*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***




It is that time of year again. We have chosen our artwork for the 2020 Playwrights and Artists Festival. We, as always, extend first look to those who have submitted to our festival in years previous.
We understand that times right now are vastly different for theatre productions. As of right now we are going ahead with this November’s festival. We will keep you updated via our website if any changes occur.
We will also be offering our prizes for these categories. 
$300 for Best of Festival.
$200 for Artistic Merit.
$100 for Audience Favorite.

The play must be inspired by one of the works of art... 

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The Gallery Players in Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York, is seeking plays for its 24th Annual Black Box New Play Festival to be held in January 2021. 
We are specificallv seeking plays from the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) playwriting community. 

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SEEKING 5-MINUTE COMEDIC PLAYS dealing with Quarantine and COVID-19 for possible publication with Smith & Kraus, Inc.
Only comedies or upbeat pieces will be considered.
Must be previously unpublished. It does not need to have had any type of reading or production.
Plays should have 2-4 characters. No more than 4...


*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***


*** AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE ***

Lin-Manuel Miranda and Disney: Timeline of a Collaboration
Disney+ is streaming a live-capture film of “Hamilton.” It’s just the latest chapter in a deepening relationship between the company and the musical’s creator.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s relationship with Disney started inauspiciously. He wrote a song on spec for a holiday show. The company rejected it.

“It was a holiday song, called ‘Holidays at Our House,’ and I will never play it for you,” he recalled recently. “It was not very good.”

But in the years since, the partnership has blossomed, so much that Miranda recently joked about the idea that Robert A. Iger, the company’s executive chairman, might burst into his house if he talked too much about an upcoming project.

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Offered as a Bicentennial project, “Valley Forge” is an adaptation of Maxwell Anderson's play. The emotional tone is common‐man lyrical. In the winter of 1778, Gen. George Washington (Richard Basehart) struggles to feed 4nd clothe a rag‐tail army, probably the “worst managed army in the history of military operations.” On the Other side, living in luxury, Gen. William Howe (Harry Andrews) is attempting to keep from Washington the news that the French have decided to join forces with the Continental Army.

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In the American Theatre, we have long been guided by the principle that we can “change the world, one play at a time.” What if it was also one day at a time with the same play? On Friday, Juneteenth, (June 19th), theatre communities around the country will provide their response to the current moment – the civil uprising that has come as a reaction to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others before them – with simultaneous free readings of Vincent Terrell Durham’s bold new play, Polar Bears, Black Boys & Prairie Fringed Orchids. With a perfect blend of wit, pathos and humor, the play speaks to some of the most pressing subjects of our time – gentrification, white fragility, the Black Lives Matter movement, and police violence against Black bodies. The need for collective action – a commitment to speaking the truth and to begin dismantling systemic racism in our institutions – has never been greater and through Vincent’s words, our community can begin moving toward awareness and justice.

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A New World is an utterly fine work, visually and in many other ways perfect. And the Globe is the right place to see it. A generally excellent cast mingles with the audience, bouncing and dancing and carting bodies and stocks past bemused but delighted tourists, while the moon rises overhead. The music, the banter, the proclamations – Dominic Dromgoole's production has you straight back in America and France of the 1790s, and you can practically smell the dung and the fear.

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The Ruckus at Machias, written by Richard Sewell and debuted in 1976, portrays local rather than national history. Centered on one of the first naval battles of the Revolutionary War, The Ruckus at Machias follows both “Tory and Rebel factions” as they navigate June 1775 and the effects of the beginnings of the Revolution in rural Machias, Maine.[6] The action centers on Hannah Weston, whose husband Josiah Weston goes against her wishes to fight the Tories and capture British soldiers aboard a ship docked in harbor, the HMS Margaretta. To help, she melts the pewter spoons from her wedding for ammunition and treks twenty miles through the forest to bring them to Josiah. As a thank you, “the community presents Hannah with a red dress – and presents the Continental Congress with its first captured war-vessel.”[7] Its language, setting, and action remain very true to the time, while more abstract, artistic moments weave in and out, making for a balanced, interesting, and informative piece.

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Dearest Enemy — as the show in question was called — wasn't a failure. It was what we'd call a moderate success. It opened Sept. 18, 1925 during a momentous ten days on Broadway: The Lunts in Shaw's Arms and the Man on Monday, Kit Cornell in the scandalous Green Hat on Tuesday, No, No Nanette and Noël Coward's The Vortex on Wednesday, Dearest Enemy on Friday, Rudolf Friml's Vagabond King on Monday and Kern and Hammerstein's momentous Marilyn Miller vehicle Sunny on Tuesday. It's not any wonder that Dearest Enemy got lost in that crowd.

This was a Revolutionary War love story, based on a factual occurrence in little old New York: On Sept. 15, 1776, a lady on Murray Hill — Mrs. Murray, in fact — entertained General Howe and his troops long enough to enable George Washington and his army, fleeing from their crushing loss in the Battle of Brooklyn, to meet up with reinforcements. Despite its novel provenance, the musical was a by-the-book affair, with Mrs. Murray's niece falling for a British soldier (of course) but tricking him to save the Republic. With songs.

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A revival of the musical comedy “1776” will come to Broadway in the spring of 2021, the Roundabout Theater Company said Monday.

The revival, directed by Diane Paulus, will begin next May at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., where Ms. Paulus is the artistic director. It will then be presented at several other theaters around the country, including in July 2020 at the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, before arriving at Broadway’s American Airlines Theater. The musical will be a coproduction of the A.R.T. and the Roundabout, both of which are nonprofits.

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