Play Selection Process

In an effort to improve our method of play selection for a growing, evolving workshop and retreat, the Icicle Creek Theatre Festival will be implementing a new script submission policy this year. The size of the response from playwrights locally and around the country in previous years – literally in the hundreds – though gratifying has put tremendous stress on the organization and prevented us from being able to read and adequately consider all of the submissions.

To accommodate a tight selection time-frame and a small staff, ICTF will switch from an open to an invitational policy. This will allow ICTF and its Festival partner, ACT Theatre, to focus time and attention on the invited playwrights and their work. This will also enable the Festival to hold longer and more in-depth conversations with playwrights before the retreat begins, thus creating stronger working relationships and outcomes.

Just after Christmas, the Icicle Creek Theatre Festival, working closely with ACT Theatre, will extend invitations by phone and email to thirty-five playwrights, including at least five from the Pacific Northwest. Those contacted will be asked to submit unproduced scripts to a Festival committee between January 1st and February 20th, 2010. Plays will be read and considered between February 20th and March 31st, 2010. By the end of April, two plays will be chosen for the Festival and the selected playwrights will be contacted; the 2010 Festival plays will be announced in a joint press release from ICTF and ACT no later than May 15th, 2010.

We understand that this new policy will cause disappointment among many playwrights who have submitted to us over the past three years, and we are sorry for this. It is a policy that was arrived at after hours of discussion, and analysis of our capabilities. As with any change in our policies, it is an experiment; we will see how things work out before continuing the policy beyond 2010.