Red Bull Theater

Short Play Festival Seeks Evil Submissions

New York City's Red Bull Theater is looking for work with a classical inspiration to fill out the playbill of its Short New Play Festival, "The Evil Plays," on Monday, July 15, 2019, at the Lucille Lortel Theater. The company is seeking submissions for the festival by March 18.

Six new short plays will be selected from an open-submission process and presented in staged readings alongside two new short plays by commissioned writers, Kia Corthron (Breath Boom, Light Raise the Roof) and Will Power (The Seven, Fetch Clay Make Man). The plays will be directed by Jade King Carroll and Vivienne Benesch.

​Red Bull Theater is about heightened language, epic themes, and great classic stories. Submissions must use the theme Evil and follow these guidelines:

• make use of heightened language or be in conversation with a classical theme, style, or story;
• be no more than 10 minutes in length;
• be self-contained with a beginning, middle, and end;
• be an original, unpublished, and never previously produced new work.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 of evil, and utilization of the language/classical conversation guideline listed above.

The theater suggests writers look through Red Bull's history of readings and productions to see the kind of work the company has done. Respond to a play Red Bull has produced or choose another classic to adapt. You might riff on a classical character, borrow a language structure, or be inspired to create a ew kind of verse for a contemporary story. The company hopes to inspire contemporary writers to be in conversation with classical theater in a multitude of creative and surprising ways.

There is a $15 submission fee. These fees partially offset open submission processing costs, commissioning fees, and travel stipends for selected playwrights. Selected playwrights will receive a staged reading of their submission as part of the festival, performed by an ensemble company of some of New York's finest actors. Selected plays also will earn a commissioning fee of $300 plus a travel reimbursement of up to $400 to attend the festival rehearsal and performance. The playwright will have final script approval and will be consulted on choices for the shared ensemble cast.

Deadline for submission is noon on Monday, March 18, 2019. "No exceptions will be made to the submission deadline," says the company flyer.

Each play should be no more than 10 pages with one-inch margins (excluding the title page and character list) in a font no smaller than 11 points. 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 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, there will be no comment on any submissions.

Past winners must wait out a two-year hiatus before submitting again.

​For more information and submission form, go to https://www.redbulltheater.com/2019-submissions-open.

February 12, 2019

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