Social Justice Work Happens Off Facebook

This past week I haven't been on FB as much b/c I've gotten into a lot out of unprompted one-on-one conversations with black and brown artists like Stacey Rose, Michael R. Jackson, James Anthony Tyler, Michel Hausmann, and many others. The dialogues were personal, complex and a key reminder: I get so much more depth and reality from actual conversations than from surfing the scroll.

In 2014 I was engaged in fellowships at BAX and National Black Theatre and talking with other black artists. When Chiron Armand said he had been 'policed out of his body' by bible and flag...that became a key theme for me. I returned to it in my work and also a meditation. What does it mean to be 'policed out of our bodies' by flag and bible? But that revelation only happened because I had an actual dialogue with Chiron. And I was having a dialogue because I actually knew him for years. I was not just popping into his life to get ideas for my work and then vanishing.

The unsexy, un-Twitter work is important and it happens in private, off-the-record, among friends. Post, tweet, blog, yes...but also reach out to your circle. And if you're a white artists who doesn't talk to black artists...reach out to YOUR circle...whatever that looks like.  Just don't pop into the DM's of a black artist to 'surf black' and then leave. If you're not down for the cause, admit it to yourself, and do better with YOURSELF first. Make honest inroads and establish connections with black people outside of trauma and horror. If you want to just surf...go to Youtube. It's great and there are tons of great speakers you can listen to for free, surfbort until it's time for brunch, and then go back to your avocado toast. Your distant black 'acquaintance in the arts' is not your free TED TALK speaker. 

But blk artists...keep talking. This is more than a 'check in' call. This is a continuous, necessary, fluid, complex community. The real work starts with honest dialogue, peer review, and personal reflection...off social media.

Social Justice Warm-Ups

Warm-ups are necessary before a marathon. But stretching is not the actual race. Playing the scales is a warm-up for a concert pianist, but it is not the actual performance. Self-care calls are a good warm-up for social activism. But it's not the actual fight for social justice.

Now we need to do warm-ups. You can't roll out of bed, jump into house slippers, and run the NY Marathon, just like you can't roll out of bed, plop down on a cushion and expect to have a good meditation. But once we complete our warm-ups, we have to actually DO the thing.
I think the problem is that we are taught things in a half-ass way. It's our country, our education system. We learn things in broken, backward, and incomplete ways from kindergarten through college.  We rush through to the end. Most of us aren't taught any warm-ups or preliminaries and so we either hurt ourselves or nothing happens and we think 'this doesn't work.' Then we go out and discourage others. The other half of us are only taught the preliminary practice. So we stretch by the side of the road and think we're in the race.

I went to grad school for playwriting and our teachers made us write for the entire first semester...moments. We objected. We wanted to write glorious plays, epics, trilogies. But our teacher made us learn how to explore our voices and then write a dramatic beat. And then write a monologue, and then write a scene, and then a series of scenes, and then we had to put those scenes up as short plays. And guess what? The plays sucked...they were lumpy lopsided first pancakes burnt at the bottom and undercooked. And so we had to go back and do it again. And again. And then we wrote 30 minute plays. We didn't get to even attempt to write a full-length play until our second year. We learned fundamentals. At any point, if we didn't complete the assignment, we had to go back and do it again.

Social justice warriors...you did the warm-ups. You made some calls, maybe you posted a black square on your social media yesterday. You showed consternation and empathy for others. Maybe you even made a sign and walked with others. That's good. But that is just a warm-up. The marathon is ahead of us and it takes place in the form of elections, letter writing, organized gatherings, planning. The civil rights movement of the 60s wasn't a series of marches or concerned phone calls to black people to see how they were feeling after a bus boycott. The marches were the tip of an iceberg. It was an actual collection of millions.

Some of y'all did some really good warm-ups during the Ferguson uprising in 2014. You put on your social justice exercise clothes, did some mental stretches of empathy, watched past experts share their experience..and then you went and had a cheeseburger. Today, we have another chance to run the race. So stretch, show empathy, post black squares of whatever you need to feel good about yourself. And then get a trainer or a teacher (this doesn't mean your black friend.) Commit to a workout regime so that you can run the race. Make it small and realistic. It's better to do something small consistently than to do grand gestures every 4 years.
And yes...keep stretching. But remember...stretching isn't the goal of a marathon. It's a warm-up.

