The International Voices Project (IVP) champions the work of global playwrights by creating opportunities to experience new and contemporary international plays on Chicago stages. IVP debuts voices from the world's stages through commissions, translations, and production. We collaborate with consulates, cultural partners, and universities throughout the Chicagoland area and partner with national and international theatres to promote global playwrights in their USA premieres.

Stage Left Theatre inspires debate by producing and developing plays that explore political and social issues.

The Theatre Department’s mission is to provide undergraduate students with a comprehensive education in the practices and processes of creating theatre and live performance. Columbia offer a number of programs designed to suit your particular interests, including Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees as well as minors in Acting, Stage Combat, Theatre Directing, and Writing for Performance. The Musical Theatre Program of the Theatre Department at Columbia College Chicago is looking for a new musical theatre work that we will workshop, rehearse, and present either in-person or...

Bechdel Fest features an ensemble of female-identifying, nonbinary, and trans artists performing hilarious and heartfelt new short plays, all of which pass the Bechdel-Wallace Test, a rubric created by cartoonist Alison Bechdel that requires a piece of entertainment to features non-cismale characters talking about something other than men. Written, directed, and performed by some of the city's most outstanding storefront artists, this year's slate of stories center around characters finally on the edge of growing up, glowing up, and making big decisions that ultimately take them to - you...

The nationally-renown Blue Ink Playwriting Award was created in 2010 to support new work. Since inception, we’ve named 10 Award winners, 79 finalists, and 109 semi-finalists. Over $6,000 in cash and prizes will be distributed to playwrights in 2020. Each year American Blues Theater accepts worldwide submissions of original, unpublished full-length plays. The winning play will be selected by Artistic Director Gwendolyn Whiteside and the theater’s Ensemble. The playwright receives a monetary prize of $1,250. Cash prizes are awarded to finalists and semi-finalists too. All proceeds of the...

he mission of the Black Ensemble Theater is to eradicate racism and its damaging effects upon our society through the utilization of theater arts. BE is the only theater in the nation whose mission is to eradicate racism. We utilize theater and educational outreach programs to bring races together in a community which embraces similarities and fosters dialogue, understanding and acceptance.

It's not a cabaret. It's the Tiny Storefront Concert Series. Four times a year, Underscore produces TSCS, a high-energy, BYOB weekend of new songs by emerging musical theatre writers, all arranged around a core theme. ​ Audiences come because it's a big, fun party. Writers submit because they can test their work in front of a live audience, and get high-quality videos for their portfolio. Actors and musicians take part because it's a blast, and because even for small-scale events like TSCS, Underscore believes in paying our artists well.

Every year we seek 10-minute audio drama scripts that are genuinely scary, imaginative, chilling, intelligent, suspenseful, horrific or downright grotesque. Writers may submit up to two audio drama scripts to Deathscribe in any given year. Five scripts will be selected from all submissions. These five pieces will be performed on stage in front of a live audience. The writer of the winning piece, chosen by a celebrity panel of judges, will receive the coveted Bloody Axe Award, as well as a $100 cash prize.

A new works festival produced by Underscore Theatre Company. Each show is responsible for their own production, meaning casting, rehearsing, designing, marketing, teching, and presenting their show.

Chicago Writers Bloc is a play development group that focuses on presenting new plays developed in monthly sessions and regular new play festivals. Led by Joanne Koch, a widely produced playwright and noted Emeritus Director of the National Louis University Master’s in Written Communication Program, the not-for-profit Writers’ Bloc has brought over 250 new plays and musicals to Chicago area audiences, supported in part by grants and by festival attendees and contributors. Many of these plays have gone on to win local, national, and international prizes with productions locally and around...

Purple Crayon Players is a student-run theatre organization at Northwestern University that focuses on producing professionally written Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA). PLAYground is Purple Crayon’s annual festival of new plays for young audiences. PLAYground fosters the development of each script through partnerships between professional TYA playwrights and Northwestern undergraduate directors and actors, whether it is the work’s first reading or its final workshops before publication or production. After a collaborative rehearsal process focused on the playwright’s development goals, we...

Purple Crayon Players is a student-run theatre organization at Northwestern University that focuses on producing professionally written Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA). PLAYground is Purple Crayon’s annual festival of new plays for young audiences. PLAYground fosters the development of each script through partnerships between professional TYA playwrights and Northwestern undergraduate directors and actors, whether it is the work’s first reading or its final workshops before publication or production. After a collaborative rehearsal process focused on the playwright’s development goals, we...