For Immediate Release. Posted September 1, 2024.
Cortez, CO—The Sunflower Troupe at the Sunflower Theatre in Cortez, Colorado, is pleased to announce its third biennial “Sunflower Shorts: A 15-Minute Play Festival” for 2025.
The troupe aspires to lift up playwrights in the Four Corners region. Original plays submitted by local playwrights and selected by a panel of judges will be performed in a series of evenings of six 15-minute short plays. Performed pieces will also compete for People’s Choice recognition.
To be eligible to enter the festival, authors and collaborators must be residents of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico or Utah. All works must be original, i.e., not an adaptation of a longer play or another work.
For the 2025 festival, all plays must take place in a hotel room, but otherwise there are no theme limits. Musicals and children’s theater works are the only genres not eligible for the festival. In addition, if an author’s work has been previously presented as a full production before a paying audience in any Four Corners region venue, it is not eligible for Sunflower Shorts. The submission deadline is January 31, 2025.
“The short play format gives actors, directors, and playwrights an opportunity to try something different, to stretch their skills, and to have a little fun. Playwrights have an opportunity to meet directors and actors and gear audience response to their work,” says Heidi Brugger, Sunflower Troupe member. “The format also provides audiences with a smorgasbord of material—sort of something for everyone,” she adds
Six plays will be chosen by a panel of judges by February 28, 2025, for production in August, 2025. Recognition will be awarded to the most popular play, which will be determined by audience vote at each performance. The festival winner will be announced on KSJD radio (https://www.ksjd.org) and social media.
“We are very excited to offer this opportunity for the community to come together to create and produce original works on stage,” says Kim Welty, executive producer for the Sunflower Troupe, adding “The festival plays an important role in expanding live performance in our area.”
There is no submission fee; entries are limited to two plays per author. The submission deadline is January 31, 2025. For a detailed list of guidelines and an entry form for 2025 Sunflower Shorts email sunflowershorts@gmail.com or check out the Facebook event “2025 Sunflower Shorts call for scripts” at https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=100093514090778&set=a.245395041920964.
The Sunflower Troupe, a program of the KSJD Community Radio Project, is an all-volunteer community theater group in Cortez, CO, that provides an outlet for creative community involvement while seeking to produce quality entertainment.