Samantha Bollinger (far left), Ava Zientek (mid-left), Audrey Daniels (center), Ashlin Sullivan (mid-right), and Skye Stockard (far right) in the 2025 Festival Showcase Performance of

Camp Cattywampus by Abigail Dulcos and Tess Inderbitzen, Directed by Georgia Mallory Guy.

Kelsey Lopez (far left), Georgios Tsambis (center left), Rio Ricardo (center back), and Erin Gordon (far right) in the 2025 Festival Showcase Performance of Remember Margot by Claudia Haas, Directed by Kara Gold-Harris

Submissions for our 2026 Festival are now OPEN!

The 2025 Festival Showcase Performance of My Tree by Samara Siskind, Directed John Perez, featuring Alex Rodgriuez, Scarlett Sofia, and Jonah Gamson

6th Annual TYA Play Fest!

In this sixth season of our TYA Playwrights Festival, ThinkTank Theatre seeks to provide a platform for forward-thinking and innovative work for Young People and Family Audiences.

Plays selected for our TYA Festival Showcase receive rehearsal with a professional cast and director, providing an opportunity for the playwright to collaborate with other professionals during the development process. The plays are presented semi-staged, script-in-hand for audiences, providing the playwright further opportunity to develop the work, in the presence of our Tampa Bay community. The dates for the TYA Festival Showcase is currently set for May, 17th 2026. Plays selected for the TYA Festival Showcase are under consideration for full production in a subsequent season with ThinkTank Theatre.

Alex Rodriguez (left) and Scarlett Sofia (right) in rehearsals for the 2025 Festival Showcase Finalist My Tree

Kelsey Lopez (left), Julianna Spataro (center-left), Gustavo Perez (center-right) and Erin Gordon (right) in rehearsals for the 2025 Festival Showcase Finalist Remember Margot.

Skye Stockard (left), Ava Zientek (center-left), Samantha Bollinger (center-right) and Ashlin Sullivan (right) in rehearsals for the 2025 Festival Showcase Finalist Camp Cattywampus

Our Play Festival Audience: At ThinkTank, we make it our mission to produce inspirational, captivating, and forward-thinking professional theater for Young People and Family Audiences. ThinkTank believes young people and family audience material should reflect the world our young people currently experience and, as such, we do not shy away from mature topics, subject matter, and language. Please feel free to submit plays that might fit this genre.

Play Content: Plays should contain at least one character of a younger experience (to be played by actors aged 14-18). Plays that represent a variety of human experiences and/or characters who can be played by members of our community with special needs will be given further consideration, as these highlight the diverse community of our Tampa Bay Area. Alongside our collaboration with the Tampa JCC’s and Federation, special consideration will also be given to plays that represent Jewish life and culture in a modern day setting.

We are not currently accepting musical submissions for the festival this season.

Selected Playwrights: Playwrights selected for the workshop process will also receive a $200 honorarium and additional funds to be applied towards travel assistance should the playwright choose to join us at the festival showcase, in-person. The honorarium is generously gifted to the 2026 ThinkTank TYA Playwrights Festival by the Gobioff Foundation, the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners, The University of Tampa Department of Nursing, and our hosts, the Tampa JCCs & Federation.

Submission Guidelines:

- Deadline for submissions: Wednesday, March 4th 2026.
- Please submit your play via this Google form to be considered for our 2026 Play Festival by Wednesday March 4th, 2025.

- We will not be using the tagging on NPX as in the past, it has recommended TYA works that haven't aligned with the needs of our festival. We recognize the additional step required here to submit and appreciated you taking the time to share your work with us as a potential component of our TYA PlayFest.

- For Round One, please submit the full-length draft of your play as a pdf. .
- Plays should have had no prior Florida Professional Productions.
(If the play has had a workshop production, please include this information on your form, as well as information about the company, # of performances, and contact information, if applicable.)
- Playwrights moved into Round Two for TYA Festival Showcase will be contacted around March 15th . All Playwrights will be contacted by May 1, 2026 regarding their submission.

Left:

Director Kara Gold-Harris (right) and Stage Manager Jessie Dorsey (left) in rehearsals for our 2025 Festival Showcase Finalist Remembering Margot

Right:

Director John Perez (right) and Stage Manager Rook Narvarte (left) in rehearsals for our 2025 Festival Showcase Finalist My Tree

Below:

Director Georgia Mallory Guy (left), Stage Manager Amelia Smith (center) and Stage Directions Reader Abby Yokum in rehearsals for our 2025 Festival Showcase Finalist Camp Cattywampus

CRITERIA

Genres: adaptation, adventure, biography, comedy, docudrama/historic, drama, fable/folktale, fantasy, mystery/thriller, parody/spoof, period, science fiction, tragedy, young audiences

Length: 60-90 minutes, 90 minutes to two hours

Cast Size: 1–8, if your cast has more than 8 characters, please include a doubling list

Age Appropriateness: ages 14-17, ages 18 and up

Unproduced Work Only?: Can not have been produced in Florida

Playwright Location: United States and Canada

This festival is made possible in part by the generous support from the Gobioff Foundation, Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners, The University of Tampa Department of Nursing, and our host at the Tampa JCCs and Federations Shanna Bryan Glazer Campus. Our TYA Playwrights Festival is a developmental program dedicated to providing a working forum for progressive and forward-thinking TYA productions for today’s theaters. Our goal with this program is to select two to four new plays for a collaborative workshop process, with local Tampa Bay Theatre professionals – directors, stage managers, actors and designers, in addition to members of our Young Artists’ Ensemble (YAE) - the Young Artists’ Ensemble Intern Company (an auditioned group of high school students from around the Tampa Bay area, who work alongside our professional in an educational internship program). We are planning for a brief rehearsal period of 3 or 4 rehearsals, allowing time for playwrights to hear and adapt their work within the rehearsal process. The festival will culminate in a presentation of these works for the general public as part of the TYA Festival Showcase, giving ThinkTank and Tampa Bay audiences larger exposure to new works, as well as offering the playwrights an opportunity to get feedback from the audience during the development process.

Questions? Email our Festival Director Sadie Lockhart at TYAPlayFest@ThinkTankTYA.org