The Scranton Shakespeare Festival is looking for playwrights interested in having their work performed during the festival’s 10th season next summer.
The festival and interdisciplinary production company Pinkhouse Productions will hold a Scratch Night program to select the winning play in February. Based on a British tradition in which artists can test material for a live audience, the Scratch Nights offers “an international opportunity for emerging, unrepresented writers to have their work performed” in the festival, Scranton Shakes explained in an announcement.
Playwrights have until Friday, Nov. 27, at 5 p.m. EDT to submit an extract of a full-length play based on the theme “ghosts,” which the festival noted can be literal or figurative. The festival is “not encouraging horror genre scripts,” it added.
Candidates who make it past that initial round will be asked to submit their entire script, and a literary team then will pick four finalists to move on to the Scratch Night in February. There, those finalists will stage 10 minutes of their work for an online audience and a panel of theater professionals. The festival will include the winning show in its next season.
Because of uncertainties related to the coronavirus pandemic, the festival will return to its “Shakespeare in the Park”-style roots by moving its productions back outdoors for the 2021 season. Festival founder and Scranton native Michael Bradshaw Flynn said the productions will take place at the Scranton Iron Furnaces, an expansive greenspace with an imposing historical backdrop on Cedar Avenue.
For details, visit: scrantonshakes.com/new-work or contact Pinkhouse’s Lawryn LaCroix at lawrynlacroix@gmail.com or 214-460-0945.
Caitlin Heaney West is the content editor for Access NEPA and oversees the Early Access blog in addition to working as a copy editor and staff writer for The Times-Tribune. An award-winning journalist, she is a summa cum laude graduate of Shippensburg University and also earned a master’s degree from Marywood University. Caitlin joined the Times-Shamrock family in 2009 and lives in Scranton. Contact: cwest@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9100 x5107; or @cheaneywest
