Sofia Pickford (L), Emma Hundley (L), Katie Calahan (US) and Jadon Milne (R) in our 2023 Main Stage Production of Star Stuff by Kimberlee Stone, Directed by Sadie Lockhart

Kaylee Tupper Miller (C), Katie Calahan (L), Jessie Dorsey (USC) and Sofia Pickford (R) in our 2023 Main Stage Production of Star Stuff by Kimberlee Stone,

Directed by Sadie Lockhart

Submissions for our 2024 Festival are now closed.
Thanks to all those who submitted to this year's PlayFest.
We will be in touch mid-April.

Kaylee Tupper Miller (L) and Adeline Richardson in our 2023 Main Stage Production of Star Stuff by Kimberlee Stone,

Directed by Sadie Lockhart

Sofia Pickford (L), Katie Calahan (L), Jessie Dorsey (C), Landon Green (C), Emma Hundley (R) and Jadon Milne (R) in our 2023 Main Stage Production of Star Stuff by Kimberlee Stone,

Directed by Sadie Lockhart

In this fourth season of our 2024 TYA Playwrights Festival, ThinkTank Theatre seeks to provide a platform for forward-thinking, diverse voices for Young Adult 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 date for the TYA Festival Showcase is currently set for August 22-26, 2024. Plays selected for the TYA Festival Showcase are under consideration for full production in a subsequent season with ThinkTank Theatre.

Alexa Perez (L) and Isabel Natera (R) in our 2023 Festival Showcase Finalist Reading of

Her Beautiful Sound

by Cris Eli Blak

Directed by John Perez

Alex Rodriguez (L), Lillian Almodovar (C), Alexa Perez (C) and Isabel Natera (R) in our 2023 Festival Showcase Finalist Reading of

Her Beautiful Sound

by Cris Eli Blak

Directed by John Perez

4th Annual TYA Play Fest!

Jessica Janelle (L) and Lilyanna Meyer (R) with Producing Artist Director Georgia Guy (C) making a preshow announcement for our 2023 Festival Showcase Finalist Reading of The Amphibians

by Dan Caffrey

Directed by Brianna Larson

Via Shea (L), Jessica Janelle (L) and Lilyanna Meyer (R) in our 2023 Festival Showcase Finalist Reading of

The Amphibians

by Dan Caffrey

Directed by Brianna Larson

Our Play Festival Audience: At ThinkTank, we make it our mission to produce inspirational, captivating, and forward-thinking professional theater for Young Adults 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 with diverse casting, special-needs individuals, and characters of a younger experience (to be played by actors aged 14-18) will be given special consideration. We are not currently accepting submissions of musicals at the festival this year.

Jewish Playwrights Lab: Sponsored by our generous host, the Jewish Community Center on the Cohn Campus, there is also a Jewish Playwright Lab category this year for a play that focuses on a clear Jewish theme, content, characters, and/or is focused on current events in the lives of the Jewish community, its people and society.

Selected Playwrights: Playwrights selected for the workshop process will also receive a $500 honorarium for their play submission, generously gifted to the 2024 ThinkTank TYA Playwrights Festival by the Gobioff Foundation, the Florida Division of Arts and Culture, and The Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners. Our hosts, the Tampa JCCs & Federation, are sponsoring Jewish Playwright Lab Category for our 2024 TYA PlayFest.

Submission Guidelines:

- Deadline for submissions: Friday, March 15, 2024.
- Deadline for New Dramatists, Agent and PW Center Submissions: April 15th (If submitting past March 15, 2023, please email tyaplayfest@thinktanktya.org to submit).
- Please submit your play via this Google form to be considered for our 2024 Play Festival by March 15, 2024.

- 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 select a scene or up to 20 pages from the play that you feel best showcases your piece. If you submit your full play, we will only read the first 20-pages.
- Please also submit a description of the full-length play.
- 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 April 5th to submit the full-length draft of their play. All Playwrights will be contacted by July 15th, regarding their submission

Casts, directors and playwrights from all three featured pieces

Star Stuff (below), The Amphibians (L) and Her Beautiful Sound (R) participate in talkbacks with our audience at the 2023 TYA Playwrights Festival

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, Florida Division of Arts and Culture, Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners, and our host at the JCC Cohn 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 Apprentice Company (an auditioned group of high school students from around the Tampa Bay area, who work alongside our professional in an educational apprenticeship 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