Arts Fort Worth is accepting script submissions for its 2023 Original Works Series and has announced this year’s selection for the annual program.
The series provides an outlet for playwrights to showcase their original work and have a chance to see their play produced on a professional level. A panel of theater professionals will review all submitted scripts and select the top eight submitted scripts to receive a staged reading.
After the readings have been presented, The Arts Center will select one script to receive a full production for presentation in the spring of 2024’s Arts Center Presents season in the Hardy and Betty Sander Theatre. The selected playwright will be presented a $500 royalty and they are encouraged to take part in the rehearsal and development of the new work production process.
The deadline to submit a script is Nov. 30. Playwrights will be notified of selections for readings in January. Notifications of final selections will be made on Dec. 1, 2023.
During previous submission rounds, Arts Fort Worth has seen an increasing number of scripts submitted from as far away as Australia and New Zealand.
Playwright Jeff Irvin’s “The Texas Book of Beasts” was recently announced as this year’s Original Works Series selection. The story is told through a series of 25 short scenes featuring four characters: a property developer, a university professor, an idealistic biologist, and a toad. The cast of characters are involved in raucous public meetings as a twenty-something woman learns to organize a diverse community to save the endangered toad’s habitat from a large encroaching development.
Texas Book of Beasts is a melodrama and romantic comedy about learning to recognize a sharp brain and a good heart. Irwin’s one-act play will be fully produced in Spring of 2023 in The Hardy and Betty Sanders Theater at The Fort Worth Community Arts Center.
Founded in 1963 as the Arts Council of Fort Worth and Tarrant County, Arts Fort Worth is a nonprofit with the mission to promote, nurture, and support the arts in Fort Worth. The organization administers a competitive grants program, manages the Fort Worth Public Art program, and operates what was formerly known as the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, a dynamic arts complex with theaters, galleries, studios, and office suites, on behalf of the City of Fort Worth. Arts Fort Worth also provides educational programming and supports arts advocacy at all levels of government, provides public art consultation services, rents the facilities for a wide range of private and public events and programs. It is supported in part by the City of Fort Worth and the Texas Commission on the Arts.
More information about 2023 Original Works Series submission guidelines is available online.
