Playwright Series seeks lunatics, lovers, poets

HUNTSVILLE – Famous playwright Edward Albee said a playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Anyone who has seen “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” or “The Zoo Story” may find their own inner workings poured out in the black box as well.

But that is even more reason why Theatre Huntsville and Evil Cheez Productions is asking to see your innards!

North Alabama and Huntsville, specifically, have proven to have outstanding musicians, actors, singers, scientists, engineers and directors – now they are looking for the next outstanding playwright.

Be you a lunatic, a lover or a poet, the Rocket City Playwright Series is seeking original submissions from wanna-be playwrights who have a knack for storytelling.

Theatre Huntsville and Evil Cheez Productions said they are committed to investing in and supporting local writers and theatrical artists.

Theatre Huntsville and writer/director/producer Wayne Miller at Evil Cheese Productions partner every year for the series. They say locally written and created productions can be a unique cultural opportunity, providing a direct lens into the identity of our community and the surrounding communities.

At some point every famous playwright was an unknown, struggling to get that first play read, produced and published. Someone had to take a chance on the unknown, and that is what the Rocket City Playwright Series is all about, they said in a joint statement.

Each year, five 10-minute plays are selected and presented to the public in a readers’ theatre format by members of the two theatre groups. Audiences vote on their top three, which are awarded cash prizes.

Submission guidelines are:

• Applicants must be at least 14 years old and reside in North Alabama
• Applicants must submit a play no longer than 10 minutes in Word Doc or PDF form only
• No musicals or children’s theatre scripts will be accepted
• Please submit only one submission per playwright
• Only light or no profanity

The submission should include the author’s name, biography, phone number and email as well as the title of their play and a cast of characters and their descriptions.

The deadline is midnight May 1. Finalists will be announced June 7 and performances of the plays will be Aug. 18-19.

Email submissions to [email protected]

And after all, according to Tom Robbins in “Still Life with Woodpecker”: “We are our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.”