The Clauder Competition

Clauder Prizes:

Clauder Grand Prize: a $2,000 cash award, plus a workshop production and a full production at Portland Stage Company during the 2007-2008 season. Gold Prizes: a $500 cash award, plus a workshop production at Portland Stage Company. Additional prizes will also be awarded to the best play from each of the six New England states.

Eligibility for the Clauder Competition:

•		Playwrights must currently live or attend school in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, or Vermont. This residency requirement may be waived in cases where the material has significant relevance to New England and where the playwright has previously lived in New England for a considerable period of time. For questions of eligibility, contact Literary Manager Dan Burson at dburson@portlandstage.com.
•		Plays must be full-length, with a running time between one and three hours.
•		Plays must require no more than 8 actors to perform. Playwrights must provide a precise casting plot for larger casts that require doubling.
•		Plays must be original works, not an adaptation or translation.
•		Plays must not be primarily for younger audiences.
•		Plays must not have received a professional production, or publication, or a pledge/commitment for the same prior to the announcement of the Clauder Winner. This includes Actors Equity showcase and waiver productions. Plays that have had readings or non-AEA productions are still eligible.
•		The winning play must meet all eligibility requirements for a full production. In consideration of PSC’s mounting of the world premiere production, the grand prize winning playwright must provide a small percentage of their royalties from the work for five years following the premiere production.

Clauder Submissions: One script per playwright.
Submissions must be sent by U.S. Mail only - no e-mails, faxes, etc. Submissions must include the complete script with a cast breakdown and up-to-date playwright contact information to establish residency. No scripts that are handwritten or scripts that are otherwise illegible will be considered. We request that submissions not be bound in binding combs or other permanent bindings that will make them difficult to photocopy.

Submitted scripts will NOT be returned.

All submissions meeting the eligibility criteria will be reviewed by at least 2 readers, and will receive an individualized letter of response including readers’ comments following the announcement of the winner.

Deadline: the 2008-2009 Clauder Competition is not open for submissions at this time.
Details on the 2008-2009 competition will be posted on this Web site. In the meantime, interested playwrights can send an e-mail with their name, e-mail, and mailing address to dburson@portlandstage.com to be added to our Competition mailing list.

Submit by mail to:
Portland Stage Company
Attn: 2006 Clauder Competition
P.O. Box 1458
Portland, ME 04104

Little Festival of the Unexpected

Past Little Festival of the Unexpected scripts have a successful track record of full productions both here at Portland Stage and at other professional theaters around the country. Almost Maine, which was developed at the 2003 Little Festival, went on to become the most commercially successful mainstage production in PSC history. Many other Little Festival works have gone on to productions elsewhere, including successful Off-Broadway runs and television filming for PBS’ American Playhouse.

Little Festival of the Unexpected Submissions
Submissions for the upcoming Little Festival of the Unexpected are accepted year-round on a rolling basis. All submissions received after January 1 will be considered for the following year’s festival. Only one submission is accepted per playwright.

Plays are eligible for development at The Little Festival of the Unexpected only if they have not previously been professionally produced or workshopped with Equity actors. This restriction includes Actors Equity showcase and waiver productions. Plays that have had readings or non-AEA productions are still eligible.

Literary agents may submit complete scripts at any time.

Playwrights may submit 10-page dialogue samples for consideration. Dialogue samples must be accompanied by a synopsis, production history and character breakdown.

Submit by mail to:
Portland Stage Company
Attn: Literary Manager
PO Box 1458
Portland, ME 04104

19th Annual "Little Festival of the Unexpected"
May 13-17, 2008

2008 Plays

The Passion of the Hausfrau
by Bess Welden, Annette Jolles, and Nicole Chaison
A solo comedy that follows the adventures of a Portland mom and would-be writer who discovers her own creative power by embarking on a hilarious and heartfelt journey of mythic proportions. Adapted from Portland’s own Hausfrau muthah-zine written, cartooned and published by Nicole Chaison.

Peer Gynt
by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Portland Stage Company and Figures of Speech
Peer Gynt is a charmer, rogue, and storyteller who chases adventure from his home in Norway to troll caves, oceans, and the African desert. This unique collaboration with renowned puppet theater Figures of Speech transforms Ibsen’s epic text into a journey of imagination and imagery, combining puppets, shadows, and actors in a creative storytelling style that will be in its first stages of growth at this festival.

Out of Sterno
by Deborah Zoe Laufer
Dotty’s life with her husband is absolutely perfect even though in their seven years of marriage he has never let her leave their apartment. When a phone call from a mysterious woman threatens to tear her world asunder, Dotty must venture out into the vast city of Sterno and try to discover what it means to be a "real" woman. A coming-of-age play in a hilariously theatrical world that explores the pressures women face just trying to make it across town.

I Don’t Want to Talk About It
by Kenny Finkle
In the span of one family dinner, the past and present collide when an old friend shows up unexpectedly. Her arrival forces each member of the family (father, mother and son) to question who they were to each other 20 years ago and who they are to each other now. A touching black-comedy about how the things we don't talk about stop us from moving forward by the writer of PSC’s 2007 mainstage hit Indoor/Outdoor.

