Garden State New Play Festival Accepting Submissions for 2026 Festival

Published by New Jersey Stage
07/06/2025

(JERSEY CITY, NJ) -- The Garden State New Play Festival (GSNPF), a partnership between Jersey City Theater Center and The New Jersey Play Lab, is an innovative new play development festival celebrating the unique way in which art can impact, unite, and inspire.  The deadline for submissions is August 15th and requests for full scripts will go out by September 15, 2025.

The mission of the Festival is to marry community engagement around issues relating to social justice with a rigorous dramaturgical process, resulting in the presentation of a slate of new plays by a diverse group of writers that have the clarity of intention necessary to spark rich conversation and an open exchange of ideas and perspectives.

This Festival is open to playwrights of all career levels residing in the state of New Jersey or the Metropolitan Areas of New York City or Philadelphia.

It is designed to foster a supportive and responsive environment for each participating playwright through an individualized approach of tailored dramaturgical guidance, community workshops, artistic and advocacy exchange opportunities, and a flexible focus on process versus product.  Through this more holistic and welcoming approach to play development, the Garden State New Play Festival aims to cultivate a vibrant ecosystem that values and champions the power of playmaking.

The Festival itself takes place from May 1-17, 2026, and will feature readings of all the plays selected for inclusion in the Festival.

The four pillars of the Festival are:

* “Community and Advocacy” - To engage a broad spectrum of New Jersey artists and arts organizations, audiences, and community advocates around the power of theatre as an agent for change

* “Awareness and Connectivity” - To  explore how writing about local and personal politics and issues connects to a larger global context

* “Artistic Equity and Exchange” - To bring together a diverse group of artists of varying career levels under an umbrella of learning, sharing, and artistic expansion

* “Craft and Excellence” - To champion and execute best practices in new play development and to be a resource for NJ Professional Theaters to identify new plays for production

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS  

The Garden State New Play Festival is a play development festival focused around community engagement and social justice. The time commitment spans from November 2025 to May 2026.

Selected playwrights are expected to engage in a rigorous dramaturgical process around their plays, and to offer workshops and classroom visits within New Jersey communities. Selected playwrights are expected to have flexibility within their schedules, and be able to be present in and around the Jersey City area on multiple occasions, both during the festival itself and in the months leading up to it.

Interested playwrights should submit in one of two categories:

“Early Career” (You may have written a play or two, or you may be writing your first play; Perhaps you have had a few readings, but most likely no professional productions; You may be coming from another art form or career, or be right out of University.)

“Emerging or Professional” (You have written several plays; You have had numerous readings and/or professional productions; You have some experience in play development settings; You may or may not have a graduate degree.)

Please note that each selected playwright will be supported based upon their level of experience and the stage of development of the play. Each development process will look different.

Playwrights should submit:

* The FIRST 20 pages of a full-length play focusing on some element of social justice.

* This is a very broad subject and they encourage you to think outside of the box of what this can mean and what this means to you personally.

* Plays can be completed or in process, and may be unproduced or previously produced. However, as this is a play development festival, playwrights should only submit work they feel is in need of further development.

* The play must not be currently under development in another long-term development process with another entity that will overlap with the work around the Festival.

* Musical submissions will be considered if they are small musicals (a cast of 4 or less) and can be accompanied by a solo musician.

* There is no limit on cast size for plays, but cast size may be considered within the selection process.

* A brief cover letter.

* Your playwriting resume (Please also include any additional resumes regarding any other work that you feel is pertinent to your artistry or experience.)

* A synopsis of the play (1 page maximum. This is not a marketing blurb or summary. This is a full synopsis of the play.)

* A character breakdown (Please include any doubling so they can assess the number of actors needed to perform the play.)

* A list of the development history of the play

Please upload your PDF documents to this Google form. You will be notified when they have received your submission.

Art is deeply personal and thus highly subjective.  That being said, they believe in the value of trying to be as explicit as they can about what currently guides them in selecting plays for the Festival. This is not a checklist, nor is it a “how-to.” It does not connote empirical quality or intrinsic value judgments of any play. It is merely a collection of attributes that they have identified amongst the plays they have felt pulled towards in the past.

* They are committed to artistic excellence in craft above all else, recognizing the many traditions and styles that can inhabit and inform craft.

* They gravitate toward contemplative theatre as opposed to consumptive theatre; plays of substance that instigate thought long after the curtain has fallen. However, they firmly believe that just because a play is about something important doesn’t automatically make it an important, or well-structured play.

* They believe that well-told stories come in all voices, tones, and styles.

* They are drawn to work with the potential to resonate beyond its immediate story and circumstances to illuminate or explore a larger, more expansive idea, and they believe that plays which reside in the gray areas of morality and impulse are the plays poised to have the greatest impact.

* They gravitate toward plays that are ambitious, either in an attempt at something new/challenging/complex or by excelling  at an established form, as well as plays that challenge our preconceived notions and pose questions as opposed to providing answers.

* They are attracted to plays that have a textured language that lifts the text off of the page, a theatricality that embraces the medium of the stage (i.e. it couldn’t equally be a film), and a heart that seeks to move us by expressing something specifically or deeply human.