(UNION, NJ) -- Premiere Stages, the professional theatre company in residence at Kean University, is accepting submissions for their annual Premiere Play Festival beginning Monday, September 1st and ending November 1, 2025. This yearly competition for unproduced scripts offers developmental and production opportunities to up to four playwrights with strong ties to the greater metropolitan area (New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Delaware).
Previous winners of the Premiere Play Festival have included Dominique Morisseau, Tammy Ryan, Keith Josef Adkins, Kathyrn Grant, Craig Garcia, Erik Gernand, Erin Breznitsky, Scott Organ and Vincent Delaney.
“We are thrilled to consider exciting new plays from so many talented writers, whose work demonstrates the vibrancy of the American Theatre” stated Nick Gandiello, managing director of Premiere Stages, who supervises the submission process.
Premiere will accept submissions September 1 through November 1, 2025, and select four finalists in Spring 2026. Any submissions received before or after the submission window will not be considered. In an effort to streamline the process and make it more user-friendly, Premiere will accept all submissions electronically through Submittable at https://premierestagesatkean.submittable.com (this link is also available through Premiere’s website).
There is no fee to enter the competition. Complete submission guidelines are available at premierestagesatkean.com/play-festival.
All finalists will receive one-day developmental readings, scheduled for Spring 2026 with a winner to be announced in Fall 2026. The festival winner will be awarded a $4,000 advance and receive a full Equity production in either July or September 2027. Another finalist will be awarded $1,500 and an Equity 29-hour staged reading. The remaining finalists will each receive an award of $1,000. In 2024, Premiere Stages received 805 submissions to the 2025 Festival. 78 Semi-Finalists were announced in May 2025 and four finalists went on to have staged readings at the Bauer Boucher Theatre Center in June 2025.
Through the Play Festival process, Premiere Stages provides an encouraging and highly focused environment in which playwrights can develop their work. Premiere Stages also actively advocates for Festival writers by reaching out to other theatres to secure subsequent productions, and partners with other organizations and theatres to extend the profile and life of the works developed.
In the twenty seasons since its founding, the Premiere Play Festival has received over 8,750 submissions and developed more than ninety plays. Multiple plays produced at Premiere have been honored by the American Theatre Critics Association, selected for agency representation, and/or been published by TRW Plays, Concord/Samuel French, Dramatists Play Service, Dramatic Publishing Company, Playscripts, and Broadway Play Publishing. A number of Play Festival winners and finalists have subsequently been produced in New York, internationally and at regional theatres across the country.
All 2026 Premiere Play Festival entries will be evaluated by a professional panel in consultation with Premiere artistic staff. Agents and theatre professionals with an affiliation to Premiere Stages may receive an invitation to submit a script directly. Premiere Stages now accepts full manuscripts for all unsolicited submissions, including non-agent submissions. Members of the Premiere Stages literary team will read at least 10 pages of every unsolicited play submitted and will decide if the play should be further considered by the Play Festival Panel.
Premiere Stages is committed to producing topical plays and interactive programs that reflect people of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, national origins, nationalities, ancestry, religious groups, gender expression or identities, sexual orientation, political beliefs, ages, abilities and disabilities.
Premiere Stages is made possible in part through funding from W. John Bauer and Nancy Boucher, The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, The Shubert Foundation, Carole Shaffer-Koros and Robert Koros and ExxonMobil Foundation, The Northfield Bank Foundation, Blue Foundry Charitable Foundation, Union County Savings Bank Charitable Foundation, The Hyde and Watson Foundation, The Union Foundation, E.J. Grassmann Trust, The New Jersey Theatre Alliance, The Union County HEART Grant and through the generous support of individual patrons and local organizations. Discover Jersey Arts is our marketing partner. Visit JerseyArts.com for more information about other arts programming happening around the Garden State.
Created in 2004, Premiere Stages is the professional Equity theatre in residence at Kean University. Through its unique partnership with Kean, Premiere’s play development programs, educational initiatives, and professional development opportunities actively embrace the university's academic curriculum while expanding the scope, accessibility, and prestige of the professional programming on campus.
Kean University, New Jersey’s urban research university, is a national institution of higher education recognized for its diversity, innovation and the social mobility of its graduates. Designated an R2 research university by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, Kean ranks among the top eight percent of U.S. universities for research and doctorate production. Founded in 1855 as a teachers college, Kean has evolved into a thriving research university that supports students as they persist to graduation, give back to their communities and launch successful careers. Kean’s six colleges offer more than 50 undergraduate programs, six doctoral degree programs and more than 70 options leading to master’s degrees, professional diplomas or certifications, across a full range of academic subjects. With campuses in Union, Toms River and Manahawkin, New Jersey, and Wenzhou, China, as well as Kean Online, the University provides students of all backgrounds an affordable and accessible world-class education.
