NYCPlaywrights June 14, 2025
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NYCPlaywrights
Jun 14, 2025, 5:03:01 PMJun 14
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Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
HENRY V
Smith Street Stage presents Henry V as its Fifteenth Anniversary production of the award winning Shakespeare in Carroll Park.
Performances run June 5-29 in Brooklyn’s Carroll Park, begin at 7:30 PM and are free. Join us for this timely story of leadership, collective endeavor, and the morally complicated sacrifices that are made in the name of nationhood. If you have any additional questions, please email Theodosia at theo...@smithstreetstage.org and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
No tickets are necessary when coming to Shakespeare in Carroll Park. We do recommend coming at least 30 minutes before curtain if you want get a chair. We supply the first 100 seats for our audience. After that, we recommend that you bring your own seating.
http://www.smithstreetstage.org/traveltickets
*** UNSOLICITED TESTIMONIAL ***
I would like to thank the awesome staff at New York City Playwrights for their listings of two one-minute play publication opportunities.
My one-minute play called “Pedestal” was recently selected for publication by Mini Plays Magazine in their second issue for June, 2025. The theme was “Love.”
My one-minute play called “Perfect World" was recently selected for publication in the second issue for June, 2025, in Literature Today. The main topic was “Echoes of the Human Experience.” My play’s subtopic was “Threads of Connection.”
Thank you NYCP!!! ❤️
Glad if we can be helpful, and thank you for sharing, Julius Bocala!
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
The Yale Drama Series is seeking submissions for its 2026 playwriting competition. The winning play will be selected by the series’ current judge, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. The winner of this annual competition will be awarded the David Charles Horn Prize of $10,000, publication of their manuscript by Yale University Press, and a staged reading at the Schwarzman Center at Yale University. The prize and publication are contingent on the playwright’s agreeing to the terms of the publishing agreement.
***
Fred Ebb Award 2025
Each applicant must be a composer/lyricist or composer/lyricist team wishing to create work for the musical theatre, and must not yet have achieved significant commercial success.
***
Our A+ Playwriting Contest for Teachers is open to all teachers employed at an accredited K-12 public or private school in the US or Canada. All plays submitted for publication through this contest must have been produced within the past two years at the school where the playwright teaches.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** WHO'S YOUR DADDY? ***
Although drenched in an atmosphere of punchy spontaneity, ''Mamma Mia!'' is extremely artful in manufacturing its air of artlessness. The show's writer, Catherine Johnson, has devised a plot expressly to string together more than 20 Abba songs, written by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus (some in collaboration with Stig Anderson), most of which are used with lyrics unaltered.
Let's get that plot out of the way: 20-year-old Sophie Sheridan (Tina Maddigan) is about to be married, and she wants her father to give her away. The problem is that, having peeked into her mother's diary from the year of Sophie's birth, she discovers that her father could be any one of three men.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/19/movies/theater-review-mom-had-a-trio-and-a-band-too.html
***
Let me talk to you a bit about King Lear. Lear puts his daughters on the spot: consider how Lear seems to spontaneously ask his daughters, in birth order, to tell him who loves him best—with that daughter earning the most/best land for her dowry. Now, many productions choose to begin with Goneril and Regan as conniving, scheming, and Machiavellian. However, what if they’re put on the spot. Keep in mind how emotionally abusive Lear acts here and how bad his parenting must have been and how manipulative this is on behalf of Lear.
By all indications, Lear has favored Cordelia the most, and he expects her to succeed. Critics like to point to how Cordelia’s refusal to play this game reflects her honor, her virtue, and her character—but it’s also naïve and dangerous. Her sisters have probably been ignored and recognize that their dowries reflect their value within the marriage economy—and thus their desirability and potential power. And in their instances, and for women in the period, in general, that power reflects their ability to live a life in something, anything, resembling good terms. And even Lear recognizes that he’s giving his daughters dowries.
