Mill Mountain Theatre Conservatory, the onsite, pre-professional training program at Mill Mountain Theatre, is seeking submissions of short plays for Write Stuff!, the third annual festival of new works penned by local students. The playwriting contest will have categories for Middle School and High School playwrights, with the theme “Discovering Truth About Yourselves and Others”. The winning plays will be selected by a panel of Mill Mountain Theatre professional artists and will be performed by local youth as part of a festival of staged-readings directed by MMT staff on April 12th, 2019 on the Waldron Stage. One of the winning plays will then go on to be entered in Young Playwrights For Change, a national competition. The deadline for submissions is January 31st, 2019.
Write Stuff! serves to connect Mill Mountain Theatre’s rapidly 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 bringing the young playwrights festival back to Mill Mountain Theatre’s Young Audiences programming for the third year in a row. “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 had been a desire of mine for several years, and I am thrilled how this festival has grown so much since its inception in 2017” 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.
In addition to staged readings of the chosen plays, MMT has the privilege of being a hosting site for the Young Playwrights for Change competition. One of the winning plays will be submitted to Young Playwrights For Change from Mill Mountain Theatre Conservatory.
Write Stuff Scripts will be centered around: “Discovering Truth about Ourselves and Others.”
How do we discover comforting or uncomfortable truths about ourselves? What do we learn about ourselves or the world around us as a product of the discovery? How do we discover the truth about another person or group of people who have different beliefs and identities from our own?
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 January 31st, 2019. Winners will be notified by February 11th, 2019. Performance and presentation of winning plays will be April 12th, 2019 on MMT’s Waldron Stage. Visit millmountain.org to learn more.
