@dramatistsguild @nancygall

You’re staring happily at the words “End ofPlay” on your brand new script. Now what? Revisions, readings, more revisions,but eventually, you want a production. If you have a new play ready to go, you’ll be pleased to learn that new play festivals and competitions have been established at several Kentucky universities and colleges.

The biennial Year-End-Series (YES) Festival of New Plays began in 1983 at Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights. The festival’s mission is to “provide playwrights, both established and neophytes, with a venue for production of new, unpublished, unproduced works,” according to Project Director Professor Sandra Forman. From 400 to 500 submissions from around the world, three plays are chosen for full productions every other spring.

Forman says the festival provides students with “the quintessential theatrical experience” as they create “from scratch” the roles, designs, and everything else involved with a premiere. The community also benefits by having the opportunity to see new plays and meet playwrights who are in residence during final rehearsals and openings. The next submission period is in 2016.

A newer but also well-established festival is Sketches! at Somerset Community College in Somerset. Although it originally featured published scripts, the festival “ran out of options,” says Steve Cleberg, the college’s Director of Theatre since 1986. Playwrights may submit ten-minute sketches with small casts and simple settings year-round to Steve.Cleberg@kctcs.edu. He receives 200 plays each year.

Cleberg finds that students who take part in the festival “build up their acting chops,” which is great preparation for the theatre department’s full-length productions. An accomplished playwright and screenwriter, Cleberg has also established an Autumn Shorts Film Festival featuring short films from around the world.

Megan Burnett, Theatre Program Director at Bellarmine University in Louisville, looks forward to continuing the Biennial International 10-Minute Play Competition started by her predecessor, Carlos-Manuel Chavarría. Look for submission guidelines this spring.

Impetus for a new play festival in Ashland came from a creative writing class at Ashland Community and Technical College (ACTC) taught by Assistant Professor Jonathan Joy, author of more than 25 plays. The college’s first festival of new work showcased plays and monologues by Ashland students, faculty, and staff.

“Students were not just writing class exercises, they were writing plays to communicate with a real audience,” Joy explains. Based on the success of the inaugural festival, the college offered two sections of playwriting in the fall and has doubled the number of student playwrights who can submit scripts for ACTC’s 2nd Annual New Play Festival to be held April 24-26, 2015.

Kentucky’s DG Youth Ambassador, Elizabeth (“Ellie”) Kilcoyne, has had several plays produced at University of Kentucky (UK) in Lexington, including The Baked Sale, which was part of Les Mots, a bill of student-written plays produced there in December.

UK’s Theatre Department has a long tradition of producing new plays by student playwrights and emerging writers through the James W. Rodgers Playwriting Competition, the Student Play Festival, One Act Play Festival, and Studio Season. The faculty is considering a New Works Now! Festival for fall 2015 to present plays and dance pieces by UK theatre and dance student artists and recent alumni, according to Associate Professor Herman Daniel Ferrell III, a New Dramatist alumnus and Kentucky’s first Regional Rep.

Lindsey Wilson College in Columbia hired Robert Brock to develop a theatre program in 2010, which he certainly is doing. The college now offers nearly twenty theatre classes, and Brock, who previously served as artistic director at Kentucky Repertory Theatre, anticipates a spring production featuring writing and directing by Lindsey Wilson students. He expects to nurture the growth of such showcases.

If you’re involved with an educational institution, brainstorm with colleagues about creating a new play festival. Chances are good that you’ll receive more than enough worthy scripts. Further, students and others directly involved will benefit as will the larger community.

ngallclayton@dramatistsguild.com

Photo (above): Elizabeth (“Ellie”) Kilcoyne, Guild Youth Ambassador for Kentucky