About…

Ashland New Plays Festival

This annual weeklong event is designed to assist playwrights in the development of new work through public readings, and to offer an educational forum for the general community through discussions and workshops. Four plays of culturally and thematically varied work are selected from nationwide submissions and become the featured projects of this annual theater festival.

Playwrights come to Ashland and work with directors, actors, and other artists gathered from the professional and semi-professional theaters of this vibrant arts community. This is a laboratory experience for playwrights prior to seeing their plays in full production. It becomes a time to discover which pieces of the play work well or not so well, and audience feedback is critical to the process.

The ANPF is a springboard for new works and many find further success in the world of theatre.

Since its inception in 1992, the Ashland New Plays Festival has served as a springboard for dozens of new works, and many have gone on to garner further success in the greater world of theatre. The ANPF itself has achieved regional and national recognition through its educational efforts and the high degree of artistic excellence embodied in the directors and actors who bring each script to life.

This Year

The 2008 ANPF Readers Committee began its work in mid-February with scripts from 180 playwrights, a 5% increase over 2007. The committee guarantees a minimum of three readings and evaluations per script, meaning that they will finish the selection process with more than 100,000 pages read during three rounds and more than than 1,000 feedback evaluations written.

The second round of reading starts each April. This year it will include about 50 of the original 180 scripts. These will be evaluated by an additional eight readers. When it comes to the third round, about 15 remaining scripts will be read by nearly 30 people, resulting in our final six selections. As a last step, a group of professional directors will read and select the four winners, which will become the scripts for our October festival.

Submissions

Script submissions and inquiries from directors and actors are now being welcomed. Click here for more information.