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We seek a new, full-length, original, unproduced and unpublished play in its final stages of development that would benefit from a week-long workshop at Coe.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, 2008 and November 1, 2008. Notification by January 10, 2008.
SEND ENTRIES TO:
Susan Wolverton, Chair, Dept. of Theatre Arts
Coe College
1220 First Avenue NE
Cedar Rapids, IA 52402
 |
EM Lewis |
2007 FESTIVAL WINNER: EM Lewis
Staged Reading: Saturday, March 31 - HEADS Poster (PDF)
EM Lewis' work has been read and produced around the country. She is the winner of University of Maryland's 2007 UMBC IN10 playwriting competition with The Edge of Ross Island. Her newest full-length play, HEADS - a hostage drama set against the war in Iraq - has been read in LA and New York, won Coe College’s New Works for the Stage Competition and was part of NYU’s hotINK Festival. It is a semi-finalist for the 2007 O’Neill Playwrights Conference. Infinite Black Suitcase was developed and received a workshop production at Moving Arts. The play was a semi-finalist for the 2006 O’Neill Playwrights Conference and a finalist in the HBTL “Diverse Voices” Playwriting Contest. Lewis is a writer-in-residence at Moving Arts Theatre Company in Los Angeles, CA, and a member of the Dramatists Guild, the International Centre for Women Playwrights and the Alliance of LA Playwrights. She lives in Santa Monica, California now - but she’s originally from Oregon.