Applications for the 44th Annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival have closed.

Our organization’s maximum capacity for reading is 750 plays. We hit our capacity at 9am on Friday, October 9. Thank you, playwrights, for sharing your play with us. Please email literary@playwrightsfoundation.org if you have any questions. We have included the information below as a helpful reference for our application process, which will open again in early fall of 2021.

 Please fill out your application before paying your application fee.

New for this year: Due to the economic hardship impacting our industry from shutdowns because of Covid-19, application fees are on a sliding scale ($5-30). After uploading your application, you will need to go to this link to pay your application fee. Suggested range ($5-30). If you’d like to request a Fee Waiver, please email literary@playwrightsfoundation.org Thank you! 

Welcome

Thank you for your interest in applying to be a part of Playwrights Foundation’s programming. Playwrights Foundation supports and champions contemporary playwrights in the creation of new works to sustain theater as a vital, dynamic art form. 

Every season, we assess a high volume of plays, and we strive to create a process which is equitable and fair to all who apply. Every script will be read fully twice by readers on our National Committee, which are composed of professionals who are advocates and allies of new work. Before any decisions are made regarding our Semi-Finalists round, multiple staff members will evaluate each writer’s individual development goals and resumes. 

As one of the leading play development centers in the U.S. with a long history, Playwrights Foundation fosters the creative process of playmaking by sustaining a commitment to the playwright, whom we regard as the creative wellspring of the theater. The organization has a deep familiarity with the work of a large range of playwrights, and work to connect those writers with creative producers interested in new play production. Special attention is given to Bay Area writers, emerging writers of any age, BIPOC and other historically marginalized writers.

You may have questions about applying, including if this opportunity is the right one for you. Our staff welcomes these questions and we are in contact with the Dramatists Guild and LMDA regarding best practices for our organization. We hope you have a good experience engaging with us, as you entrust us with reading and evaluating your latest new play. We welcome writers of all ages, backgrounds and identities, and celebrate both national and local writers.

Bay Area Playwrights Festival

We invite playwrights to apply for the 44th Bay Area Playwrights Festival, where ultimately, four to five plays will be chosen for development. The reading process spans several months and everyone who applies will receive notification of their status before we announce BAPF’s 2021 summer festival.

Applications for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival are open to any playwrights living in North America and writing primarily in English (multilingual plays are accepted) who consider themselves either an emerging writer (of any age) or mid-career playwright.  Playwrights Foundation is strongly committed to developing the work of emerging and mid-career writers, and we offer other opportunities for more established playwrights and long-time alums to continue sharing work with us. 

Applications must be full-length, unproduced and original plays in PDF form. We do accept adaptations, but not translations. Plays that have previously received a workshop or university production are considered unproduced. 

Only one application is allowed per playwright. If you were selected for the 2020 Bay Area Playwrights Festival we ask you observe a one-year hiatus from applying for the festival. Playwrights can submit a new draft of a play they previously submitted during one additional submission cycle. We will not accept new drafts of plays that have been submitted in at least two previous submission cycles. We do not accept musicals at this time.

We define those terms as follows: 

• • ‘Emerging’ refers to  playwrights who are relatively early in their careers – student, recent playwriting program graduate (up to 3 years), and older dramatists who have had 0-3 professional (paid) productions of their work. You can be emerging at any age and we celebrate that.
  • ‘Mid-career’ as playwrights who have received more than 3 professional productions, and who are generally working professional playwrights, but not yet fully established with multiple regional LORT productions. We are looking for a mix of career experiences to create a cohort, so all writers are welcome. 
  • ‘Unproduced scripts’ we follow the Dramatists Guild’s definition as “a script that has not been “professionally” produced. Readings, staged readings, AEA workshops, development productions, amateur productions, concert versions, etc.” are not professional productions. 
  • ‘Full-length’— We ask that your scripts are a minimum of 60 pages in length, but if it is shorter and you know that it does take more than an hour of stage time, simply email our literary team to ask if it is eligible. We are not a 10-Minute play nor One-Act play contest, but looking for more substantial dramaturgy of interest to producing theatre seasons. 

Playwrights chosen for the festival will be paired with an artistic team composed of a professional dramaturg, director, and actors, and other artists as needed. The lead artistic team members will go on a 3-day retreat the weekend prior to the festival, and will subsequently receive two staged readings over two weeks, each one separated by five to six days for rehearsals and rewrites. Local and national producers, theater artists and the general public are invited to the festival to see the staged readings and meet the playwrights.

We want to emphasize that the public staged readings are not intended as a showcase for a finished play, and the readings are advertised to our audiences as rehearsals rather than performances; our festival actively fosters the creative process of playmaking, and not “finishing” the work before the public reading. We equally value the creative work in the room and the public readings as opportunities to advance each individual playwright’s developmental goals. Our organization also values connecting playwrights to creative partners and producers.

