VISIONFEST
Short play festival
LiveWire seeks an image to inspire new plays!
VisionFest 4: Where the image meets the stage will be presented in June of 2012. Further guidelines and timelines for the festival below:
PLAY SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Submissions will be required to use the final image as inspiration. The image should not appear in the play. Submissions are open to local, regional, national and international playwrights.
- Only original material may be submitted.
- LiveWire will ONLY be accepting online submissions.
- Submission should be sent via email vf4-play@livewirechicago.com.
- Submissions should be formatted as a PDF (.pdf) or Word Doc (.doc) with the title of the play as the name of the file (i.e., My-Awesome-Play.doc).
- Do not include playwrights' name on any of the pages in the document.
- In the body of the email, please include: Playwrights' Name, Title of Play, Email Address, Phone Number and Current City of Residence.
- Submissions will be open February 13 through May 5. (Any submissions sent outside of these dates will be discarded.)
- Plays must be between 1 to 10 minutes in length; 1 to 10 pages depending on density of material. (Any scripts over 10 minutes will be discarded.)
- One submission per playwright will be considered.
- Previously produced scripts will NOT be accepted.
For our inaugural festival, we asked the community to help chose a theme. Through an online poll that offered 12 suggestions from the Collective, the theme of Control was chosen for VisionFest 2008. In 2009, we sought suggestions for Environments that plays would take place in. From those suggestions, the Collective chose 12 for the online poll. The community voted and chose a Street Corner as their preferred Environment. Last year, LiveWire chose the theme of Feast for VisionFest3 and asked for suggestions of a line or phrase that all playwrights would have to include in their play. Again, we chose a dozen of those suggestions to place in an online poll. "I can't remember the last time we were all together," won the community vote.
Once the unique guidelines are chosen, LiveWire opens submissions to playwrights to write plays that meet the requirements. Each year, we have received more than a hundreds plays from writers around the world. From those plays, the Collective chooses 6 to 10 plays to present. At the festival, programs are provided with ample space for the community to offer feedback to the playwrights. LiveWire collects the feedback and sends them to the playwright at the end of the run... The community truly has a hand in shaping these plays and we hope they will continue to help shape the festival for year's to come.