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For those who have been following the discussion related to this call for short plays, please see the summary of our response below. You can also read Words Players Artistic Director Daved Driscoll's complete response to Dramatists Guild of America President Doug Wright's letter .

The play submission guidelines on this page will be updated with feedback obtained from the many voices in the ongoing discussion. We will post a notice through Facebook and Twitter when that happens.

Summary

1) We deeply regret the misunderstanding which my wording of the submission guidelines has caused. We regret the perception that the guidelines intended disrespect to authors, to art or to author rights. No such disrespect was intended. 2) We acknowledge and enthusiastically support authorial ownership of all intellectual property. Our guidelines failed to make that clear.

3) We ask for permission from authors to make changes in their works.

4) Our small, budget-less, educational workshop is geared toward new, chiefly unpublished, playwrights. Its purpose is to afford them an opportunity, which they might not otherwise have, to see their plays performed and to thus better understand audience reaction to them.

5) There are a number of limitations inherent in our production, which we spell out. We spell out these limitations precisely so that playwrights considering submission will understand the nature of our production. Playwrights are encouraged to submit only scripts which they feel will work under these limitations.

These limitations are, chiefly: -- We rehearse four or five times. -- With rare exceptions, we will perform on a bare stage, in street clothes. -- We have a limited pool of available actors. With a few exceptions, the actors and directors are twelve to twenty-two.

Modifications to scripts are made primarily to adapt them to these published limitations. Modifications are always made with respect for the playwright’s text.

6) We sent our call for scripts to a relativity small list of email subscribers who are aware of and understand the nature of the work, as well as the intent of the submission guidelines.

7) Well-meaning recipients of our email announcement shared our call for scripts in a variety of forums. It was forwarded, without our knowledge or consent, to a variety of forums which included experienced and professional playwrights who, lacking familiarity with our youth theatre and its educational and artistic goals, understandably perceived the guidelines as disdainful of writers and of appropriate relationships between writers and producers.

8) Our guidelines failed to make clear our endorsement of authorial rights precisely because we assumed that acknowledgement of those rights was so universal that we didn’t need to make our endorsement of them explicit. We were mistaken.

9) The submission guidelines failed miserably in their intent, which was chiefly to warn experienced playwrights that our Festival is an informal workshop aimed at developing new playwrights and allowing them to witness, first-hand, how directors, actors and audiences will perceive their words.

Daved Driscoll, Artistic Director Words Players Theatre

CALL FOR PLAYS

2015 ORIGINAL SHORT PLAY FESTIVAL

WORDS PLAYERS THEATRE

ROCHESTER MINNESOTA

"On the stage it is always now."

-- Thornton Wilder, Some Thoughts on Playwriting

Words Players Theatre, Rochester, Minnesota, is calling for one act plays for our 8th Annual Original Short Play Festival. The Festival will accept the submission of any script which has not been previously published or produced.

We intend to evaluate and select scripts by mid-September and will notify you then as to whether we have selected your script for production.

Rehearsals for the plays will begin in September.

Original, creative work is at the core of what we do here at Northland Words. Whether it's each of our original Shakespeare in the Park productions, our annual Thornton Wilder Short Play Festival or our "Original Short Play Festival," we celebrate the reality that all performance art is original. Merely preserving "the way it was done" is for mummies and pottery shards, not performance art.

The deadline for submission to this year's Festival is August 15. Plays may be sent by email to shortplays@northlandwords.org.

PLEASE KNOW:

➢ Our production of the play is our only "compensation" for its use.

➢ There will be two performances of most plays, October 23 & 24, 2015. It is possible that some plays will perform only once.

➢ The plays will be produced with minimal or no costumes, props or sets.

➢ The plays will be directed by student directors (mostly high school- and college-age) under the mentorship of our Artistic Director.

➢ While authors are welcome to confer with the directors, such conference is at the discretion of each director. Student directors will develop their autonomous interpretation and will maintain independent control of each production. They will in all probability modify settings and dialogue to fit our production situation and their own visions of the shows. Directors will, in particular, strive to make each play "entertaining" to our audiences and may modify the scripts, accordingly.

➢ Our casts are comprised of amateur community actors of all ages. A large percentage of them are quite young (high school- and college-aged).

➢ We largely ignore considerations of age, race and gender in our casting decisions. We may modify scripts, as necessary, in light of this consideration.

➢ We will record each production for possible online posting (with author credit), as well as for further promotional, artistic or other uses. These recordings will be the property of Words Players / Northland Words.

➢ We don't pay for the scripts.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

➢ Although there are no hard and fast rules for submission, by and large we will give preference to those plays which, in our judgment, appeal to the broadest audience. A lot of great art, of course, does not do so. But our emphasis is perhaps less on the artist-centered goal of producing "great art" (whatever that is) than on the more community-centered goal of producing art that communicates well with its audience. In our case, the audience invariably includes a large percentage of young people. We will prefer scripts that appeal to them as well as to old non-young people.

Part of this emphasis is our desire to give writers and directors first-hand experience of the vagaries of "marketability" as much as the more arcane goals of "art." (This doesn't mean we're necessarily looking for Neil Simon. Although we'll certainly consider his script, if he wants to submit one! Neil? Only that we will strive to make each play both understandable and interesting to our audiences. And again: an important consideration of marketability is an understanding of each particular audience.)

➢ That being said, we also encourage fresh and original approaches to theatre. We prefer most of all plays that are significant and interesting, without off-putting superciliousness.

➢ We will also give preference to younger and newer authors. Again, we don't have inflexible rules about what ages constitute "youth;" this is only a general consideration.

➢ We will also prefer, of course, those scripts which will work well with the minimal and specific production standards outlined above. A play with a cast of fifty, necessarily set in pre-Revolution Versailles, may well be a fantastic play but will probably be unworkable in our particular situation.

➢ We have performed Festival plays as long as 30 minutes but prefer those under 15.

Plays may be sent by email to shortplays@northlandwords.org and should include name, address and telephone number. The deadline for submission is August 15.

If you have any questions about any of this, please don't hesitate to talk to us. We're very excited about the prospect of presenting these original plays. –

Daved Driscoll, Director