Get Back To Work

I just saw a commercial that began with the 'now more than ever' and 'during these difficult times' schtick. I thought it was going to be an ad for car insurance or beer or Viagra...but that was not the case. As the music swelled and a montage of hardy-looking folks unfolded the selling point was how... we all needed to get back to work! Plot twist!!

Yes, it was a commercial for work, or rather it was a paid ad to remind you lazy, good-for-nothing freeloaders who have been hiding out from a global pandemic that killed 100,000 citizens and is still going on in the middle of civil unrest...that the best medicine is to get back out there.

I want to know how the marketing meeting for this ad went down...a bunch of suits sitting in a conference room and then their boss storms in and says 'Americans need to be reminded of their most basic dignity...life, liberty, free speech? No, they gotta go flip those burgers, bitch! It's been almost a month and 40 million lazy Americans decided to become unemployed. So we gotta motivate them with some powerful images and voiceover speech.

Look, Americans love to work...or they have bought into the idea that they should love work because it makes them a virtuous Christian soul. Americans eat their lunch at their desk, Americans stay late b/c they don't want to be thought of as lazy, they come to work sick and spread diseases because they can't afford to take a break, pop out babies and have the shortest maternity leave before they run back to the assembly line, buy their own supplies for their classrooms so that they don't let students down. The avg American really believe they can work themselves to wealth. Despite all the evidence, the avg American thinks 'if I just work hard enough, I will overcome.' We work harder, not smarter. Americans forsake their family, health and happiness to work. I know people who have worked themselves to death.

The only thing American workers don't get...are the benefits of their labor. Last in pension, last in healthcare, last in unemployment, last in childcare support. How does a ruling class overwork, underpay, and continue to get the lower class to keep driving, keep pushing, keep working despite the need for reform?
It's simple: they used race. They told the white working class person to fear the black guy taking their jobs. They told the black guy that they're lazy and need to work twice as hard. And then they told both of them that the Mexicans are coming to takeover everything. They rotted out the Northern and Rust Belt unions by getting low-information, high school educated white factory workers to fight against expanding unions. Shareholders increase their wealth exponentially by sitting at home on their butt, but they push the main point...the whip has to be cracked, the illusion of the lazy worker has to be maintained to get them to work themselves to death. 

The Unreal Irrelevancy of American Theatre

I've never looked to American theatre for relevance, political significance, or reality. I write plays b/c I enjoy the craft and exploring my voice. I write about black love, black hate, blacklivesmatter, police brutality, black respectability, insurrection, rebellion, black apocalypse, and other things. For the most part, the plays go directly into my desk drawer after getting a round of polite passes.  The only play I've had done of any significance is OBAMA-OLOGY and that's b/c it went from a Juilliard workshop and then directly to London where it received a great production at Finborough Theatre. The British stamp of approval gave it some mileage back home, but it's a play about black life, police brutality, the election, transformation...i.e. I knew that I was writing it for my soul b/c American theatre doesn't care about that. American theatre is interested in black storytelling that is about SLAVERY and maybe a sprinkling of civil rights era stories. Period. That's what gets done. That's what hits the sweet spot for white liberals: slavery and maybe MLK. Maybe a tortured black woman. Maybe. Even better if you can incorporate some combination of the 3.

The reason why A STRANGE LOOP was such a revelation to see is b/c it was DONE. It work written from the black queer heart that a major institution actually produced (and a true thank you to Playwrights Horizons.) It was the unicorn that leaped through a million pitfalls, passes, white liberal allies, and climbed the Mount Olympus of development. And it satiated black and white audiences without compromise.

I've been writing plays for two decades and 99% of my stuff sits in the desk drawer. I've been writing tv for 5 yrs and had episodes about BLM, voting rights, LGBTQ struggles for POC, and black love. Millions of people watched those stories and I got paid hundreds of thousands of dollars...and healthcare and job stability and promotion and a sense of relevance in the culture.

I deeply appreciate New Dramatists and the O'Neill. I love Seattle Public Theatre and Miami New Drama b/c they are institutions that have women and POC in charge. But other than that...it's crickets. I loved developing my BLM play "Running on Fire" at Juilliard and O'Neil Center before being told that it wasn't relevant to American theatre in 2016. Okay.  I went back to work on THIS IS US and then THE GOOD FIGHT. The joy of the work was internal and not dependent upon the American theatre. I love the theatre community but it holds little value to me. It's a place to sharpen my knife.

