Hypatia Theatre Company is accepting new-play manuscripts for its 2008 New Play SYMPOSIUM from Playwrights in and around the greater Chicagoland area, including those in Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Four plays will enter an intense two-week workshop process with directors, dramaturgs, and a cast, culminating in staged readings. Of the four plays, one will be placed in Hypatia’s upcoming season for full production.

Plays should suit Hypatia’s Mission: to create complex and dynamic roles for women, to enrich the voice of the American Theatre, to engage our audience with questions that lead to a cathartic theatrical experience.

Symposium 2008 Theme: Power

The world is at the threshold of tremendous global change— a Presidential election, heightened awareness of the climate crisis, and increasing instability abroad. Our 2008 Season will engage an audience interested in those stories. Stories of power can pit our heartstrings against our pocketbooks, illuminate journeys across the globe, test where obligation meets desire, measure the depth of corruption and the height of heroism, and trace the macrocosmic down to the microcosmic. These plays will demand everything of an audience's intelligence, as well as the intelligence of playwrights who create them.

Under this broad theme, power does not necessarily refer to government. We embrace plays with any number of characters, unusual locales, and unexpected ideas. Like most great writing, good and evil will take a backseat to their gray paradoxes.

A few submission guidelines:

1. Theatrical: Hypatia produces work that is specifically theatrical, and kitchen-sink realism will not find its home with us. Dynamic, expressive language, tales of life-and-death circumstances, sublime aesthetics, and vivid, original characters entice our audience.

2. Story-Driven: The chief beauty of the piece should be the power of its story, not its political message. This does not mean that plays with heavy political content must shy away from being opinionated, but works of propaganda from any worldview will not be considered.

3. Process, not Product: Since SYMPOSIUM is a two-week long dramaturgical intensive, playwrights interested in vigorously reworking their plays with a diverse group of theatre artists belong with our company. “Finished” scripts or playwrights disinterested in a critical process need not apply. Also, since Hypatia works only with world-premiere plays, scripts with prior production (excluding academia) are not eligible.

4. Substantial in Length: No shorter than 45 minutes, and no longer than 2 hours. Sketches and Epics, though valuable, will not fit in our format.

5. EOE: While Hypatia focuses on creating dynamic roles for women, playwrights of any gender are strongly encouraged to submit. Our production history includes a wonderful balance of female and male theatre artists. That said, scripts must include strong female characters central to the plot.

6. Send the Whole Thing: While we strongly encourage works-in-progress and early drafts, writing samples will not be considered.

Hypatia strongly prefers electronic submissions to any other method.

Please email your .doc or .pdf file to newplays@hypatiatheatre.org.

*Files are stored in a password-protected database, and files Hypatia does not wish to further pursue will be deleted.

Playwrights who prefer to mail manuscripts may do so.

Hypatia Theatre Company
Literary Department
4662 N. Rockwell St
Chicago, IL 60625

*Only manuscripts accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope will be returned.