Playwriting
Fostering opportunities to develop new work for the stage has been a long-standing
mission of Coe's theatre program. There are several ways that
students get
exposure to the full process of play making.
For example, since 1993 Coe has held a national biennial playwriting contest that has been listed as one of the top 60 Festivals in the World in Theatre Festivals: Best Worldwide Venues for New Works by Lisa Mulcahy. The winning playwright is invited to campus for a one-week residency that will include supervising writing workshops with playwriting students. Students help to mount a staged reading of the winning play to witness first-hand the collaborative process between the writer and other theatre artists.
See details for the New Works for the Stage Playwriting Festival below.
Playwriting I and II are offered each spring with additional opportunities for advanced projects in playwriting in the form of independent study. See course descriptions in the College catalog.
Finally, new plays written by students from Coe and other local colleges are mounted at the end of each semester as part of The City Dionysia Festival.
Coe College Playwriting Festival:
New Works for
the Stage
(Biennial Contest: Deadline Nov. 1, even years. Residency: April, odd years)
We seek a new, full-length, original, unproduced and unpublished play in its final stages of development that would benefit from a week-long workshop at Coe. No musicals, adaptations, translations or collaborations will be considered.
This is an excellent development opportunity for emerging, professional playwrights. Spend a week in residence workshopping your play with a professional director, faculty, students and community theatre artists.
INTENT
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For the playwright: We want to provide the resources and the time and space that will enable you to experiment with and further develop your play. In addition to helping you take your new work to the next level, we will also offer you teaching experience conducting a master class with our students. Finally, you will be given opportunities to connect with theatre professionals in eastern Iowa.
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For our students: This is an opportunity for our students to meet and interact with a working playwright, and to observe how plays evolve. Our students will be involved with the workshop either directly as participants, or indirectly as observers.
AWARDS
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One new play will be selected for a week-long rehearsal and workshop that will culminate in a public staged reading by students, faculty members, and/or individuals from the community. The winning playwright will receive an award of $500 plus travel, room and board for a week-long residency at Coe.
GUIDELINES
Any playwright with U.S. citizenship is encouraged to submit plays for consideration. Only one entry per playwright, please. To submit, please send the following:
- One clean, bound script
- A resume
- The play's development history
- A statement of development goals for your play (one page)
DEADLINES
Scripts will be accepted between October 1 and November 1. Notification by January 10.
SEND ENTRIES TO:
Susan Wolverton, Chair, Dept. of Theatre Arts
Coe College
1220 First Avenue NE
Cedar Rapids, IA 52402
 |
Lauren Yee |
2011 Festival Winner: Lauren Yee
Staged Reading: Friday, February 18, 2011
Lauren Yee's plays include Ching Chong Chinaman; Hookman; in a word; A Man, his Wife, and his Hat; and Samsara. She has been a Dramatists Guild fellow, a MacDowell Colony fellow, and a member of the Public Theater Emerging Writers Group. She has been a finalist for the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, the Heideman Award, the Jerome Fellowship, the PEN USA Literary Award for Drama, the PONY Fellowship, and the Wasserstein Prize.
Her play Ching Chong Chinaman was a finalist for the 2008 Princess Grace Award and the winner of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival's 2010 Paula Vogel Award and Kumu Kahua Theatre's 2007 Pacific Rim Prize. Named one of the top 10 plays by the East Bay Express and City Pages, the play has been produced at Berkeley's Impact Theatre, Minneapolis's Mu Performing Arts, the New York International Fringe Festival, New York City's Pan Asian Rep, and Seattle’s SIS Productions. The play will be published by Samuel French later this year. Her work has also been developed at the Hangar Theatre, the Public Theatre, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and others.
The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the Kennedy Center, the O'Neill Studio at Yale, and PlayGround have previously commissioned her work. She is currently working on new commissions for AlterTheater (slated for production in 2011), the Kennedy Center, and Mu Performing Arts (with support from the MAP Fund).
A graduate of Yale University, Lauren is pursuing her MFA in playwriting at UCSD, studying under Naomi Iizuka.