More...
https://yetmorewords.wordpress.com/2016/10/21/age-abuse-fathers-kids-in-lear/
***
One of Shakespeare’s most moving love triangles isn’t romantic, it’s filial. The tension between Prince Hal and his two father figures — King Henry IV and Sir John Falstaff — fuels both parts of Shakespeare’s Henry IV and resonates strongly throughout Henry V, grounding these history plays in emotional richness. How these relationships are depicted onstage and onscreen (most recently, in Netflix’s The King) can frequently shift the emphasis (and with it, the audience’s sympathy) from one side or corner of the triangle to another.
The political is made personal in the very first scene of Henry IV, Part 1, when King Henry laments that the “gallant” and “blest” Hotspur so outshines the “riot and dishonor” of his own son that he wishes “it could be proved / That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged / In cradle-clothes our children where they lay.” But Hal’s only play-acting, or so he says at the end of scene two, in a soliloquy in which he confesses that he will “throw off” his “loose behavior,” “redeeming [himself] when men least think [he] will.” Whether his deception has a goal other than idle amusement, and whether he’s eager (or reluctant) to grow up and start behaving responsibly is very much open to interpretation. If the story of both parts of Henry IV is Hal’s journey from prince to king, there’s a greater emotional impact if Hal travels a great distance rather than just a short hop.
More...
https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/the-king-prince-hal-falstaff-father-son-triangle-onstage-onscreen/
***
Marie has been raised since infancy by the men of the 21st, who regard her as their joint “daughter.” Marie has learned the easy ways and surprising oaths common to French soldiers. The men of the Regiment come in withTonio, a Tyrolean peasant they have caught loitering about. Marie reveals that Tonio saved her life when she was about to fall off a precipice, and now she has fallen in love with him. The regimental “fathers” cannot conceive of giving their daughter in marriage to a man who is not a French soldier, let alone a man who is not a member of the 21st. Marie sings the regimental song, an irresistible performance that inspires Tonio to confess that he has followed Marie because he loves her. Marie weighs the evidence of Tonio’s affection and decides in his favor.
More...
https://www.operaamerica.org/calendar/production/21637/the-daughter-of-the-regiment
***
Oedipus Rex is a father’s nightmare. Sophocles’ Greek tragedy tells the sordid story of a son, Oedipus, whose biological parents leave him to die as a newborn. He is rescued and, years later, he returns to his hometown only to inadvertently kill his father and marry his mother. Freud’s infamous interpretation of the story, and rise of the “Oedipus Complex” is that all men sort of want to kill their fathers and marry their mothers. But what modern fathers need to know is that it is certainly possible to read Sophocles without Freud’s weird mommy issues.
More...
https://www.fatherly.com/health/modern-fathers-guide-oedipus-complex
***
Few artists, no matter their stature, have been able to achieve this level of immortality in a single work. O’Neill did so, remarkably, after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936, and it won him his fourth Pulitzer Prize. Who among his audience in 1956 knew that the mother of America’s greatest playwright, Mary Ellen “Ella” O’Neill, had been a morphine addict for over 25 years? That his brother, James O’Neill, Jr. (Jamie), would have exerted such a Mephistophelian influence on the playwright at such a young age? That his father, the great matinee idol James O’Neill, one of the most celebrated actors of his time, had lived in such a painful state of perpetual regret and with an Irish-born terror of poverty only alcohol and a nearly manic acquisition of real estate could ease his suffering? Certainly no one who did not know the notoriously closed personality of O’Neill intimately, and even several who did.
More...
https://literariness.org/2020/09/29/critical-analysis-of-eugene-oneills-long-days-journey-into-night/
***
“Proof” explores a father and daughter’s compassionate connection—even after death.
We meet Catherine (magnificent Alicia Mason) on the back porch of her home in Chicago, discussing her life with her dad, Robert (brilliant Joseph Walters) who died a week ago. Catherine converses with a hallucination. Mason conveys Catherine’s teetering emotions, powerfully in the New Group Theatre production of the Pulitzer and Tony Award Best Play.
Robert, her mathematical genius father, succumbed to mental illness, losing his ability to work coherently with numbers. In her hallucination, he wants Catherine to pursue her genius for Math: “You could recite all the prime numbers when you were three.” She has his talent, but fears inheriting his insanity.
