The Colorado New Play Festival provides playwrights and theatre companies an opportunity to develop their work in beautiful Steamboat Springs, CO. Each playwright will be collaborating with a director, actors, a dramaturg, and a stage manager for a week-long workshop of their play. At the end of the week each piece will be presented as a staged reading to an audience made up of their fellow participants, theatre lovers from Colorado, and industry professionals who are attending the Festival weekend.

Submissions are read by our staff and by a group of theatre professionals who serve as outside readers for that year. Once all of the submissions have been read, our staff and outside readers will discuss each script. The Festival Curator then makes the final decision on what the lineup will be.

Our readers discuss the quality of a submitted draft, what work the theatre company wishes to do at the Festival as stated in the RFP, the piece’s potential, if the Festival can meet the needs of the piece, and if the playwright’s voice will help us have the most diverse lineup of new work possible for that year.

We will provide our RFP after a member of the theatre company gets in touch with us about participating in the Festival.

All submissions must be made by a member of a theatre company that is actively interested in further developing and/or producing your play. We will not accept submissions sent directly from playwrights or from a professional representative. We do not make exceptions for anyone, so please do not ask.

The Colorado New Play Festival partners with theatre companies. As we do not put on productions ourselves, our unique model helps us ensure that the work done during the week has a life beyond the Festival.

We are open to any genre. We do accept musicals and plays with music, but any needed extra costs (larger cast size, instruments onstage) will play a part in our decision. While we also accept dramatic adaptations of pre-existing work, we are looking for pieces original to the playwright. If an adaptation is submitted it should have a clear point of view from the playwright that helps tell the story in a new way. All of that said, what we are most interested in is the piece that your theatre is most passionate about bringing to the Festival regardless of what category it might fall under.

Plays submitted must be a completed draft and all plays must be full length (in our case we consider that to be an hour or longer).

The rehearsals at the Festival are to be used as the playwright and theatre company wish. That said, this week is more catered to workshopping text than staging. Ideally, your reading will not need more than what is usually required for a staged reading with music stands.

We ask that each theatre company submits 1 play only.

We do consider plays that have been previously workshopped.

We do not consider plays that have already been produced.

The most recent draft of your piece and a completed RFP that we will provide you.

We ask that you do not submit the same play again.

Submissions will be accepted starting Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024 at 9:00am MT and the submission period will end Friday October 18th, 2024 at 4:00pm MT.

There are no extensions. All submissions must be sent by Friday October 22nd, 2024 at 4:00pm MT.

We will tell theatre companies our decision after the first of the new year and announce our lineup to the public shortly after that.