Acorn Productions Calls For Original Plays, Vaudeville Performers For Phyzgig & Maine Playwrights Festival.

Acorn Productions has published guidelines for submissions to the company's two well-known annual festivals: Phyzgig and the Maine Playwrights Festival. Any playwright whose primary residence is in the state of Maine is eligible to submit a script of any length to Acorn's annual contest, and variety entertainers who work in any family-oriented genre are invited to apply to perform in Phyzgig, the popular vaudeville festival that takes place between Christmas and New Year's in downtown Portland. Acorn is thrilled to continue to offer an open selection process to both of these events, which provide creative incubators for artists seeking to expand the scope of their work. The deadline for Phyzgig applications is September 15, 2009, and the deadline for playwrights varies according to length. Full length scripts need to be submitted before September 1, 2009 while one-act and short plays can be submitted up to and including December 1, 2009. Guidelines for either opportunity may be downloaded at the company's website, www.acorn-productions.org.

Phyzgig will be celebrating its twelfth year of honoring the rich tradition of vaudeville through a series of variety shows from December 26 to 31, 2009 at SPACE Gallery and the Portland Performing Arts Center. The event has become one of Acorn's signature presentations, and acts as a magnet for artists and audiences from other states in New England and across the country. Phyzgig began with a series of performances by Avner the Eccentric, the festival's Artistic Director, and expanded to include other world-class artists based in Maine and other locales from Boston to California. Acorn Productions seeks artists for Phyzgig who perform family-oriented variety entertainment suitable for presentation in a traditional theatre venue. Performers who appear at the festival generally perform 15 to 20 minutes of material at three or four shows during the week. Compensation is based on a share system. Additionally, Acorn provides housing and some travel reimbursement for out of town performers. Phyzgig also offers artists an excellent chance to network with other performers working in the field.

Acorn will be celebrating the tenth anniversary of the annual Maine Playwrights Festival during the 2009/10 season. This popular event began as the Maine Short Play Festival and has expanded to include plays of any length. This year's edition of the festival will take place from April 16 to May 1, 2010 at the St. Lawrence Arts and Community Center on MunJoy Hill in Portland. The festival features rotating evenings of plays in repertory: one full length production, an evening of one-act plays, and a third evening of ten to fifteen minute plays. Any Maine-based playwrights is eligible to enter up to two scripts for consideration by the festival's reading committee. Four full length-plays will be chosen for a final round of readings in the fall as part of Acorn's "2nd Friday" dramatic readings of playwrights' works in progress at the new Acorn Studio Theater in the Dana Warp Mill, Westbrook. One of these four scripts will receive the production slot at the St. Lawrence; the plays for the other two evenings will be chosen by the reading committee without a final round of public readings.

Acorn Productions is a non-profit company focused on building artist collaboratives in order to nurture the community of performing artists in Southern Maine. The company offers a regular schedule of public events each season, as well as providing actor training through classes and workshops, and a free series of "Naked Shakespeare" performances. Acorn Productions has been working to enrich the cultural life of Southern Maine since 1995 when the organization began as the in-house Production Company at the old Oak Street Theatre. The company currently works out of the Acorn Studios, located in the historic Dana Warp Mill in downtown Westbrook, in a complex that includes the new 50-seat Acorn Studio Theater, available for use by the community.

 

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