SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

All plays are to be submitted electronically in a PDF or WORD format.  

You must complete the appropriate cover sheet and submit it with each play you enter.  Use the cover sheet form provided for each award category.

All scripts must be in the Samuel French format.  For a sample of the format click on: Script Formatting 

The deadline for all submissions is November 1.

Plays submitted after the deadline will not be considered for this coming year’s festival, but can be considered for the following year.  Please read the rules and guidelines carefully for each award.

To be eligible for any student playwriting award, an undergraduate must carry a minimum of 6 semester hours (or equivalent quarter hours), while a graduate must carry 3 semester hours (or equivalent quarter hours). Undergraduate, graduate, and continuing part-time student playwrights must be matriculating, degree-seeking students. It is expected that work on the new play will have begun during the period the student is so enrolled.

Students in on-line courses may submit ten-minute and one-act plays within the region they reside, providing they confirm that they carry the required 6 semester hours of credit when the play was written.  They must affirm that the school where they take the on-line course participates on an associate or participating entry level.

If a school has any associate or participating entry, the school may enter as many original scripts for reading awards as it wishes, but no more than two per student per category.   A “category” means a maximum of two 10-minute plays, two one-act plays, and two full-length plays allowed per student – a total of six in all. 

The exceptions to the above rules are for the David Mark Cohen Award and The National Student Playwriting Award.  To qualify, each must have received full productions, and be registered as Participating Productions with the festival.  The remainder of the awards are considered “reading awards”.  In addition, each new play registered as a Participating production will be considered for regional and national festival presentation. 

Please note that any one play may qualify for more than one award.  Please read through all the award qualifications to see if your play can be submitted.  As with any portion of this process, if there are questions please contact the Playwriting Chair for Region Seven.

A new play or musical may be a collaboration, adaptation, company-written play, or a play based on factual materials but may not be a translation. To be eligible, adaptations from other works must include written permission for works under copyright and must involve substantial changes in form and/or expression.

A full-length play is defined as either one major work or two or more shorter works written by the same playwright, based on a single theme, or encompassed within a unifying framework. In all cases, the entry must provide a full evening of theater-approximately one and one-half hours or longer, including intermissions.

Staged readings as well as full productions of new works can be entered as associate productions. These associate staged readings or full productions will be responded to by Region VII NPP representatives and eligible for national playwriting awards. Only full productions can be entered as participating productions.

If the play has been produced, the production must be presented during the period of the student’s enrollment, or within two years after his or her enrollment ends.

Please check over all the additional information offered on the national website at :  http://www.kcactf.org/