Shooting the Arrow

I've had the police called on me for the felony of sitting in public, walking, exercising, being in a museum, trying to find my car in a parking lot. 99% of the time the cops come up to me with a look on their face like 'yeah...I gotta check out this bullshit.' I stay in a state of equanimity. I also know that my lighter skin tone makes people think I'm Latino some times, I don't have an 'aggressive' hairstyle of militancy (sarcastic here). I code-switch with ease, and I have the markings of 'de-escalation.' Most of the times the cops are visibly uncomfortable by the end of the exchange...perhaps the creeping suspicion that they are apart of something troubling. I say some encouraging words to them...not for my sake...but on behalf of the next black person they are confronting. I say something seemingly innocuous that may hit them later in the day when they have to approach a black woman or man who is sitting on a park bench and rightfully annoyed. I leave them with a time capsule thought for later and the next black person.

It's called 'pempa' in Tibetan...you shoot the arrow of consciousness forward to a different time and place. Technically, you're supposed to do it in death when you want to shoot your consciousness forward, but you can try it throughout the day in little actions. You wake up and shoot a thought forward to 4pm when you have a meeting or have to be somewhere uncomfortable. Blk ppl have been doing pempa in America for hundreds of years. We hollow ourselves out in a moment of threat and shoot our consciousness forward...we think of how we want to survive an interaction to see our kids, or imagine going home with a funny story of some uptight white woman calling the cops on us for sitting, we imagine walking in the door and saying 'baby, you won't believe what happened to me today...'  The forward-thinking actions do have power b/c -in that future- the police can't get to you. In that pempa the white lady or man who called the cops is just a petty racist in the rearview mirror. And by shooting forward, we can numb ourselves to the present moment. You've seen that look in black ppl's eyes confronting an exasperating situation and suddenly their eyes go dead and their tone gets flat...they are not there any more. They  have gone into the past or future...where the present indignity/threat/conflict can not harm them.

In trauma, we mostly go to the past...we shoot our arrow to a previous incident, or catastroph-ize by recalling other bad endings in societal consciousness. The mind readily draws on past stories to inform or enflame a current situation. But in 'pempa' you move forward. You keep moving through the flames. You fling the mind and the thoughts toward joy. And if you are in a present joy but anticipating.a future hardship, you use that peaceful platform to shoot a conscience arrow toward that future ordeal.

As a black person I'm shooting arrows of consciousness all the time. I'm careful not to go back. Only forward. And I try to shoot the arrow not only for me, but the next generation, for the cops, for even the perpetrator. 

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GET WHAT YOU WANT: June 2020

1. LUXEMBOURG ARTS PRIZE
Deadline: June 2nd
website: https://www.luxembourgartprize.com/en/call-for-submissions-en/

The Luxembourg Art Prize aims to reveal and promote talented artists who have yet to establish a profile on the contemporary international scene. Its function is to discover artists, and it is open to any artist, amateur or professional, with no limits on age, nationality or place of residence. The Prize is aimed at artists working in one or more of the following media: drawing, printing, installation, painting, performance, photography, digital art, sculpture, sound art, video, mixed media, decorative art (textiles and material, glass, wood, metal, ceramics, mosaic, paper or other techniques).

The winner of the Prize receives an award of €50'000 (about US$56,500 GBP42,500 CHF56,000 CA$75,000 JPY6,300,000) paid into their bank account within a few days of the ceremony. The finalist artists will be included in a group exhibition in the gallery. The Luxembourg Art Prize is a unique opportunity to enter the international professional art circuit and to have your work seen by major private and institutional art collectors. You will have the chance to be supported and personally advised by Hervé Lancelin.

Unlike other prizes or art salons, the Luxembourg Art Prize is designed by a leading not-for-profit organisation to boost your career by exhibiting your work in a private exhibition space of museum quality and giving you a high level of visibility.

All the costs associated with travel to and accommodation in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg for the finalist artists and one other person of their choice will be paid in full by the organisation in 2019. This includes transport for the works of art, air and train tickets and full-board accommodation in a four-star hotel.

The organisation will arrange return travel for the finalist artists and their companions by train or air. It will send travel documents to the finalist artists and their companions within the ten days before the opening of the finalist artists’ group exhibition.

