Native Playwrights Contest Deadline Extended to March 1 and Free Playwriting Workshop with Lee Cataluna

January 30, 2023

On Weds February 15th from 7-9 ET/4-6 PT, The Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program (YIPAP) will be offering a free workshop online with Playwright Lee Cataluna (Native Hawaiian). This is open to all Native writers to attend, and is particularly geared toward aiding anyone interested in submitting to this year’s playwriting contest. This workshop is open to all aspiring Native playwrights, with any level of experience. Building on YIPAP’s previous workshops with Blossom Johnson, Vera Starbard, Tara Moses and Marisa Carr, we hope to continue regularly offering workshops of this variety to support, encourage, and offer community for Native writers.

For any youth interested in submitting to our annual Yale Young Native Playwrights Contest, this is a great opportunity to get advice from a professional working in the field, that you can apply to putting together and polishing your play before submitting. We have extended the deadline for submissions to March 1st. Each year, we offer writing workshops before the final deadline, to make sure youth have the opportunity to explore playwriting with confidence, and ask any questions that come up. You can read more about our annual Young Playwrights Contest below:

This workshop is open to all ages and you do not need to be a Yale student to participate. Please email madeleine.hutchins@yale.edu to reserve a spot in the class. Attendees will receive a zoom link for the event after registering. Please feel free to also reach out to madeleine.hutchins@yale.edu with any questions! We look forward to creating with you on January 12th!

More About Lee Cataluna

Lee Cataluna’s play Heart Strings won a ReImagine grant from TYAUSA and was produced at Atlantic Theater in 2022. She joined with Eve Ensler, Sarah Ruhl, Dael Orlandersmith and other female playwrights in the collection of monologues called My Body No Choice, which was commissioned by Arena Stage and performed at 30 theaters across the country.  Other commissions include pieces for La Jolla Playhouse (What the Stars See, Home of the Brave), Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Visual Sovereignty Project), Arena Stage (Power Play - Emma Riot) and San Francisco Playhouse (Sons of Maui.) Her play Flowers of Hawaii was developed at Out of the Box Theatrics in NYC,  Native Voices at the Autry in Los Angeles,  and Chautauqua Institute.  She was the 2020 winner of the Von Marie Atchley Award for Excellence in Playwriting from Native Voices. Cataluna was a member of the first Oregon Shakespeare Festival Indigenous Writers Cooperative. She is currently working on a TYA musical for the BIPOC Superhero Project. Her work has been supported by NEA grants. She has an MFA in creative writing from UC Riverside. She is of Native Hawaiian descent and lives in Honolulu.   www.leecataluna.com

More about The Yale Young Native Playwrights Contest

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO MARCH 1st 2023

Native Youth 25 and under are encouraged to submit to the Annual Yale Young Native Playwrights Contest. The winner will receive a developmental workshop of their play at Yale and $500 prize. For the first time since 2020, we are excited to finally be able to host the YIPAP Festival in person on Yale’s campus this year. Transportation and housing at Yale will be provided to the winner for the duration of the Annual YIPAP Festival (in early May 2023). Each year the YIPAP Festival consists of a workshop and staged reading of the winning youth play(s), alongside new plays by professional Native playwrights, and the annual Misty Upham Award for Young Native Actors. Contest winners will also have the opportunity to be mentored by a professional Native playwright.

For All Applicants:

Applications are due: March 1st 2023

All submissions must be emailed to madeline.sayet@yale.edu and/or madeleine.hutchins@yale.edu

The playwright must be between the ages of 15 and 25 and identify as Indigenous.

Plays must be original scripts of no more than 120 pages and no less than 50 pages (this can vary due to structure, so feel free to email to double check eligibility) and written in standard play-script format with one-inch margins, 12 point Times or Courier font, all pages numbered, a title page, and character list. Plays must be in either Word or PDF format.

Front page of script must list:

Title of play

Full name

Tribal affiliation

Date of birth

Home address

Email

Phone number

*Note: Putting on a play is a collective effort and, as such, the winning playwright will be partnered with a professional Native playwright and/or director to workshop their piece before its staged reading.

We look forward to reading your submissions!

Previous winners of this prestigious award for Native Youth include some of the finest Native playwrights working today: Tara Moses (Seminole), Dillon Chitto (Mississippi Choctaw, Laguna, Isleta Pueblo), Kinsale Drake (Diné), Tomas Endter (Lac La Ronge), Drew Woodson (Western Shoshone), Charli Fool Bear (Yanktonai), Everett Ray George (Fallon Paiute Shoshone Tribe),  Nicholas Martin (Sappony), Isabella Madrigal (Cahuilla Band) , and Reed Adair Bobroff (Diné).