Submission Rules for Playwrights

We began accepting plays for Acts of Brevity 2008, November 1, 2007 and will welcome submissions through December 31, 2007.  Winners will be announced here, on our website, by March 15, 2008.

We accept and consider short plays that are 15 minutes or fewer. We prefer cast sizes of not more than six characters.

The deadline for submissions to our annual short play festival, Acts of Brevity, is December 31st. Limit of two plays per author.

When submitting a play, please include the production history and a title page with all of your contact information (i.e. Name, Address, Phone Number, Email Address, and Website if you have one).

November 26, 2007 

A Letter to Playwrights from the Director of a Small Theater 

Two Chairs Theater Company has recently been reproached by some playwrights for instituting a submission fee for its
annual Acts of Brevity Short Play Festival and putting the burden of operation “on the backs of playwrights.” This, we are assured, relegates our status to “second-rate” and “unprofessional.”

I started this theater to produce new works. I did so in part because I am a playwright, and I know how difficult it is to find theaters to produce new plays. Unlike many theaters for which only the world premiere will suffice, we strive to produce quality plays, period. The fact that the world premiere took place in New York, Chicago, Denver, or Timbuktu is irrelevant to our audiences (as it should be to audiences in New York if we happen to hold the world premiere). We produce plays that deserve to be seen because they inform us, make us think and question, or simply make us laugh.

For our first production, our “staff” built risers out of old pallets and stretched donated motel bedsheets to make flats. We rigged coffee-cans with floodlights and borrowed a homemade dimmer pack. And I personally opened my wallet to pay for the lumber to build the stage and whatever else we couldn’t round up. We did it because we believed there needed to be another place where new playwrights could be heard. We wanted a theater company that didn’t rehash the same musicals again and again. We did it because we believed that more voices needed to contribute to the dialogue in this country.

Over the past six years, I have worked thousands of hours to make that vision a reality. I have taken not a single dollar in compensation for that effort, and I have no intention of doing so until the theater is able to generate everything it needs, with the full realization that I might never benefit financially from this company. My fellow volunteers have contributed thousands of hours more. We are not on the payroll of Two Chairs Theater Company. Two Chairs Theater Company does not have a payroll. We work full-time jobs elsewhere. We have wives and husbands and children who need our time and attention. And yet here we are on the weekends building sets, spending our evenings rehearsing and performing, and giving voice to the words of a playwright.

The margin for success of a theater company is perilously slim. In the past four years, five theater companies have gone out of business in Grand Junction. We are doing everything we can to grow this theater slowly and prudently so we can continue providing live theater to our patrons. We have ticket holders, sponsors, and donors. We have refreshments. We also have rent, insurance payments, and phone bills. And no, we haven’t tried bake sales or garage sales.

Do playwrights deserve to be paid? Absolutely. When performing original full-length scripts, an average of seventeen percent of our gross receipts has gone to royalties for playwrights. To date we have not paid the playwrights whose work has been produced in Acts of Brevity, but we expect to be able to do so this season. Last year we had 475 submissions to our short play festival. This does not include the 70 plus full-length play submissions we received. We are not compensated for the hundreds of hours spent reading, logging, and evaluating these plays, nor have we asked to be. Because of the additional work involved, we are asking playwrights to support the company’s mission of producing new plays. We are asking for a vote of confidence.

We love doing theater. We love reading and performing your work. But there is a point where the enthusiasm and energy of this labor of love dwindles when the rewards seem few and we are forced out of the role of artisan to perform the unpleasant and often unrelated work of putting money in the coffers. We could, of course, resort to performing the well-tested repertoire of mainstream theater, which would likely generate a larger audience but exclude the struggling playwright. Or we could quietly close our doors, one more victim of public apathy. Then there would be one less theater producing new works and one less opportunity for a playwright’s voice to be heard. I do theater because I enjoy the communion with other artists that creates something greater than the sum of its parts. If playwrights do not want to participate, so be it. I’ll spend my evenings at home where I can tuck my children into bed. 

Sincerely, 

Joseph Wilcox
Executive Artistic Director
Two Chairs Theater Company