Fw: MATC Dramatists Lab Call for Plays

For anyone who's interested.

 

Angie Fiedler Sutton

Associate Editor

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----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Sarah A. Crockarell <Sarah.Crockarell@COLORADO.EDU>
To: MATC-L@LISTSERV.ILSTU.EDU
Sent: Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:04 PM
Subject: MATC Dramatists Lab Call for Plays

The 34th Annual
Mid-America Theatre Conference (MATC) - Playwriting Symposium
Hyatt Regency Hotel
St. Louis, MO.
March 7-10, 2013

PLAYWRIGHTS:
CALL FOR PLAYS, Mid-America Dramatists Lab
The Playwriting Symposium of the Mid-America Theatre Conference seeks submissions of new ten-minute plays by playwrights who wish to participate in our Mid-America Dramatists Lab.  Staged readings of the selected plays will be performed at the conference during the Playwriting Symposium sessions or at the cutting edge Fringe Festival.

Home to the famous Gateway Arch —the "Gateway to the West" and a monument of westward expansion — St. Louis proclaims itself to be a site of many myths about the United States of America:its dreams, promises, potential, ambitions, identity, destiny, abuses, manipulations, hubris...and the list goes on. The ways that myths are created, used, manipulated,
exposed, recycled, and remade is a central exploration of any critical analysis of a place, a people, a culture, or a cultural practice. The role of myth in theatre practice, scholarship, and education is as varied as the myths of creation and origin that our religions, cultures, and nations depend upon. A myth is a cultural marker, a beacon of historical memory, while at the same time it is an invention used to propagate an ideology

For our 2013 St. Louis meeting, the Mid-America Theatre Conference invites proposals of presentations, conversations, scripts, and workshops around the theme of "Myth" as it plays a role in our own work—both in the United States and abroad. How do theatres and practitioners depend upon or create useful myths? How do historians address them? What are our myths and how are we aware of them (or not aware of them)? How do we try to consciously or unconsciously deny, propagate, or provoke them in our work? How might a work's reception be shaped by existing myths? What kind
of iconoclastic moves might destroy old myths or create new myths?

We encourage playwrights to consider the all-conference theme as a springboard to generate creative ideas.  Unrelated submissions will certainly be considered as well, since challenging myths has been just as important to theatre as reifying them.  This is a juried event and while all playwrights are invited to submit, the call for scripts is directed primarily at academic playwrights who are faculty members or graduate students and/or professionals in the field who seek the opportunity to present their work and receive feedback from their peers. The plays that are selected will be rehearsed and presented as staged readings at the conference with assigned teams of directors, dramaturgs and actors. Each ten minute play receives approximately two hours of rehearsal time at the conference.  All participants assigned to a given project need to have the final script in hand prior to the conference.  Three to four additional plays will be selected to be presented as a part of our evening Fringe Festival Showcase.

All playwrights whose plays are selected must register for the conference. There is no funding from the conference for travel or lodging costs. The Mid-America Theatre Conference will take place March 7-10, 2013 at the Hyatt Regency in St. Louis, MO. All playwrights are strongly encouraged (though not required) to be present for orientation Thursday afternoon, March 7.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Scripts must be typewritten using Samuel French or similar guidelines with a Times New Roman 12 point font.

Scripts MUST not exceed ten minutes in length. We will NOT accept plays with longer run-times. Please time your plays prior to submitting. A general page estimate includes approximately 8-9 pages although this is not an exact science. Scripts with fast-paced dialogue are often much shorter in time than plays with extensive monologues.

Scripts should bear only the title of the play and NOT the name and address of the author.  As a separate document, list the title of the play, name of the author, address, phone number, e-mail, and university/college, theatre or state affiliation.  This will insure blind reading of the scripts when they are sent to the readers.
(If you are also interested in acting, directing or serving as a dramaturg, please apply under separate cover.)

The play may call for NO MORE than three actors to participate. Roles may be doubled but the symposium will only accommodate three actors per script

Submit plays and title page by e-mail attachment in PDF format to Ron Zank, Playwriting Symposium Co-Chair, ronald.zank@lamar.edu  Direct all questions to Ron by email or by calling (409) 880-8154.
All submissions must be received by OCTOBER 1, 2012. (This is earlier than other MATC submission deadlines.)
Acceptance will be acknowledged by December 2012 or earlier.