The organisation will also book hotel rooms on the basis of dual occupancy (each artist with their companion).


2. STUDIOS OF KEY WEST RESIDENCY
Deadline: June 8th
Website: https://tskw.org/residency-about/

The Studios offers a residency program for emerging and established artists and writers designed to encourage creative, intellectual and personal growth. The program grants nearly 35 artists each year the time and space to imagine new artistic work, engage in valuable dialogue and explore island connections.

The Studios’ residency program is community-based and built upon the hope that visiting artists will take inspiration from Key West’s rich artistic past and present, and will engage with — and be inspired by — the remarkable people and culture that surrounds them.

Key West’s official motto, “One Human Family” reflects our commitment to living together as caring, sharing neighbors dedicated to making our home as close to paradise as we can. To that end, we encourage artists of all races, nationalities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and abilities to apply.

Residencies are almost a full month, and run from the 16th of the month through the 14th of the next. There is a $40 application fee.


3. JEREMY O. HARRIS and BUSHWICK STARR FINANCIAL AID
Deadline: June 15th
Website: https://www.thebushwickstarr.org/pet-project-grant?fbclid=IwAR3-VF_2Z0lPD06hw60laahmaGl9DCJR1I4HnnBofRqhOdRWzYdn5ySdRbo%27

This grant will distribute 152 unrestricted cash awards of $500 each directly to US-based playwrights, of any employment and/or immigration status. To us, a practicing playwright is a person who generates live performance in a theatrical setting through the creation of text and action. Playwrights in need at any stage of their practice or career are encouraged to apply. Grantees will be chosen through a random lottery after submissions have closed.

TO APPLY: Playwrights are asked to submit a piece of writing to demonstrate eligibility for this grant, which is designated for playwrights. Shorter plays and texts are acceptable as long it constitutes and translates into an evening of performance. We ask for page numbers denoting an excerpt that you would like us to read. Although the grant process is not merit-based we are always interested in familiarizing ourselves with as many artists as possible, and will attempt to look at all writing that is submitted during summer 2020.

Awards will be granted by random lottery. Application will open on Friday, May 29 2020 at 3pm Eastern time and remain open until we receive 1500 submissions. We will then randomly select 152 recipients from the pool of 1500 applicants (10% of the applicant pool). Submissions will be viewed and administered by The Bushwick Starr curatorial staff to confirm eligibility.

Grants will be issued in cash by electronic fund transfer or check, we aim to make payments no later than Monday, June 15 2020.

You do not need to demonstrate need, skill, or merit to be eligible for funding. However, we hope you will weigh your level of need when considering whether to apply. If your experience of need is not urgent or acute, please consider stepping back and letting those who could most benefit from our limited resources access them first. If you know someone who is eligible and would benefit, please consider inviting them to apply.


4. CENTER THEATRE GROUP 2021 SHERWOOD THEATRE AWARD
Deadline: June 17th
Website: https://www.centertheatregroup.org/programs/artists/sherwood-award/

Center Theatre Group’s $10,000 Dorothy & Richard E. Sherwood Award is given annually to support innovative and adventurous theatre artists working in Los Angeles. The deadline for the initial application is June 17, 2020, at 12:00pm. Selected candidates will be invited to submit full applications. Notification will be sent to all applicants regarding the full application process by late July.

Full applications, along with letters of recommendation and work sample material will be due no later than August 14, 2020, at 12:00pm.

The Sherwood Awardee will receive $10,000 and two finalists will receive $2,000 each.

Competitive candidates will demonstrate the following qualities:

-Innovative—introducing new ideas; original and creative in thinking
-Pushing boundaries—extending frontiers, experimenting, challenging the theatrical norm, finding new forms of artistic expression
-Exceptional talent—the ability to capture the attention of the audience through pure skill and craft, a natural ability or aptitude in the selected field, translating passion and dedication into works of art, etc.
-Effective communication—theatre artists who can passionately and effectively communicate their point of view and distinct artistic voice.


5. THE CIVILIANS R&D
Deadline: June 22nd
Website: http://thecivilians.org/upcoming/apply-to-the-2019-20-civilians-rd-group/

The Civilians’ R&D Group provides writers, directors, composers, and other generative artists with a space to develop their investigative theater projects. The creative process may include research, interviews, engaging with specific communities, or other experimental methods of inquiry.

