Red Bull Theater Opens Submissions for Ninth Annual Short New Play Festival

Red Bull Theater today announced that their ninth annual festival of 10-minute plays of heightened language and classic themes will feature two brand new commissions from Kia Corthron and Will Power, alongside six brand new plays chosen from hundreds of submissions from playwrights across the country. Submissions are now open through March 18, 2019.

The 2019 Short New Play Festival will be presented on Monday July 15th (7:30pm) at Lucille Lortel Theatre, directed by May Adrales and Vivienne Benesch. Casting will be announced at a later date.

Each year, the company selects new works of heightened language and classical themes from today's top established and emerging playwrights. Six brand-new short plays will be selected from a competitive open submission process and and be presented in staged readings alongside the commissioned plays. Using this years' theme EVIL, writers are asked to submit a short play of no more than 10 minutes in length that makes use of any, or all, of the following: heightened language or verse; a classical theme or style; a classical story; is self-contained with a beginning, middle and end; and is an original, unpublished, and never previously produced new work.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 Festival's theme: EVIL; and utilization of the heightened language/classical conversation guideline listed above. There is a $15 submission fee. These fees partially offset open submission processing costs, commissioning fees and travel stipends for selected playwrights. Red Bull Theater is working to reduce these fees each year.?

The deadline is 12 Noon on Monday March 18th, 2019. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Selected playwrights will receive a staged reading of their submission as part of the festival on Monday July 15th, 2019, performed by an ensemble company of some of New York's finest actors; will receive a commissioning fee of $300 plus a travel reimbursement of up to $400 to attend the festival rehearsal and performance; will have final script approval and will be consulted on choices for the shared ensemble cast; will have the optional opportunity to have their play published and licensed by Stage Rights as part of our Red Bull Shorts series.

Each play should be no more than ten pages with 1 inch margins (excluding the title page and character list) in a font no smaller than 11pt. When read out loud the play should be approximately 10 minutes in length. Scripts will only be accepted via electronic submissions in PDF format. Please use the exact title of the play as the name of the PDF file. Writer's name and contact information must be on the title page ONLY. The title page is removed for adjudication to "blind" the selection process. Due to the volume of scripts, we are unable to comment on any submissions. Past winners, please note that we require a two-year hiatus from submitting again. No exceptions will be made to the submission deadline.

This year's selections will be announced by the end of May, 2019.

This year's commissioned writers are:

Kia Corthron was the 2017 resident playwright of Chicago's Eclipse Theatre, which produced three of her plays. Other plays produced in NYC by Playwrights Horizons, EST, NYTW, Atlantic, MTC; in London by Royal Court, Donmar Warehouse; regionally at Minneapolis' Children's Theatre, ATL/Humana, Taper, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Yale Rep, NYS&F, Baltimore's Center Stage, Goodman, Hartford Stage, elsewhere. Awards include the Windham Campbell Prize, USArtists Jane Addams Fellowship, Simon Great Plains Playwright Award, McKnight National Residency. TV: "The Jury," "The Wire." The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter won the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Dramatists Guild Council, New Dramatists alumnus.?

Will Power New York: Flow, The Seven, Fetch Clay, Make Man (all NYTW), The Gathering (P.S. 122), Steel Hammer (co-writer, BAM), Blessing the Boats The Remix (Performer, Under the Radar Festival/The Public Theater). Regional: Seize the King (La Jolla Playhouse), Stagger Lee (Dallas Theater Center), Honey Bo and the Goldmine (La Jolla Playhouse), Five Fingers of Funk (Children's Theater Company), others. Upcoming: Detroit Red (Arts Emerson). Television: "Bill Moyers; On Faith and Reason," "The Colbert Report," "The Carson Daly Show," "Theater Talk." Distinguished Visiting Professor, Spelman College, Atlanta. Love to my family; Marla, Omar-Sol and Sophia.

