To submit your work, please email it, in pdf to:- spatrisefestival@gmail.com
(please include your name and contact details, ie phone number & email address)
RISE is on hold until after COVID. Keep safe
Submissions are open from April 1 to April 30
Stanwell Park Arts Theatre, SPAT, is a community theatre group located in Stanwell Park in the Northern Illawarra. Our purpose is to provide a place for the community to tell their stories, and participate, in theatre.
We are delighted to inform writers about our upcoming new works festival based on the theme of ‘Rise’.
This is an opportunity for playwrights to take a new work and have it read on stage in front of a live audience. Performances are limited to thirty minutes per piece. There is no required format or content other than to link to our theme of ‘Rise’ in whatever way you wish. Work can be an excerpt of a longer work or a stand-alone thirty-minute piece. Work can be written new for this festival or be an existing work that the playwright wants to revisit.
Each evening will contain three new works and end with a Q&A where all the writers and directors will take questions from the audience and discuss their work. Over the course of the festival twelve new works will be shown.
The festival is open to people with a local connection – in this instance that means being a member of, or joining SPAT, or the South Coast Writers’ Centre. To join SPAT https://www.spat.org.au/memberships/
To register your interest or if you have any questions please email spartstheatre@gmail.com, the link for submissions will open on April 1st.
The timings
- April 1st – Submissions open
- April 30th – Submissions close
- May 30th – Shortlist announced
- During workshops and other assistance will be offered to the shortlisted playwrights and they will have the opportunity to resubmit.
- June 30th – Programme announced (delayed due to COVID)
- August 6th, 7th, 13th and 14th – Performances (These dates will change TBA, sorry)
Details…
- Playwrights agree to grant SPAT the rights to a single performance of the work at the festival. With the exception of this one staged reading and associated publicity all rights remain with the playwright.
- SPAT will not make changes to the script without the permission of the playwright. The festival director will do their best to ensure a collaborative and fruitful working environment between playwright, director, actors, and volunteers.
- The work can be in any format, as a guide formats for playscripts can be found at https://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/resources/medium-and-format but these are not mandatory.
- There is no specific limit on language or themes, however, please be aware that the audience will include younger people. If a content or trigger warning is required please include one on your opening page.
- As an estimate approximately thirty pages should be included in the submission, if it is a longer work then, if selected, we will work with the playwright to identify a thirty-minute section or sections to be performed.
- SPAT reserves the right to change the festival programme, or cancel performances, at any time.
- SPAT will provide a director and actors for the script. SPAT will provide a diverse mix of seven actors, if more cast members are required then the actors will double up.
- The performance will be a script-in-hand staged reading.
- There is no payment for the performance, nobody at SPAT is remunerated for participation, all income is used to fund community theatre productions and events.
- Playwrights commit to attend their performance night and take part in the end of evening Q&A.
- Playwrights will need to join SPAT to submit, with the exception for members of the South Coast Writers’ Centre.
- There is no prize, however, SPAT are hoping that one work will be selected for development into a full length play for staging in 2022.
- Submissions will be done through a webform that will be launched on April 1st. Not all submitted plays will be performed. The selection process will be conducted anonymously.