The group meets about 12 times on a regular basis for nine months to share methodologies and resulting work, facilitated by the R&D Program Director. At meetings, group members participate in supporting the development of each other’s projects, therefore regular attendance is critical and should be considered when applying.

At the end of the season, each project will be given a brief rehearsal process to address development goals culminating in a work-in-progress presentation.

In an effort to prioritize keeping our communities safe during this global health emergency, we remain flexible with shifting circumstances. We therefore anticipate the 2020-2021 R&D Group may meet remotely until safety and circumstances allow us to do otherwise.

Applications are due by June 22, 2020, at 11:59PM EST


6. WAVE FARM RADIO ARTIST FELLOWSHIP
Deadline: June 26th
Website: https://wavefarm.org/radio/wgxc/calendar/1mvwgp

Wave Farm is delighted to announce a second year of the Radio Artist Fellowship, a nine-month, part-time engagement for a radio artist and scholar living and working in the United States. The Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow will work closely with Wave Farm’s Executive Director, Galen Joseph-Hunter, and Artistic Director, Tom Roe. The Fellowship will also include communication with Mentors: Anna Friz, Joan Schuman, and Gregory Whitehead.

Radio artists explore broadcast radio space through a richly polyphonous mix of practices, including poetic resuscitations of conventional radio drama, documentary, interview and news formats; found and field sound compositions reframed by broadcast; performative inhabitations/embodiments of radio’s inherent qualities, such as entropy, anonymity and interference; playful celebrations/subversions of the complex relationship between senders and receivers, and the potential feedback loops between hosts and layers of audience, from in-studio to listeners at home to callers-in; use of radio space to bridge widely dispersed voices (be they living or dead), subjects, environments and communities, or to migrate through them in ways that would not be possible in real time and space; electroacoustic compositions with sounds primarily derived from gathering, generating and remixing radiophonic sources.

The Fellowship will combine remote work with three on-site visits to Wave Farm’s research library and radio studios.* Located in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley, Wave Farm is a nonprofit arts organization driven by experimentation with broadcast media and the airwaves. A pioneer of the Transmission Arts genre, Wave Farm programs provide access to transmission technologies and support artists and organizations that engage with media as an art form. Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7-FM: Radio for Open Ears is a full-power, creative community radio station in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley. The WGXC program schedule features original content by over one-hundred volunteer programmers, and commits significant daytime listening hours to radio art and experimental sound.

*Details of the Wave Farm visit schedule will be determined in collaboration with the selected artist, with consideration given to any ongoing travel restrictions related to COVID-19.


7. HEADLANDS CENTER FOR ARTIST RESIDENCY
Deadline: June 26th
Website: http://www.headlands.org/program/air/

The Artist in Residence (AIR) program awards fully sponsored residencies to approximately 50 local, national, and international artists each year. Residencies of four to ten weeks include studio space, chef-prepared meals, comfortable housing, and travel and living expense reimbursements. AIRs become part of a dynamic community of artists participating in Headlands’ other programs, allowing for exchange and collaborative relationships to develop within the artist community on campus. Artists selected for this program are at all stages in their careers and work in all media, including drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, new media, installation, fiction and nonfiction writing, poetry, dance, music, interdisciplinary, social practice, and architecture.

Goals:
-To support and invest in individuals at the cutting edge of their fields, whose work will impact the cultural landscape at large. To provide these artists with the support and opportunity to take their work to the next level and to explore and experiment
-To bring artists and thinkers into a dynamic community of local, national, and international artists: a professional network of creative practitioners and thinkers
-To encourage artists to explore their ideas and work within the context of the Marin Headlands, a part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area
-To bring an international community of artists to the Bay Area and create opportunities for engagement and cross-cultural exchange with local artists and audiences
Please note: Due to the uncertainties created by COVID-19 and its impact on our 2020 and 2021 residency seasons, your application for a 2021 residency may be held for consideration for 2022 instead. If that proves necessary, you will be notified and will have the opportunity to update your application.


8. MAXIM MAZURDA NEW DIGITAL PLAY CONTEST
Deadline: June 30th
Website: http://alleyway.com/playwrights/

Original plays or musicals written specifically for a tech platform such as Zoom. As theatres face the challenge of moving programming online, please consider the following:

Creativity. We are not looking for plays that could just as easily be performed on stage. We want you to truly embrace the digital/virtual platform. How can you engage with an audience through this distant reality? How can you make this mediated form immediate?

