ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
Concord Theatricals presents the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival (OOB) is the nation’s leading short play festival. Beyond playwrights, the Festival has given voice to many emerging directors, performers and production companies. As part of our unique model that requires playwrights to partner with sponsoring producers, we’ve hosted prestigious theatre companies on our Festival stage such as The Royal Court, Circle-in-the-Square, Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Yale School of Drama. It is an honor to provide a home for so many exceptional artists, and we’re humbled when thinking back to the many great performances that have happened on our stage.
HOW THE FESTIVAL WORKS
Concord Theatricals presents the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival offers a prize of publication and licensing for six short plays in the notable OFF OFF BROADWAY FESTIVAL PLAYS series. The application period for the Festival begins in in late fall and lasts for four weeks. Playwrights may submit one unpublished play or musical that may be up to 15 pages in length and a max run time of 15 minutes (ideal run times are between 8-13 minutes). All submissions are read by the Festival’s staff, and 30 semi-finalists are chosen to present their play during Festival week. Festival week starts with four nights of staged reading sessions that are presented in front of a judging panel comprised of professionals representing various parts of the theatre industry. At the end of each session, the judges deliberate and one to three plays are selected to move on to the Festival Finals. During the Finals, the Festival staff will watch the final 10 to 12 plays and select six authors to be a published in the Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival series, which is published and licensed by Concord Theatricals via its Samuel French imprint.
The author is responsible for securing a producing company (or self-producing) their work in the event that the work is selected as a Festival participant. The responsibilities of the author and/or producer include, but are not limited to, the casting of non-equity actors; the appointment of the director (if applicable); rehearsals; transportation; costumes (if needed); and for all fees and expenses attendant thereunto. Concord Theatricals will provide a theater space will include a basic lighting plot with limited pre-set general light cues and basic sound equipment. Music stands and chairs will be available at the theatre. Concord Theatricals will further provide all front-and back-of-house personnel and a board operator if needed.
OOB ALUMNI PLAYWRIGHTS
The Festival has served as a doorway to future success for many aspiring playwrights, and has helped launch the work of such notables as Theresa Rebeck, Shirley Lauro, Sheila Callaghan, Bekah Brunstetter, Steve Yockey, Saviana Stanescu, David Johnston, and Daniel Pearle. In many cases, Festival participation has sparked agent contracts for Festival finalists. Many past Festival playwrights have gone on to win major playwriting awards and honors, as well as to have major theatrical productions of their works staged. Read more about our “classes” of past OOB winners below:
18 by Darius M. Buckley
Darius M. Buckley is a dramatist, published author, performing artist and native Detroiter. He studied Broadcast and Cinematic Arts at Central Michigan University and is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting at Columbia University. A few of his playwriting credits include: The Fly & Incredibly Dope Adventures of Tyrone Jenkins: A Detroit Hip Hop Musical (CMU and the Detroit Fringe Festival), Thin Places (115 Short Play Festival) and The Bridge (Columbia University). Darius has also written and directed films such as: The DEFY Film, 5: A Visual Poem, American Thriller, Wonder Boy and Making Tyrone: A 1VK1 Mini Documentary. His literary publications include Wonder Boy: A Science Fiction Short, Only The Golden Sky Knows and his first novella, HAZE: Book One. His calling is to write soulful black stories that inform, inspire and heal. Stories that embody the pain, joy and magic of young black voices.
Nub City, USA! by Nicholas Hulstine
Nicholas Hulstine is a Louisville, Kentucky based theatre artist. On stage he’s appeared in Tuesday Night Poker (Theatre Row), Foreign Gothic (FringeNYC), The Dazzle (John Cullum Theater), The Flick (The Alley Theater) and Nobody Bunny and the Golden Age of Animation (Theatre 502). Film credits include My Friend Dahmer, Above Suspicion, The Art of Self Defense, Chopin, Runner and Great Light. His plays include Happyouth (Gene Frankel Theatre), The Track N’ Hole (Prologue Theatre, Chicago), Blue Scatters Most (The Secret Theatre) and The Geography of Nowhere (The Chain Theatre). He’s the co-founder of the Louisville Fringe Festival. Education: The American Musical and Dramatic Academy, BA The New School, MFA in Playwriting Spalding University.
The Velociraptor’s Very Good Day by Sarah ‘Sair’ Kaufman and Shane Dittmar
Sair and Shane (They & Them) are a disabled, nonbinary writing team with ambition to broaden the accessibility of musical theatre to be more inclusive of the disabled community. They & Them were finalists in the 2022 Write Out Loud songwriting competition and recipients of the 2022 Danny Award for Original Song. The 10-minute musical they wrote for the Prospect Musical Theatre Lab – The Velociraptor’s Very Good Day, a piece about dinosaurs and autistic joy – was also selected for the 2023 SoundBites X Festival by Theatre Now New York. They are both a part of the BMI Musical Theatre Writer’s Workshop. Their flagship project is a D&D-inspired fantasy musical podcast called The Reality Shaper (therealityshaper.com) that they are currently developing. A song from the project called “The Non-Binary Song” went viral, and the pilot episode of the podcast is available on your podcast app of choice!
Dugout Daisies by Julissa Mishay Norment
Julissa Mishay Norment is a dynamic and inventive award-winning playwright, bookwriter and lyricist that strives to create and diversify theatrical experiences, primarily through a Black, Queer and Feminist lens. Julissa is currently an Abbott Musical Theater Collaboration MFA Candidate at Temple University.
DRAWBRIDGE by Mallory Jane Weiss
Mallory Jane Weiss grew up in New Jersey, where she went down the shore and ate Taylor ham. She continues to do those things and writes plays in Brooklyn. Select plays include Big Black Sunhats (Great Plains Theatre Commons New Play Conference 2023; The O’Neill National Playwrights Conference 2022; Clubbed Thumb Biennial Commission finalist 2020), Lights Out and Away We Go (The O’Neill NPC finalist 2023; Clubbed Thumb reading 2022), The Page Turners (Clauder Competition Gold Prize 2023; Princess Grace Award semi-finalist 2022; The O’Neill NPC finalist 2021), Pony Up (Princess Grace Award Finalist, 2019) and Dave and Julia Are Stuck in a Tree (Playing on Air’s James Stevenson Prize 2020). Mallory is an alumna of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers’ Group (2021-2022), The COOP’s Clusterf**k (2021), Gingold Theatrical Group’s Speakers Corner (2018-2019) and Fresh Ground Pepper’s BRB Retreat (2019). B.A.: Harvard University, M.F.A.: The New School.
Freestyle Hand Entry by Elise Wien
Elise Wien is a writer who likes to make her plays like cakes – with a frosting of slapstick comedy, a moist inner layer of complex emotional landscape and a molten core of ethical dilemma (OPEN WIDE). Her plays include Osher & The Infinite Curtain (Residency, VoxLab), OTP (Production, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre), [cowboy face] (Winner, Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for Comic Playwriting; Finalist, Leah Ryan Fund for Emerging Women Writers), Craters, or the making of the making of the moon landing (Production, Smith College; Reading, Corkscrew Theater Festival). She is a recent graduate of Boston University’s Playwriting MFA program.