Red Bull Theater's annual Short New Play Festival has generated over 1,000 new short plays of classic themes and heightened language, presenting over 60 of them in a one-night only Festival performance with some of New York's finest actors and directors. In its first eight years, the commissioned playwrights have been: Lee Blessing, Constance Congdon, Lisa D'Amour, Elizabeth Egloff, Amy Freed, David Grimm, John Guare, Tina Howe, David Ives, Arthur Kopit, Ellen McLaughlin, Dael Orlandersmith, Peter Oswald, Regina Taylor, Anne Washburn, and Doug Wright. Winners of the open submission competition have included: K.M. Abbruzzese, Liz Duffy Adams, Mike Anderson, Heidi Armbruster, Matt Barbot, Emily Taplin Boyd, Dave Carley, Fred Dennehy, Dipika Guha, Arthur Holden, Will Kenton, Anchuli Felicia King, Sam Lahne, Tabia Lau, Patricia Ione Lloyd, Wendy MacLeod, Anya Martin, Stephen Massicotte, Dakin Matthews, Elizabeth Miller, Winter Miller, Mark O'Donnell, Eric Pfeffinger, Jason Gray Platt, Bridgette Dutta Portman, Amanda Quaid, Lynn Rosen, Tom Rowan, Aubrey Saverino, Natalia Savvides, Jen Silverman, Tommy Smith, James Still, Matthew Wells, Samara Weiss, Daniel Wilson, and Tim West.

Stage Rights has published a 3-volume collection of the plays from Red Bull Theater's annual Short New Play Festival as RED BULL SHORTS. This ongoing series features 10-minute plays of heightened language and classical themes by today's hottest writers, including commissions by established playwrights such as Tina Howe, Ellen McLaughlin, Dael Orlaendersmith, and Doug Wright, and winning entries by writers such as Rachel Leopold, Amanda Quaid, Anya Martin, and Christian Simonsen - all chosen from a competition that receives nearly 300 submissions each year. In the hands of great playwrights, the 10-minute play is a highly entertaining dramatic form. This collection offers the most delectable of these delightfully compact works - some downright silly, and others powerfully moving. Volume #4 will be released in 2019.

Red Bull Theater, hailed as "the city's gutsiest classical theater" by Time Out New York, brings rarely seen classic plays to dynamic new life for contemporary audiences, uniting a respect for tradition with a modern sensibility. Named for the rowdy Jacobean playhouse that illegally performed plays in England during the years of Puritan rule, Red Bull Theater is New York City's home for dynamic performances of great plays that stand the test of time. With the Jacobean plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries as its cornerstone, the company also produces new works that are in conversation with the classics. A home for artists, scholars and students, Red Bull Theater delights and engages the intellect and imagination of audiences, and strives to make its work accessible, diverse, and welcoming to all. Red Bull Theater believes in the power of great classic stories and plays of heightened language to deepen our understanding of the human condition, in the special ability of live theater to create unique, collective experiences, and the timeless capacity of classical theater to illuminate the events of our times. Varietyagreed, hailing Red Bull's work as: "Proof that classical theater can still be surprising after hundreds of years."

Since its debut in 2003 with a production of Shakespeare's Pericles starring Daniel Breaker, Red Bull Theater has served adventurous theatergoers with Off-Broadway Productions, Revelation Readings, and the annual Short New Play Festival. The company also offers outreach programs including Shakespeare in Schools bringing professional actors and teaching artists into public school classrooms; Bull Sessions, free post-play discussions with top scholars; and Master Classes in classical acting led by veteran theater professionals.

Acclaimed as "a dynamic producer of classic plays" by The New York Times and "the most exciting classical theater in New York" by Time Out NY, Red Bull Theater has produced 17 Off-Broadway productions and over 150 Revelation Readings of rarely seen classics, serving a community of more than 5,000 artists and providing quality artistic programming to an audience of over 65,000. The company's unique programming has received ongoing critical acclaim, and has been recognized with Lortel, Drama Desk, Drama League, Callaway, Off Broadway Alliance, and OBIE nominations and Awards.

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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