Technology. We are only at the beginning stages of understanding all the incredible opportunities technology can afford us. Which platform will work best for your play? How will it be done? What “magic” can you employ to use technology to help tell your story in the most successful way? Is it Zoom? Skype? FaceTime? An app? Something else? Is it live? Live to tape? Filmed previously and heavily edited? The winning plays will be specific and creative in this approach, as emphasis should be placed equally on the story and the form.

Audience. Who is this for? Is it interactive? Passive? Zoom fatigue is real. How long can your production honestly ask an audience to sit at their screen? 10 minutes? 60? 90? Be realistic in your attempts at engaging your target audience.

Finalists will be notified by early Fall 2020 and the winning play will receive its premiere production via Alleyway online during the 2020/21 season and will be awarded a royalty/prize of $250.


9. PROJECT Y: ZOOM CALL PLAYS
Deadline: June 30th
Website: http://www.projectytheatre.org/2020/04/zoom-plays/

On March 14th, 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic started to take hold of all of our best laid artistic plans, we realized the moment asked us to be nimble.  So we put out a national call for Zoom Plays: monologues, scenes, and plays written to be performed on the Zoom platform.

Within weeks, over a hundred submissions had arrived from all around the world.  Some were plays previously written that the playwright thought would work well for this platform.  Many others are written by playwrights who are answering the call and writing a new play for this prompt.  The submissions continue to this day. 

Playwrights were encouraged to make context central to the prompt; there must to be a realistic need for this to be a Zoom call. Teenagers talking late at night.  A couple separated by borders.  Classmates trying to Zoom for a class project.  Lovers making plans to elope.

These new works are now organized, and through this website are now available for anyone, nationally or internationally, who seeks to use this for educational reasons: teachers, theatre companies, colleges, high schools, coaches, community organizations, academic institutions, etc.  Please note:  each of these playwrights have granted the rights for educational purposes only.   If you want to do something more with the play, you must contact the playwright for appropriate permission.

We have categorized them by the following criteria to help you find one that you like:

2 person plays
Under 15 minutes in running time
Over 15 minutes in running time
Monologues
FRED EBB AWARD
Deadline: June 30th
Website: http://fredebbfoundation.org/fred-ebb-award/eligibility/

Each applicant must be a composer/lyricist or composer/lyricist team wishing to create work for the musical theatre, and must not yet have achieved significant commercial success. 

Application Materials:

1.  A digital recording containing up to four songs from one or more musical theatre pieces, with typewritten lyrics and a description of the dramatic context for each song.

o MP3, ZIP, and M4A files are preferred, but Dropbox files are acceptable as well. Dropbox files should not have time limits.

2.  A completed application form.

• All applications will be coded as they arrive. Because all submissions will be reviewed blind, please do not place name(s) of writer(s) on the electronic files, lyric sheets, or description of dramatic context. Names should only appear on the Application Form. 

• Only musical theatre work will be considered.

• Please do not submit recordings that include any audience sound.

• The applicant(s) must have written all the songs included in the submission. For example, a composer cannot submit one song with her own lyrics, and a second song with lyrics by another writer.

• No individual may appear on more than one application. You cannot apply as an individual and again as part of a team, or as part of more than one songwriting team.

Submission Deadline and Award:

Applications will be accepted from June 1-30, 2020. Please email applications to: fredebbfound@gmail.com. The winner will be selected in November 2020 and will receive $60,000. 


10. WOODWARD INTERNATIONAL PLAY COMPETITION
Deadline: July 1st
Website: https://cola.unh.edu/theatre-dance/opportunities/cultural-stages

The University of New Hampshire is now accepting submissions for the Woodward International Playwriting Prize. The Woodward Prize is part of Cultural Stages: The Woodward International Drama and Dance Initiative and is given once every four years. The aim of this program is to broaden and deepen the understanding of international cultures through a competition for plays addressing relevant themes. Plays submitted for this competition should have a primary focus on cultures from countries other than the US. The winning play will be given a fully produced production as part of the University of New Hampshire's 2021-22 Department of Theatre and Dance main stage season. The winning Playwright will receive a cash prize of $5,000, plus expenses to travel to the University of New Hampshire and stay for the one week of performances. Finalists will be posted on the University of New Hampshire Department of Theatre and Dance website in October 2020. The winning play will be announced by February 1, 2021. A first and second runner up will also be named at that time. Pending funding, readings of the first and second runner up will be presented with travel and expenses provided to the playwrights to attend the readings.


