Mill Mountain Theatre Conservatory, the onsite, pre-professional training program at Mill Mountain Theatre, is seeking submissions of short plays for Write Stuff!, the second 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 Mill Mountain Theatre professional artists. The deadline for submissions is December 31st, 2017. The chosen plays will be performed as part of a festival of staged-readings on February 10, 2018 on the Waldron Stage. Mill Mountain Theatre Conservatory students will act in the staged-readings directed by Mill Mountain Theatre staff.
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 about the newest addition to Mill Mountain Theatre’s 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. Expanding that vision to invest in the development of young writers has been a desire of mine for several years, and I am thrilled that our education department now has the capacity to take on this effort. Our inaugural festival was a success, and I look forward to bringing back the second annual festival and to watch its growth and success happen over the next several years.” she said.
The mission to encourage student authors is also in alignment with Mill Mountain Theatre’s pedagogical goals. “Write Stuff is an incredible experience for young artists to work on a new play process. It isn’t often that young people get to be involved in brand new plays: learning how scripts change, how characters are developed, and how to work with a playwright in the room,” says Travis Kendrick, Mill Mountain Theatre’s Director of Education. “Last year, Mill Mountain Theatre gave this experience to three young playwrights, who got to see their words come to life onstage as other young actors embodied the characters that they had created. The new plays performed to a full house, and each playwright participated in a talk back discussion with the audience afterwards,” he added.
Scripts, 10-15 minutes in length, should be formatted as PDFs and emailed to education@nullmillmountain.org with the subject line “Write Stuff! Submission.” The deadline for script submissions is December 31st, 2017. Winners will be notified by January 15th, 2018. Performance and presentation of winning plays will be February 10th, 2018 on MMT’s Waldron Stage.
