Eugene O'Neill Theater Center Now Accepting Scripts for 2014 National Playwrights Conference

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center is now accepting scripts for development during the 2014 National Playwrights Conference. Applicants may submit works to the O'Neill's Open Submissions Process through Friday, October 25, 2013.

The National Playwrights Conference, which will celebrate fifty years of new play development during the summer of 2014, is led by Artistic Director Wendy C. Goldberg. The conference supports playwrights during the creation and development of new plays. Authors of selected works are awarded residency with a stipend, housing, meals, and transportation for July 2014 to support an intensive rehearsal process and two script-in-hand public readings.

Every fall, the O'Neill receives approximately 1,000 scripts for consideration and in each of the past three years, seven of the developed works were discovered through the open submission process. Submissions are sent to readers across the country and read blindly, allowing volunteer readers to focus on each writer's voice and story, rather than a recognizable name or previous accomplishment.

One or two works and/or collaborations each conference are at the invitation of the O'Neill, and help launch conversations with a larger national field.

Wendy C. Goldberg, Artistic Director since 2005, noted, "This Conference belongs to the playwrights, and I believe that it is imperative to allow the playwrights who submit their work the opportunity to have their plays read and considered seriously for the conference."

The National Playwrights Conference, the O'Neill's founding program, was launched in 1964. Playwrights have shaped the Conference from its very inception. When founder George C. White first gathered a prominent group of emerging writers to discuss their needs, the result was the O'Neill model - a place where playwrights can focus entirely on the development of their plays in workshop production without the pressures of commercial endeavors. More than 600 plays have been developed through the National Playwrights Conference.

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