Checklist before applying:

• • A full-length Script in PDF form, titled LastNameFirstName_PlayTitle_DraftDate
  • Resume in PDF form, titled LastNameFIrstName_Resume
  • A list of three Development Goals (500 words max)
  • A 1-2 sentence synopsis of your play
  • You are a playwright living in North America writing primarily in English (Multilingual plays accepted).
  • You have read our website and acknowledge the defined terms.
  • Application fees will be prompted at the end, and are Pay What You Can. If you would like to request a Fee Waiver, please contact literary@playwrightsfoundation.org

This Sounds Great, but I Have More Questions Before Applying.

• How are development goals used in your process?

With the number of writers who apply each year, it’s always a tough, subjective call of what moves forward to our Semi-Finalist round. If there’s one part of the application that we lean on to discern what advances when we’re deciding between two plays that our readers have recommended, it’s the writer’s Development Goals. Artists should demonstrate a self-awareness surrounding their artistic goals, their challenges, and their overall, or desired, trajectory as a writer. Our core staff reads the development goals for after a play has been evaluated fully by National Committee readers and these are helpful in making decisions of what plays move forward to semi-finalist stage. This is another way we can get to know your voice as a writer.

Development goals don’t have to be a long essay, but they do have to be specific. Avoid generic statements regarding aspects we already know we can help you such as: “I’ll know what to change when I hear it before an audience” and “I want to be able to work with a director and dramaturg.” We know we can offer you these things, consider them a given. 

For those writers who do move forward to the Semi-Finalist and/or Finalists round, we will ask for revised development goals. What’s helpful in the early evaluation process is that we want you to tell us where you are in this moment in time, with this version of the script, so that we can gain an understanding about how you talk about your own work and how you self-identify its strengths and weaknesses. This is a chance to excite us about your play, in your own voice, and we’re eager to hear you speak more about your own work.

We have a multi-tiered process and the ultimate goal is to find writers who can use an opportunity like the one we can offer, and we do want a mix of writers from various experiences, so understanding your past work history is part of our process.

• Does BAPF read “blind” or not? Why have you made this choice?

In our recent history, we have not read scripts blind, although our policies have changed year-to-year. Nationally, there has been recent advocacy for identifying markers on scripts, as the identity of who is telling the story does matter. It broadens our readers’ understanding of why this is an important story to tell, and we can have more nuanced conversation about contemporary issues. 

Some checks in this system:

• • Readers are asked to notify us and send a script back if they are randomly assigned a writer that they know and may feel compromised giving a fair evaluation. 
  • We incorporate resumes and playwright websites much later into the process, after we receive reports from the National Committee readers.

Anything else? You are always welcome to email the Literary team at literary@playwrightsfoundation.org with questions once we open our process on September 4th, 2020. PF’s Literary office will be closed the month of August. 

2021 Festival Dates: 

Festival dates are tentatively scheduled for July 7-25, 2021. Dates and determination of in person or online depend on the progression of circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. A pre-festival weekend retreat (July 7-10) prior to rehearsal brings together artistic teams and playwrights to share work, thoughts and feedback with other festival participants. It is mandatory for playwrights to be in residence for the entire retreat and festival period.

Financial arrangement: Minimum $600 Stipend, travel, housing.

Award notification: The playwrights selected for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival will be notified by or before mid-April 2021.

Applications for Playwrights Foundation’s 44th annual Bay Area Playwright Festival are live here from September 4, 2020 to October 16, 2020 (or will be cut off if we hit 750 scripts). Pay application fee here.

Other Programs

Rough Reading Series

Select scripts from the Bay Area Playwrights Festival applications not included in the Festival may be selected for the Rough Reading Series as well as from alumni and current Resident Playwrights. We particularly encourage our alumni and other writers not eligible for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival to share their new work with us in consideration for a Rough Reading or a Producing Partnership (read more below).

Award notification: The playwrights selected for the Rough Reading Series will be notified on a rolling basis.

Producing Partnerships

Our Producing Partnerships Initiative allows us to connect the work of our alumni playwrights to producing theaters here in the Bay Area, with an eye towards producing a world premiere or an important second or third production.

Producing Partnerships will be extended by invitation only, but we encourage our alumni and other writers not eligible for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival to share their new work with us in consideration for a Producing Partnership or Rough Reading.

Resident Playwrights Initiative

Launched in 2008, the Resident Playwright Initiative (RPI) offers rising Bay Area playwrights: an artistic home, a community of support, and a nurturing environment in which to work. With most theaters around the country offering opportunities only to well-established playwrights or their own writers, Playwrights Foundation provides a place for the next generation of gifted Bay Area playwrights to take the next steps in their work.

Applications for the Resident Playwrights Initiative are open to any Bay Area based playwrights. Upon review, select playwrights will be invited to apply for further consideration. We are not currently accepting applications for Resident Playwrights.