VICTORY GARDENS ANNOUNCES CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR THE THIRD IGNITION FESTIVAL
Victory Gardens is searching for new, challenging, and innovative plays by writers of color for the 2012 festival. The third IGNITION festival will create a productive environment for both emerging and established playwrights of color to explore and develop their new work. Six new plays will be presented in a festival of readings scheduled July 29-August 5, 2012. The plays will be directed by leading artists from Chicago and around the country. Following the readings, the plays may be considered for further development and possible production at Victory Gardens Theater.
Victory Gardens provides selected playwrights with housing and transportation as well as a stipend for one rehearsal week beginning July 29th through the final event of the festival weekend on August 5, 2012.
Submission Deadline: March 1, 2012
Announcement of Six Festival Participants: May 1, 2012
Festival Dates: July 29 – August 5, 2012
Submission Guidelines:
- There is no restriction as to subject matter. Victory Gardens hopes that a diversity of perspective will inform the plays, but the plays do not have to deal specifically with race, ethnicity or identity issues.
- The initiative is open to all playwrights of color.
- Submitted plays must be unproduced and must be in English or primarily in English.
- Playwrights may only submit one full-length play.
- Plays must be submitted by mail, not electronically, and should not be permanently bound.
- Please include a biography or resume as well as the reading/development history of the submitted script. Please be sure to include your email address as well as your phone number(s).
- Please include a return addressed postcard if you wish to be notified when the script arrives. All scripts will be recycled after reading and will not be returned.
- There is no submission fee.
Submission should be mailed to: IGNITION, Victory Gardens Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue , Chicago , Illinois 60614 . For further information, please call Sandy Shinner, 773-549-5788 ext 2139.
The bi-annual festival brought to the attention of the country the critically-acclaimed The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity by Kristoffer Diaz, the widely produced Year Zero by Michael Golamco and Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them by A. Rey Pamatmat, as well as this year’s upcoming world premiere of We Are Proud To Present A Presentation… by Jackie Sibblies Drury (March 30-April 29). IGNITION continues Victory Gardens’ core mission of presenting new plays that reflect and speak to diverse communities in Chicago and throughout the country.
Victory Gardens Theater, founded in 1974 and now under the artistic leadership of Chay Yew, is the recipient of the 2001 Tony Award for Regional Theater. For thirty-six years the theater’s mission has been to develop and produce new plays for the American Theater. Victory Gardens is a leader in its commitment to inclusion and cultural diversity, and has been recognized by the Ford Foundation for translating this core value into mainstage productions by writers of color each season.
Undone by Andrea Thome
We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South-West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915 by Jackie Sibblies
Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them by A. Rey Pamatmat
The Subject by Chisa Hutchinson
Aurora by Leonard Madrid
blu by Virginia Grise
Icarus Burns by Christopher oscar pena
Lost Accents by Qui Nguyen
microcrisis by Michael Lew
One Week in Spring by Kristiana Rae Colon
Yasmina’s Necklace by Rohina Malik
Victory Gardens Theater’s 2008 inaugural IGNITION festival, generously funded by the Ford Foundation, had a dual goal: to introduce exceptional new writers of color under the age of 40 to Victory Gardens and to ignite future productions of the winning plays around the country.
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Six plays were selected for the festival weekend out of 120 submissions: Fati’s Last Dance by France-Luce Benson Six additional plays were selected as finalists: Dirty by Carla Ching; Holly Down in Heaven by Kara Lee Corthron; The Great White Way by Sigrid Gilmer; Native Speaker by Nambi E. Kelley; West of the Willow Tree by Janine Nabors; How Far? Too Far? by Tania Richard. The six festival playwrights traveled to Chicago to participate in rehearsals, and leading theater artists of color from across the nation directed and performed in the new play readings. Following the festival, two plays were selected for intensive workshop and VG committed to produce at least one festival script. In fact two scripts were chosen for production at VG during the 2009/10 season - Year Zero and The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity. Generously funded by the Chicago Community Trust, the productions completed the first cycle of IGNITION. In January, Victory Gardens announced The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, would be remounted at New York’s Second Stage Theatre, April 27 - June 20, 2010. And Second Stage presented the second production of Michael Golamco’s Year Zero May 18 - June 13, 2010. On April 13, 2010 The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity was named a 2010 Pulitzer Prize Finalist. |