More...
https://theatrius.com/2020/01/14/proof-probes-self-doubt-despair-at-new-group-s-f/
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
HENRY V
Smith Street Stage presents Henry V as its Fifteenth Anniversary production of the award winning Shakespeare in Carroll Park.
Performances run June 5-29 in Brooklyn’s Carroll Park, begin at 7:30 PM and are free. Join us for this timely story of leadership, collective endeavor, and the morally complicated sacrifices that are made in the name of nationhood. If you have any additional questions, please email Theodosia at theo...@smithstreetstage.org and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
No tickets are necessary when coming to Shakespeare in Carroll Park. We do recommend coming at least 30 minutes before curtain if you want get a chair. We supply the first 100 seats for our audience. After that, we recommend that you bring your own seating.
http://www.smithstreetstage.org/traveltickets
*** UNSOLICITED TESTIMONIAL ***
I would like to thank the awesome staff at New York City Playwrights for their listings of two one-minute play publication opportunities.
My one-minute play called “Pedestal” was recently selected for publication by Mini Plays Magazine in their second issue for June, 2025. The theme was “Love.”
My one-minute play called “Perfect World" was recently selected for publication in the second issue for June, 2025, in Literature Today. The main topic was “Echoes of the Human Experience.” My play’s subtopic was “Threads of Connection.”
Thank you NYCP!!! ❤️
Glad if we can be helpful, and thank you for sharing, Julius Bocala!
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
The Yale Drama Series is seeking submissions for its 2026 playwriting competition. The winning play will be selected by the series’ current judge, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. The winner of this annual competition will be awarded the David Charles Horn Prize of $10,000, publication of their manuscript by Yale University Press, and a staged reading at the Schwarzman Center at Yale University. The prize and publication are contingent on the playwright’s agreeing to the terms of the publishing agreement.
***
Fred Ebb Award 2025
Each applicant must be a composer/lyricist or composer/lyricist team wishing to create work for the musical theatre, and must not yet have achieved significant commercial success.
***
Our A+ Playwriting Contest for Teachers is open to all teachers employed at an accredited K-12 public or private school in the US or Canada. All plays submitted for publication through this contest must have been produced within the past two years at the school where the playwright teaches.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** WHO'S YOUR DADDY? ***
Although drenched in an atmosphere of punchy spontaneity, ''Mamma Mia!'' is extremely artful in manufacturing its air of artlessness. The show's writer, Catherine Johnson, has devised a plot expressly to string together more than 20 Abba songs, written by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus (some in collaboration with Stig Anderson), most of which are used with lyrics unaltered.
Let's get that plot out of the way: 20-year-old Sophie Sheridan (Tina Maddigan) is about to be married, and she wants her father to give her away. The problem is that, having peeked into her mother's diary from the year of Sophie's birth, she discovers that her father could be any one of three men.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/19/movies/theater-review-mom-had-a-trio-and-a-band-too.html
***
Let me talk to you a bit about King Lear. Lear puts his daughters on the spot: consider how Lear seems to spontaneously ask his daughters, in birth order, to tell him who loves him best—with that daughter earning the most/best land for her dowry. Now, many productions choose to begin with Goneril and Regan as conniving, scheming, and Machiavellian. However, what if they’re put on the spot. Keep in mind how emotionally abusive Lear acts here and how bad his parenting must have been and how manipulative this is on behalf of Lear.
By all indications, Lear has favored Cordelia the most, and he expects her to succeed. Critics like to point to how Cordelia’s refusal to play this game reflects her honor, her virtue, and her character—but it’s also naïve and dangerous. Her sisters have probably been ignored and recognize that their dowries reflect their value within the marriage economy—and thus their desirability and potential power. And in their instances, and for women in the period, in general, that power reflects their ability to live a life in something, anything, resembling good terms. And even Lear recognizes that he’s giving his daughters dowries.
More...
https://yetmorewords.wordpress.com/2016/10/21/age-abuse-fathers-kids-in-lear/
***
One of Shakespeare’s most moving love triangles isn’t romantic, it’s filial. The tension between Prince Hal and his two father figures — King Henry IV and Sir John Falstaff — fuels both parts of Shakespeare’s Henry IV and resonates strongly throughout Henry V, grounding these history plays in emotional richness. How these relationships are depicted onstage and onscreen (most recently, in Netflix’s The King) can frequently shift the emphasis (and with it, the audience’s sympathy) from one side or corner of the triangle to another.