Performance Schedule (May 8-12, 2007)

Tuesday, May 13 – 7:00 PM
THE PASSION OF THE HAUSFRAU by Bess Welden, Annette Jolles & Nicole Chaison
    Preceded by TWO DOZEN QUESTIONS by Laura Philbrook
    and FAREWELLS by Eliot Routh

Wednesday, May 14 – 7:00 PM
PEER GYNT a Portland Stage Company & Figures of Speech collaboration
    Preceded by TEN TRUTHS ABOUT FLATFOLDS by Mary Clare Kusturin

Thursday, May 15 – 7:00 PM
OUT OF STERNO by Deborah Zoe Laufer
    Preceded by AUTUMN HOPE by Jackie McLean

Friday, May 16 – 8:00 PM
I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT by Kenny Finkle

Saturday, May 17
11:00 AM PEER GYNT
    A Portland Stage Company and Figures of Speech collaboration
2:00 PM I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT by Kenny Finkle
5:00 PM THE PASSION OF THE HAUSFRAU by Bess Welden, Annette Jolles & Nicole Chaison
8:30 PM OUT OF STERNO by Deborah Zoe Laufer

These performances are part of PSC's Studio Series offerings.

All festival events will be held in PSC’s Studio Theater, 25A Forest Ave. For reservations call the Portland Stage Box Office at 207-774-0465

2008 Playwrights

Bess Welden, Annette Jolles & Nicole Chaison
(The Passion of the Hausfrau)

Bess Welden is the writer/performer of several one-woman plays, including Keeping the Word and The Handshake with Annette Jolles. She is also the librettist of "A Little Miracle," commissioned by the New York Chamber Symphony and premiered at Lincoln Center. As an actor, Bess has appeared on Portland Stage’s mainstage and in productions with the Denver Center, Williamstown Theater Festival, Opera House at Boothbay, and Hangar Theater, among many others.

Annette Jolles is an Emmy-award-winning theater and television director, writer and producer who has developed the Off-Broadway premieres of That Time of the Year and Little By Little (The York Theatre Co.), Suddenly Hope (Denver Civic Theater), and Big Red Sun (Palo Alto’s Theatreworks). She directs and choreographs for The Little Orchestra Society at Lincoln Center and New Voices Concerts at Symphony Space, as well as television series and special events on CBS, Discovery, PBS, TNN, and A&E.

Nicole Chaison chronicles the roller coaster of passion that is parenting in her self-published quarterly, Hausfrau muthah-zine. She wrote the James Beard Award-nominated Spice (ReganBooks, 2006), and her stories and comics have appeared in Mamaphiles, MotherWords, and the collection Forty Things to Do When You Turn Forty (Sellers, 2007). Her graphic novel, The Passion of the Hausfrau, is forthcoming from Ballantine in spring 2009.

Figures of Speech & Portland Stage Company (Peer Gynt)
Figures of Speech & Portland Stage Company join together in a rare collaboration to bring the epic tale of Peer Gynt to life in a new stage version. Carol and John Farrell founded Figures of Speech Theatre in 1982 to explore the interplay of puppets, actors, shadows, music, movement, and masks. Believing that audiences experience art most vitally when they are called upon to engage their imaginations fully, the company produces visual theater that emphasizes myth and transformation.

Portland Stage Company has a strong record of developing world premieres such for its mainstage audiences, including in recent years Magnetic North, Yemaya’s Belly, Women and the Sea, and the 2004 hit Almost, Maine.

Deborah Zoe Laufer (Out of Sterno)
Deborah Zoe Laufer is the author of numerous plays that have appeared across the country, including The Gulf of Westchester, Fortune, Miniatures, and Random Acts. Her play End Days was developed at the O’Neill’s National Playwrights Conference in 2007 and was recently awarded with the American Theatre Critic Association Steinberg Award. Through the NNPN, End Days is being premiered this season at The Phoenix Theatre, Florida Stage and Curious Theatre. Her play The Last Schwartz is completing a six-month run at the Zephyr Theatre in Los Angeles. It received its world premiere at Florida Stage, was nominated for a Carbonell Award for Best New Work, and is slated to open off-Broadway in the fall of 2008. A graduate of The Juilliard School, Laufer is a two-time recipient of the LeCompte du Nouy grant from the Lincoln Center Foundation.

Kenny Finkle (I Don’t Want to Talk About It)
Kenny Finkle is the writer of Indoor/Outdoor, which received its off-Broadway premiere at the DR2 theater in 2006. The play had its world premiere at the Hangar Theatre, and has also been produced at Trinity Repertory, the Colony Theatre, Virginia Stage, and Portland Stage (Fall 2007). Finkle’s other plays include: Bridezilla Strikes Back (co-written with Cynthia Silver, NY Fringe Festival, 2005) Transatlantica (Flea Theatre in Tribeca, 2002) and Josh Keenan Comes Out to the World (Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festival and Hangar Theatre School Tour, 2003-4). He is a recipient of a NYFA fellowship, and the University of Illinois' Inner Voices prize. Finkle is a graduate of Columbia University's MFA Playwriting program, a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and a member of the Dramatists Guild.

From Away

From Away is an annual festival of new work celebrating the many voices of international playwrights. Each year, the festival brings talented playwrights from around the world to Portland, where excerpts from their work are presented, in translation, by Portland Stage Affiliate Artists.

From Away is produced in collaboration with the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, a unique residency program that brings together the writers of the world. Founded in 1967, the IWP was the first international writer’s residency at a university, and it remains unique in the world. The IWP brings established writers from around the world to the University of Iowa, where they become part of the lively literary community on campus. Over the years, more than a thousand poets, writers, and dramatists from more than 120 countries have completed residencies in the program. From Away takes place near the culmination of their three-month residency in the International Writing Program, and has become a favorite event for many of the writers.



The From Away festival features readings from the recent work of the writers, followed by an open forum discussion between the playwrights, PSC artists and the audience. Through both performance and conversation, the festival brings together the words and opinions of writers from many disparate continents and walks of life. Former From Away playwrights have come from China, Bosnia, Cuba, Uganda, Russia, Singapore, Italy, Israel, Palestine, Georgia, India, Hungary, Czech Republic, Ireland, Australia, Argentina, Poland, Macedonia, and Bolivia.

This year’s From Away festival is November 12, 2007.