AboutFACE Ireland Calls For Submissions For 2018 NEWvember New Plays Festival

AboutFACE Ireland have announced they are now accepting submissions of new plays from playwrights based in Ireland, and Irish playwrights around the world, for the 2018 NEWvember New Plays Festival Dublin, to be held over three days November 8th to 10th at The New Theatre in Dublin's city centre. The closing date for submissions is Friday August 17th 2018. There is no fee for submissions and all plays are read blind of name or gender by a panel. The final plays will be selected based on their originality, range, production potential, narrative quality and emotional resonance, and will be announced in October. AboutFACE announced that NEWvember 2018 is supported by FRINGE LAB at Dublin Fringe Festival and by the New Theatre. They also announced a new transatlantic connection with the Off-Broadway theatre The Cell, with one of this year's final plays to be given a further reading at the Cell in New York.

This marks NEWvember's second year in Dublin after 5 years in New York. AboutFACE co-created and co-produced NEWvember at the Carpenter Shop Theatre in the village of Tivoli in upstate New York, with their partners Tangent Theatre, from 2011 to 2015. In New York, NEWvember was highly successful - drawing large audiences, including breaking the box office record for the venue on successive nights; and finding massive interest from writers - by its fifth year, submissions reached nearly 500 plays a year and rehearsed readings of new work by over 30 playwrights had been presented, while several plays developed at the festival have gone on to Off-Broadway and regional American productions.

In 2017 NEWvember moved to Dublin, Ireland, where the festival was held at Belvedere House. Already from NEWvember 2017, plays have gone on to further success - Extremophiles by Fergal O'Byrne has since been awarded the prestigious Eamon Keane Playwriting Award at the 2018 Listowel Writers' Week while The Barber of Moville by Ronan Carr has gone on to full production including a 10-venue Irish tour.

Paul Nugent, Co-Artistic Director of AboutFACE Ireland adds, "After the hugely positive response to bringing NEWvember to Dublin for the first time in 2017, we are so excited to see what NEWvember 2018 will bring. We're honoured and delighted that this year we start exciting new relationships with two of the most important organizations for developing new plays in Ireland, the New Theatre and FRINGE LAB at Dublin Fringe Festival, and as well as strengthening our New York connection through a new reading cross-over with our Off-Broadway friends the cell. With last year featuring stories ranging from mail-theft at a Boston wake and bittersweet comedy at a Dublin barber shop, to heartbreaking romance at a Belgian finishing school and desperate survival in the Antarctic, and with playwrights attending from Dublin, Copenhagen and the USA, we can't wait to see what gems of new plays we'll receive this year."

For more information, and to submit, go to http://aboutfaceireland.com/newvember/

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