*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Ghostlight Theatre Ensemble (GTE) is excited to invite all playwrights to participate in its 2026 Festival 10 event. This is GTE’s fourth such festival. It will feature a variety of 10-minute plays, both published and unpublished, that are written, directed and performed by Bay Area thespians. You may submit up to three plays. Plays should meet the 10-minute length requirement and be able to be performed in a small stage setting.
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The Bite Sized Theatrical Spooktacular 2025
We are looking for original short plays (or other theatrical pieces) that are 10 minutes or less. This production is on Halloween, and we encourage any submissions that may resonate thematically, whether they directly relate to Halloween or not.
While we will consider anything and everything, we especially want to see submissions that are comedic or spooky, as this fits best with the tone of the evening!
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Playwrights First open for full-length plays
Overall, we look for:
magination and originality in both style and subject or point of view.
Characters that intrigue and move us.
A compelling action revealing the human condition.
Theatricality inherent in the above.
Rules:
One, single full-length play per playwright in English from anywhere in the world.
Not produced full-scale prior to submission. Readings, workshops, and college productions are acceptable.
No joint authorships, adaptations, translations, musicals, or shorts.
Award: $1,000 first place.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at
https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** PROOF ***
Ayo Edebiri and Don Cheadle will make their Broadway debuts next spring as a father and daughter united by math as well as mental health struggles in a revival of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Proof.”
The play, by David Auburn, previously ran on Broadway from October 2000 to January 2003 — an unusually long run for a serious drama. In 2001 it won not only the Pulitzer but also the Tony Award for best play.
Set in Chicago, “Proof” is about a young woman whose father, a well-known mathematician, has died; she is juggling complex relationships with her sister and with one of her father’s former students. And those relationships are upended by the discovery of a mathematical proof of uncertain authorship in her father’s office. Reviewing an Off Broadway production in 2000, the critic Bruce Weber, writing in The New York Times, deemed it “an exhilarating and assured new play” and said that it “turns the esoteric world of higher mathematics literally into a back porch drama, one that is as accessible and compelling as a detective story.”
More...
https://archive.ph/iTroL***
‘Proof’ was captivating and thought provoking, a triumph of the writing (David Auburn), direction (Joseph Houston) and an impeccable lead (Lucy Jane Dixon). ‘Proof’ is the story of a woman who took care of her genius mathematician father (David Keller) for years, as he deteriorated due to mental illness. When he dies Catherine (Lucy Jane Dixon) is left wondering if she has inherited her father’s illness along with his academic prowess. She must deal with her returning older sister Clare (Angela Costello) who wants her to leave the family home and a pushy past student of her father’s, Hal (Samuel Holland) wanting to go through her father’s work.
Auburn’s writing is clever and fast pace, creating moments of wit, hilarity and pain with equal impact. His work is astonishing in its ability to create comedic and heart wrenching moments that feel realistic and not at all staged.
More...
https://mancunion.com/2018/11/30/review-proof-by-david-auburn/***
London theatre has a thing about prime numbers at the moment. They feature prominently in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and they also pop up in this revival of David Auburn's Broadway play, first seen in London in 2002 in a production starring Gwyneth Paltrow – a role she reprised on screen.
Here, Mariah Gale plays Catherine, a spiky and fragile 25-year-old who has abandoned her university course to care for her ailing father, Robert (Matthew Marsh), a maths genius who revolutionised his field before he was 25, but has suffered severe mental breakdowns since. The action begins on the night before her father's funeral, when Catherine's bossy, competent sister, Claire (Emma Cunniffe) – a currency analyst who's been paying the bills while Catherine provides the care – flies in from New York.
At base, this is a hokey family drama, and the fact that it won the Pulitzer in 2001 makes you think it was a quiet year. Auburn clearly wants this to be a story in which mathematical and emotional equations, intellect and feeling, collide. So he throws everything at it: ghosts, flashbacks, sibling rivalry, guilt, even an ambitious grad student, Hal (Jamie Parker), who knows that if he can find something startling in Robert's notebooks his own career will be made.
In the hands of a playwright such as Tom Stoppard, this might have been a fascinating and multi-layered piece. But the questions it poses (is the lack of prominent women in maths down to gender or prejudice? Are genius and madness really aligned?) never entirely add up, and most often it simply skims over the issues. Hidebound by its form and without much intellectual daring, Auburn's play lacks elegance, unlike the maths proofs it describes.
More...
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/mar/21/proof-review***
John Madden’s “Proof” is an extraordinary thriller about matters of scholarship and the heart, about the true authorship of a mathematical proof and the passions that coil around it. It is a rare movie that gets the tone of a university campus exactly right, and at the same time communicates so easily that you don’t need to know the slightest thing about math to understand it. Take it from me.
The film centers on two remarkable performances, by Gwyneth Paltrow and Hope Davis, as Catherine and Claire, the daughters of a mathematician so brilliant that his work transformed the field and has not yet been surpassed. But his work was done years ago, and at the age of 26 or 27, he began to “get sick,” is the way the family puts it. This man, named Robert and played by Anthony Hopkins, still has occasional moments of lucidity, but he lives mostly in delusion, filling up one notebook after another with meaningless scribbles. Yet he remains on the University of Chicago faculty, where he has already made a lifetime’s contribution; his presence and rare remissions are inspiring. Recently he had a year when he was “better.”
More...
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/proof-2005***
''Proof,'' an exhilarating and assured new play by David Auburn, turns the esoteric world of higher mathematics literally into a back porch drama, one that is as accessible and compelling as a detective story. The play is fundamentally a mystery about the authorship of a particularly important proof, a mystery that is solved in the end; it is also, however, about the unravelable enigma of genius, and the toll it can take on those who are beset with it, aspire to it or merely live in its vicinity.
In that service, the play takes great pains to depict the study of mathematics as a painful joy, not as the geek-making obsession of stereotype but as human labor, both ennobling and humbling, and in so doing makes the argument that mathematics is a business for the common heart as well as the uncommon brain.
As directed by Daniel Sullivan and performed by an exemplary cast, ''Proof'' has the pace of a psychological thriller, and if its resolution tilts toward the sentimental, the characters deserve to be hopeful.
More...
https://archive.ph/e5pIV***
David Auburn's ''Proof'' at the Manhattan Theater Club is a family play of ideas. With intricate twists and turns, it takes a dramatic and comic ride through the lives of a brilliant, deranged mathematician and his two daughters, one of whom has devoted herself to taking care of her father.
Although this is not Mr. Auburn's first play, it is his first major production and it has been a heady experience for the 30-year-old playwright. ''Proof'' opened last week starring Mary-Louise Parker and directed by Daniel Sullivan. For the author, the sequence of events was quick and stunning: from page to stage in less than two years, and then surrounded by praise from critics and theatergoers.
In his first extended interview, Mr. Auburn spoke modestly about his accomplishment. He said that he had written the first draft of the play very quickly and, accepting suggestions from his agent and friends, he painstakingly revised it. Then he submitted it to the Manhattan Theater Club. Last April the company had a reading with Ms. Parker playing the central role.
''She nailed it,'' he said. ''With no prompting and no direction, she surpassed all my expectations and was unafraid to be scary'' and to stress the critical edginess of her character.
More...
https://archive.ph/l05t8***
PROOF Audiobook
10-minute preview - Anne Heche, Robert Foxworth,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_n7B7QLfuE
