Young Writers Project

Anything, Anyone, Anywhere!

The Fourth Annual Little Festival of the Unexpected Young Writers Project gives high school playwrights the opportunity to be read, seen, and heard by professionals during Portland Stage's annual celebration of new works for the stage. Young writers are invited to ex-plore their imaginations and the theatrical form, and submit original scripts of short plays or monologues to Portland Stage. The deadline for submissions is
February 1, 2010.

Selected scripts will be presented as public, staged readings by professional actors in May 2010 during the Little Festival of the Unexpected (LFU) in the Portland Stage Studio Theater. The LFU Young Writers will take part in the festival by attending rehearsals for their script, observing rehearsals of full-length plays in development, and meeting with professional playwrights in residence in Portland during the festival.

Additionally, for this year's Young Writers Project, Portland Stage is collaborating with The Telling Room, a non-profit writing program for kids and teenagers in greater Portland. The Telling Room will offer two workshops this fall for young writers to develop plays they can later submit to the Young Writers Project. For more information on the workshops,
click here!

Submission Guidelines:

Click here to download the 2010 Young Writers Project brochure
(501KB .PDF)

• Open to all students, grades 9-12.
• Submit a short play or monologue no longer than 10 minutes (test the length of your script by reading it aloud).
• Original work only; adaptations of existing plays, movies, or books will not be accepted.
• Submissions must include a title page with the writer's contact information: name, address, phone number, e-mail address, school, and grade level.
• Submissions must also include a character list for the piece.
• Typed scripts only: no handwritten or otherwise illegible scripts will be accepted.
• For information or suggestions on script formatting, we recommend the Drama Workshop's Web site. You can also get information on script formatting by taking a workshop with our partners at, The Telling Room.

Selection Process:

• All submissions will be read and evaluated by Portland Stage Affiliate Artists; local professional actors, directors and playwrights who call Portland Stage their creative home.
• Successful scripts will demonstrate creativity, originality and theatricality - write about anything, anyone, anywhere!
• Portland Stage will announce selected plays here on our website in early April, 2010. All writers who submit a script will be notified by mail of the selection results.

Deadline: submissions must be post-marked no later than
February 1, 2010.

Submit by mail to:
PORTLAND STAGE
Attn: 2010 Young Writers Project
P.O. Box 1458
Portland, ME 04104