07: Yale Playwrights Festival 2025

The Mourning Show YPF 2023

YPF 2023:The Mourning Show

Photographer Kristopher Aziabor

The Yale Playwrights Festival (YPF) was founded in 2003 by Professor Toni Dorfman and Alum Laura Jacqmin. For over two decades it has been a source of inspiration for writers, actors, directors, mentors and peers. Every fall, students submit unpublished, previously unproduced one act or full-length dramatic works-in-progress. Faculty readers select four to six scripts to be included in the spring festival. The author of each script is assigned two mentors—one from the Yale faculty and one professional writer—who work with the student playwright. The festival culminates in a staged reading of the play before an audience.

Call For Scripts - YPF 2025!

Deadline for script submission: Monday, December 2, 2024, by 4 pm (electronic submission)

Open to all Yale College undergraduate students.

Please submit your one-act and full-length script(s) for consideration for the 2025 Yale Playwrights Festival (YPF).  YPF is a full weekend of live readings for a live audience scheduled for Saturday, February 22-Sunday, February 23, in the Underbrook.

We are looking for unpublished, previously unproduced works in progress. This means that your script should be open to rewrites and development as you workshop it with mentors, peers, and audience members. At the same time, the draft you submit should be fleshed out enough to be legible to readers and a creative team, so be sure to articulate the full arc of the action/story in as complete a way as possible. In our selection process, we are looking for plays that will benefit from the mentorship of writers working in and out of Yale and then from a rehearsed reading in front of an audience.  (In other words, it is not just a fever dream but also not finalized for production, in which case, please produce it.)

After you submit your script, a panel of Yale faculty, staff, and graduate student readers will read all submissions and select five to six scripts to feature in the festival. The author of each selected script is then assigned two mentors, one inside Yale and one outside Yale, professional writers who work with the student writer in the six weeks or so before the festival. The focus of YPF is process. Each writer continues to work on the script before it is scheduled for presentation in YPF25. A facilitated feedback session follows each reading in the festival, bringing together audience members, mentors, playwrights, and creative team to discuss the play in a supportive manner.