11.LANESBORO ARTIST RESIDENCY
Deadline: July 31st
Website: https://lanesboroarts.org/artist-residency-program/residency-program-guidelines/

The Lanesboro Artist Residency Program offers two or four week residencies to emerging artists driven to explore ways in which their work can be applied to the community and how Lanesboro’s rural community can inform their work.

The Lanesboro Artist Residency Program, located in Lanesboro, MN (pop. 754), is supported by the Jerome Foundation and aims to provide an immersive, meaningful experience for emerging artists from Minnesota and the five boroughs of New York City. The program is unique in that it provides an entire rural community and its myriad assets as a catalytic vehicle for engagement and artistic experimentation, with staff working with each resident to create a fully-customized residency experience.

Lanesboro Arts’ goal is to be flexible and accommodating to artists, allowing them access to local resources needed for conceptualizing and realizing their place-based work. Lanesboro Arts recognizes “place-based work” as work that is specifically inspired by and designed for the place in which the work takes place; it can be a new project, or an interpretation of the artist’s current work tailored to engage the community of Lanesboro. The residency program was designed to align with and amplify Lanesboro Arts’ vision for communities–especially rural communities–to embrace artists as economic drivers, culture bearers, community builders, and problem solvers.

Artists must be legal residents of Minnesota or one of the five boroughs of New York City to be eligible to apply. To be considered, eligible artists must submit their application through the online webform on Lanesboro Arts website. Complete program details are below. Please contact Kara Maloney at 507-467-2446 or kara@lanesboroarts.org with any questions.


12. CROSSROADS DIVERSE VOICE PLAYWRITING INITIATIVE
Deadline: August 15th
Website: https://finearts.illinoisstate.edu/crossroads-project/

The 2021 Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative welcomes submissions for full-length, unproduced plays by playwrights of color in accordance with the mission statement of the Crossroads Project (see below). A diverse panel of judges comprising of faculty, staff, and students will select one playwright as the winner of the contest.

The winning playwright will receive:

An invitation to Illinois State University in Bloomington-Normal, IL for a one-week new play development workshop, culminating in a public staged reading. The playwright may also be invited to offer guest lectures and colloquia. The Crossroads Project will cover costs for travel, housing, and meals during the workshop.
An honorarium of $500 for the workshop.
To be eligible to win the contest, a playwright must be available for a one-week workshop in late March 2021 (exact dates TBD). Due to funding limitations, the Crossroads Project can only cover costs for travel within the United States.

The deadline for submissions is August 15, 2020, 11:59 p.m. (central daylight time). There is no entry fee. We only accept electronic submissions in PDF format. Because our staff and resources are limited, we can only consider the first 100 submissions.

Please include in your submission:

A sample from your play up to 15 pages. This does not have to be the first 15 pages of the play.
A playwright’s statement (max. 250 words) describing your inspiration for writing the play, as well as how you believe a workshop in a university setting will further your development process.
A synopsis of the play (max. 250 words).
A character list with short descriptions for each character (age, ethnicity, gender, occupation, family relationships, etc.)
Please follow these guidelines when submitting your play:

A playwright may only submit one play per contest. The writer of the play must submit their own work.
Plays that have been previously fully produced or published are ineligible for the contest. Plays that have previously had workshops or staged readings are eligible.
Submissions must be the original work of the playwright, which may include adaptations of fictional or factual material. Translations of other playwrights’ work are not accepted.
The submitting playwright must either be the owner and controller of the copyright or provide written proof that they have acquired the legal right to use copyrighted material in their work.
Submissions must be full-length plays.
Musicals are not accepted. However, plays with limited music requirements are accepted.
The primary language of the play must be English.
There are no other restrictions in subject matter or style.
The Crossroads Project reserves the right to accept or reject any submitted play for any reason.
To submit your play, use the play submission form . Please try the link first to check if the contest is still open.

We will contact semi-finalists by the end of October 2020 and ask them to submit the full play.

The winning playwright will be notified by mid-January 2021.