Mill Mountain Theatre Conservatory is seeking submissions of short plays for Write Stuff!, their fifth-annual festival of new works penned by local students. The playwriting contest will have categories for Middle School and High School playwrights, and winning plays will be selected by a panel of professional Mill Mountain Theatre artists. Deadline for submissions is March 1, 2021.
The selected plays will be performed by Mill Mountain Theatre Conservatory students and directed by Mill Mountain Theatre staff during a virtual festival of play-readings on April 17, 2021.
Write Stuff! serves to connect Mill Mountain Theatre’s expanding education programming with its historical and ongoing commitment to new play development. Ginger Poole, Mill Mountain Theatre’s Producing Artistic Director, expressed excitement at the return of this beloved Young Audiences programming.
“Beginning with the Norfolk Southern Festival of New Works and continuing through our partnership with the Hollins Playwrights Lab, new work has been an important element of Mill Mountain Theatre’s identity,” Ginger said. “Expanding that vision to invest in the development of young writers is very important to our organization. Our inaugural festival was a success, as were the subsequent events, and I look forward to bringing the festival back for a fifth year and watching its growth and success continue in the coming years.”
The mission to encourage student authors is also in alignment with Mill Mountain Theatre’s pedagogical goals. “Write Stuff is an incredible experience and opportunity for young artists to work on a new play process,” says Victoria Buck, Mill Mountain Theatre’s Interim Director of Education. “It isn’t often that young people get to be involved in producing brand new plays: learning how scripts change, how characters are developed, and how to work with a playwright in the room.”
Scripts, 10-15 minutes in length, should be formatted as PDFs and emailed to [email protected] with the subject line “Write Stuff! Submission.” Deadline for script submissions is March 1, Performance, and presentation of winning plays will be April 17.
