photograph 51 for Leviathan Productions and Red Yes Studio. In television, Anna is writing the pilot “Go, Team” for Paramount+ and Defiant by Nature. Prior to that, Anna developed projects at Apple TV, HBO Max and AMC. Anna's critically acclaimed plays have been produced at major theaters around the U.S. and in Australia, Israel, Japan, Italy, Germany, India, and Sweden. Her widely produced play  Photograph 51 starring Nicole Kidman won London's WhatsOnStage Award for Best New Play. It was selected as a “Best of the Year” play by The Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and The Telegraph. Anna's play Actually received the Ovation Award in Los Angeles for Playwriting of an Original Play. Her play The Wanderers, which was produced at the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York, won the San Diego Critic's Circle Award for Outstanding New Play. Inspired by a true story, her play Boy was nominated for the John Gassner Award by the Outer Critics Circle.  Photograph 51 has been released as part of Bloomsbury's Modern Classics series. Bloomsbury/Oberon Books has published a collection of her work entitled Anna Ziegler: Plays One.   Anna Ziegler: Plays Two is also now out from Bloomsbury. Anna is a graduate of Yale and holds masters degrees in poetry from The University of East Anglia (UK) and dramatic writing from NYU.

ABOUT THIS YEAR'S DIRECTORS:

Evan Yionoulis, an Obie award-winning director and nationally recognized teacher of acting, is Juilliard's Richard Rodgers dean and director of the Drama Division. She came to Juilliard after 20 years on the faculty of Yale School of Drama, where she was a professor in the practice of acting and directing and Lloyd Richards chair of the department of acting from 1998 to 2003. She has directed new plays and classics in New York, across the country, and internationally, including Adrienne Kennedy's He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box (world premiere) and Ohio State Murders (Lortel Award, best revival) for Theatre for a New Audience, Richard Greenberg's The Violet Hour (Broadway), Three Days of Rain (Obie for direction, Manhattan Theatre Club), and Everett Beekin (Lincoln Center Theater), and, during her 20 years as a resident director at Yale Repertory Theatre, productions including Shakespeare's Richard II and Cymbeline, Brecht's Galileo, Ibsen's The Master Builder, and Guillermo Calderón's Kiss. With composer/lyricist Mike Yionoulis, she is developing the multi platform project Redhand Guitar, about five generations of musicians across an American century, and The Dread Pirate Project, about identity and anonymity across the digital and natural worlds. She is a Princess Grace Award recipient and serves as president of the executive board of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.  

ZOË ADAMS creates theatre to spark imagination and open hearts to the magic of transformation. Her eclectic body of work includes: The Christine Jorgensen Show, Wizard of Oz, The Historical Range of Ursus Americanus, Sister Act, Meltdown: A live-action game about Climate Change, In the Name of Us (Best Short Play at DUAF), The Cherry Orchard, Not Clown, Skin Flick City, Stacked at The National Theatre of Croatia, and the immersive supper club Krāv. She is the proud recipient of the 2024 – ‘26 Drama League Stage Directing Fellowship. MFA, Directing, Columbia University; SDC Associate.  Zoë's participation in Red Bull Theater's annual Short New Play Festival is made possible by the Drama League Directors Project.

ABOUT THE NOËL COWARD FOUNDATION

The Noël Coward Foundation was set up as a charitable trust in 2000 by Graham Payn and Dany Dasto. Its aim is to award grants to educational and development projects across the Arts and to continue the keen interest Coward himself took in charitable work during his lifetime. The Foundation is proud to support a diverse range of outstanding organizations working in theatre, music, playwriting, technical training, academic research and many other areas.

ABOUT THE DRAMA LEAGUE DIRECTORS PROJECT

The Drama League Stage Directing Fellowships provide a wide range of opportunities for emerging and rising directors, creating multiple avenues for future success in the theater industry.  Providing significant financial support and health insurance reimbursement, creative retreats, network development, and residencies at multiple theater companies, The Drama League Stage Directing Fellowships also offer opportunities to direct readings and productions throughout the two-year experience. The Drama League is a creative and career development home for directors, and a platform for dialogue with, and between, the audiences they inspire in theater, television, film, opera, online, and anywhere live performance is found.  Launched in 1916, the organization is one of the longest continuously-operating arts service organizations in the United States.  

For more information about the Short New Play Festival, or any of Red Bull Theater's programs, visit www.redbulltheater.com.

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