Fwd: Call for Scripts - Earth Matters On Stage 2012

Tue Oct 12 12:55:54 EDT 2010

Wes D. Pearce
Associate Dean (Undergraduate)
Faculty of Fine Arts
University of Regina
S4S 0A2
306 585 5571

>>> Brian EG Cook <cook3 at UOREGON.EDU> 10/12/2010 10:32 AM >>>
Apologies for cross-postings.

Greetings,

Please see the attached Call for Scripts for the University of Oregon's
2012
Earth Matters On Stage Playwrights Festival.

The deadline for submissions is July 1, 2011.  Later calls will focus
on
panel proposals and paper submissions.  Questions may be directed to
ecodrama at uoregon.edu.

Please feel free to circulate the call widely.

Thank you,

Brian Cook
Assistant to the Artistic Director
EMOS 2012

_______________________

EMOS (Earth Matters on Stage)
Ecodrama Playwrights Festival ~ 2012
At the University of Oregons Miller Theatre Complex, 
May 24-June 3, 2012

CALL FOR SCRIPTS

First place Award: $1,000 and workshop production
Second place Award: $500 and workshop production
Honorable mentions: public staged reading

The Guidelines for Playwrights below describe the focus of the
Festival.
Please read. The Deadline for Submissions is July 1, 2011.  

The mission of EMOS Ecodrama Playwrights Festival is to call forth
and
foster new dramatic works that respond to the ecological crisis, and
that
explore new possibilities of being in relationship with the
more-than-human
world. The Festival is ten days of readings, workshop performance/s,
and
discussions of the scripts that are finalists in the Playwrights
Contest. 
Some readings and workshops will be followed by facilitated talkbacks
with
the playwrights.  In addition, a symposium on the second weekend of
the
Festival includes speakers, panels and discussions that will advance
scholarship in the area of arts and ecology, and help foster
development of
new works.   The call for proposals for scholars and those wishing to
participate in the Symposium will be posted in Fall 2011 at 
pages.uoregon.edu/ecodrama.

The EMOS award includes a workshop production. The winning plays will
be
chosen by a panel of distinguished theatre artists from the USA and
Canada.
Past judges have included:  
Robert Schenkkan, Playwright, winner of 1990 Pulitzer Prize
Martha Lavey, Artistic Director, Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago, IL
José Cruz González, Playwright, SCR Hispanic Playwrights Project;
faculty
Cal State LA
Ellen McLaughlin, Playwright, NY
Timothy Bond, Artistic Director Syracuse Stage, NY
Olga Sanchez, Artistic Director, Teatro Milagro, Portland, OR
Diane Glancy, Playwright, Native Voices Award, faculty Macallister
College
Marie Clements, Playwright, British Columbia

Guidelines for Playwrights

What kind of theatre comes to mind when you hear ecodrama? Political
plays
that advocate for environmentalism, or educational theatre about
recycling?
While these examples would fit, please let your imagination soar WAY
beyond
them!  

Ecodrama stages the reciprocal connection between humans and the
more-than-human world.  It encompasses not only works that take
environmental issues as their topic, hoping to raise consciousness or
press
for change, but also work that explores the relation of a sense of
place
to identity and community. 

Help us create an inclusive ecodrama that illuminates the complex
connection
between people and place, an ecodrama that makes us all more aware of
our
ecological identities as a people and communities; ecodrama that
brings
focus to an ecological concerns of a particular place, or that takes
writer
and audience to a deeper exploration of issue that may not be easily
resolved.

While many plays might be open to an ecological interpretation, others
might
be called ecodrama, Examples are diverse in form and topic: Ibsens
An
Enemy of the People, in which the towns waters have become polluted
and a
lone whistle blower clashes with powerful vested interests; Schenkkans
The
Kentucky Cycle, the epic tale of a land and its people  Indigenous,
European, African  over seven generations; August Wilsons Two Trains
Running that bears witness to the loss of inner city sustainability;
Moragas Heroes and Saints, about the embodied impact of industrial
agriculture; Marie Clements Burning Vision, which documents the impact
of
Canadian uranium mining on first nations communities and land;
Giljours
Alligator Tales, a one-woman play by a Louisiana Cajun native about
her
relationship to her neighbors, the weather, the oil rigs off the coast
and
the alligators on her porch; Normans Secret Garden in which nature
consoles
a childs grief; Albees The Goat, or who is Sylvia, that confounds
human
species taboos.

Winner of the 2004 EMOS Festival ~ Odins Horse, by Chicago playwright
Rob
Koon, in which a writer learns something about integrity from a tree
sitter
and a lumber company executive, went on to premier in Chicago in 2006.

Winner of the 2009 EMOS Festival  Song of Extinction, by Los Angeles
playwright EM Lewis, in which a musically talented teen and his father
whose
mother/wife is dying come to understand the deeper meanings of
extinction
from a Cambodian science teacher.  Song of Extinction premiered in Los
Angeles and was recently published by Samuel French.

For us at EMOS, the central questions are when we leave the theater
are
things around us more alive? do we listen better, have a deeper or
more
complex sense of our own ecological identity?

We need your voice, so does the theatre, so does our world.  Imagine!
Write!
Submit!

Thematic Guidelines
We are looking for plays that do one or more of the following:
Put an ecological issue or environmental event/crisis at the center of
the
dramatic action or theme of the play.
Expose and illuminate issues of environmental justice.
Explore the relationship between sustainability, community and
cultural
diversity.
Interpret community to include our ecological community, and/or
give
voice or character to the land, or elements of the land.  
Theatrically explore the connection between people and place, human
and
non-human, and/or between culture and nature.
Grow out of the playwrights personal relationship to the land and
the
ecology of a specific place.
Theatrically examine the reciprocal relationship between human, animal
and
plant communities.
Offer an imagined world view that illuminates our ecological condition
or
reflects on the ecological crisis from a unique cultural or
philosophical
perspective.
Critique or satirizes patterns of exploitation, consumption, or other
ingrained values that are ecologically unsustainable.
Are written specifically to be performed in an unorthodox venue such
as a
natural or environmental setting, and for which that setting is a not
merely
a backdrop, but an integral part of the intention of the play. 

Submission Guidelines
We are looking for full-length plays that are written primarily in
English
(no ten-minute plays please; one-act plays are okay if 30+ minutes in
length).  Submitted plays should address the thematic guidelines as
listed
above.

1. All submissions should include a cover page with:
Play Title
Author Name
Contact Information
2. Two blind copies of the FIRST 30 PAGES OF THE SCRIPT ONLY.  Please
do not
put the authors name on the script, only on the title page.
3. A synopsis of the play and cast requirements.

Submissions must be received by July 1, 2011 to: 

EMOS Festival/Theresa May, Artistic Director
207 Villard Hall, Theatre Arts
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403

Deadline: July 1, 2011  
Early submission encouraged. / No electronic submissions please.

Evaluation Process
After reading the first 30 pages of all submitted plays, we will
evaluate
the submissions to reduce the size of the pool.  We will then request
two
full paper copies be sent to us by Sept. 15, 2011.   Winners will be
selected from this smaller pool.

Questions?  See our Frequently Asked Questions on the EMOS Website at
pages.uoregon.edu/ecodrama.  If you still have a question, email:
ecodrama at uoregon.edu 

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Call for Scripts EMOS 2012.PDF
Type: application/pdf
Size: 269744 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://artsservices.uwaterloo.ca/pipermail/candrama/attachments/20101012/cd458d5b/attachment.pdf>