The political is made personal in the very first scene of Henry IV, Part 1, when King Henry laments that the “gallant” and “blest” Hotspur so outshines the “riot and dishonor” of his own son that he wishes “it could be proved / That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged / In cradle-clothes our children where they lay.” But Hal’s only play-acting, or so he says at the end of scene two, in a soliloquy in which he confesses that he will “throw off” his “loose behavior,” “redeeming [himself] when men least think [he] will.” Whether his deception has a goal other than idle amusement, and whether he’s eager (or reluctant) to grow up and start behaving responsibly is very much open to interpretation. If the story of both parts of Henry IV is Hal’s journey from prince to king, there’s a greater emotional impact if Hal travels a great distance rather than just a short hop.
More...
https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/the-king-prince-hal-falstaff-father-son-triangle-onstage-onscreen/
***
Marie has been raised since infancy by the men of the 21st, who regard her as their joint “daughter.” Marie has learned the easy ways and surprising oaths common to French soldiers. The men of the Regiment come in withTonio, a Tyrolean peasant they have caught loitering about. Marie reveals that Tonio saved her life when she was about to fall off a precipice, and now she has fallen in love with him. The regimental “fathers” cannot conceive of giving their daughter in marriage to a man who is not a French soldier, let alone a man who is not a member of the 21st. Marie sings the regimental song, an irresistible performance that inspires Tonio to confess that he has followed Marie because he loves her. Marie weighs the evidence of Tonio’s affection and decides in his favor.
More...
https://www.operaamerica.org/calendar/production/21637/the-daughter-of-the-regiment
***
Oedipus Rex is a father’s nightmare. Sophocles’ Greek tragedy tells the sordid story of a son, Oedipus, whose biological parents leave him to die as a newborn. He is rescued and, years later, he returns to his hometown only to inadvertently kill his father and marry his mother. Freud’s infamous interpretation of the story, and rise of the “Oedipus Complex” is that all men sort of want to kill their fathers and marry their mothers. But what modern fathers need to know is that it is certainly possible to read Sophocles without Freud’s weird mommy issues.
More...
https://www.fatherly.com/health/modern-fathers-guide-oedipus-complex
***
Few artists, no matter their stature, have been able to achieve this level of immortality in a single work. O’Neill did so, remarkably, after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936, and it won him his fourth Pulitzer Prize. Who among his audience in 1956 knew that the mother of America’s greatest playwright, Mary Ellen “Ella” O’Neill, had been a morphine addict for over 25 years? That his brother, James O’Neill, Jr. (Jamie), would have exerted such a Mephistophelian influence on the playwright at such a young age? That his father, the great matinee idol James O’Neill, one of the most celebrated actors of his time, had lived in such a painful state of perpetual regret and with an Irish-born terror of poverty only alcohol and a nearly manic acquisition of real estate could ease his suffering? Certainly no one who did not know the notoriously closed personality of O’Neill intimately, and even several who did.
More...
https://literariness.org/2020/09/29/critical-analysis-of-eugene-oneills-long-days-journey-into-night/
***
“Proof” explores a father and daughter’s compassionate connection—even after death.
We meet Catherine (magnificent Alicia Mason) on the back porch of her home in Chicago, discussing her life with her dad, Robert (brilliant Joseph Walters) who died a week ago. Catherine converses with a hallucination. Mason conveys Catherine’s teetering emotions, powerfully in the New Group Theatre production of the Pulitzer and Tony Award Best Play.
Robert, her mathematical genius father, succumbed to mental illness, losing his ability to work coherently with numbers. In her hallucination, he wants Catherine to pursue her genius for Math: “You could recite all the prime numbers when you were three.” She has his talent, but fears inheriting his insanity.
More...
https://theatrius.com/2020/01/14/proof-probes-self-doubt-despair-at-new-group-s-f/
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