Festival Overview

The New Works Festival is scheduled to take place from January 23rd to February 2nd, 2010. A non-juried festival of world premiere works, it will feature up to 30 world premiere projects from the Portland creative community, from fully-staged world premiere works of theater to experimental ensemble-driven work, plus workshops, readings, and other performance events. Unlike a typical fringe festival or T:BA this festival will feature the finest work of our local resident theater companies, not the work of touring companies, ensuring that the artistic and financial benefits of the festival stay right here in Portland. Also, where other New Works Festivals are curated by one theater company and typically feature a string of staged readings, this festival will be curated by many different theatrical voices and will feature fully-staged premieres, giving audiences greater depth and breadth of work to choose from in a concentrated time frame. For this reason we feel this festival will be unique nationally, providing a new model for creating and publicizing new work that will be of substantive value to the national theater conversation.

Participation Requirements

To participate in the festival, fully-staged productions must be World Premieres, defined as not having had a fully staged production at another theater company in its current form regionally or nationally. Staged readings and workshops of new plays in development can participate as long as the most recent draft being presented has not been staged for public viewing before. We welcome work generated non-traditionally, collaboratively, and using new techniques and methods, and work that transcends the boundaries of traditional theater. New adaptations of established literary works are welcome as long as this production constitutes an entirely new script and not a revision or edition of an earlier adaptation of the work.

Logistics and Collateral

A Festival Pass good for all participating Festival Performances will cost $100 and will also grant you admittance the opening and closing night parties and all after parties. Passes will be sold by PATA, the participating theater venues and other partner organizations. Organizations who sell the pass will keep $50 per pass sold, with the rest of the revenue returning to the Festival to cover Marketing and Promotion costs. The goal for year 2 of the festival is to sell 100 Festival Passes.

A Festival Button will also be sold for $5 that will grant the wearer discounts at all participating productions and at participating restaurants and businesses. These will be sold by PATA, participating venues and partner organizations. The festival will retain all revenue from the button sales. The goal is to sell 500 Festival Buttons.

A Festival Booklet will be created, listing and describing all participating productions and including a map to the venues, and a comprehensive calendar. Companies who do not have work participating in the festival can get a basic listing in the book for a small publication fee, and restaurants and affiliated businesses can get a listing in exchange for a small fee and a commitment to offer a discount to button holders. Circulation will be 5,000.

The Theater Company will receive the following benefits of participation:

• Retain 100% of all subscription and single ticket revenue generated from participating festival production/event (excluding Festival Pass tickets).
• Retain $50 out of each $100 Festival Pass sale made by your organization.
• Placement in the Festival Booklet, including 200 word show description, venue name, run dates, address, and location on the Festival venue map. Content due by September 15, 2008.
• Placement of Company Logo and Marketing image or press photo into the Festival booklet.
• Listing on the Festival Web page on Travel Portland's website, with live link to company website for patrons to purchase tickets.
• Inclusion in the Festival press materials, distributed to local, regional and national print and internet news outlets.
• Invitation to participate in Festival Announcement Press Event.
• Company name listed on selected print ads and materials to be distributed throughout Seattle, Oregon and NW Washington through POVA, TPS, and cooperative ad buys with participating hotels and transportation sponsors.
• Opportunity to include one swag item and information sheet into concierge swag kits to be distributed to 30 area hotel concierges.
• Other co-promotional press and marketing opportunities as developed.
• 5 Complimentary Festival Buttons.

In exchange for which, the Theater Company agrees to:

• Program a fully-staged production of a World Premiere work or a staged reading or workshop of a world premiere work with run dates that overlap the dates of the festival
• Make Artistic leadership (including playwright where possible) available for relevant panel presentations, workshops, and press events.

• Include the New Works Festival logo on all ads and printed material for the production.
• Include a descriptive sentence and web url for the festival in all media releases related to the participating production.
• Include a description of the festival and a link on the your website to the Fertile Ground website www.fertilegroundpdx.org.
• Email a promotion of the New Works Festival to your email list, with your customized link included to sell festival passes.
• Provide the festival with an ASCII tab-delimited list of contact info for your 2008/2009 subscribers and/or single ticket buyers for use on a festival postcard mailing.
• Distribute Festival Booklets in the lobby during all Fall 2009 performances.
• Provide two volunteers to help man tables during advance sales of festival passes.

• Honor all Festival Pass tickets per performance (pending availability) during the 10 day span of the festival. Got a small venue? You can set a limit for how many Festival Passes per day you will agree to honor, as long as you make those seats available on a first come, first served basis on the day of the performance.
• Honor comp requests from all visiting Artistic Leaders. A list of visiting Artistic Leaders will be distributed to you by the Festival in advance so that you can welcome and invite our out of town visitors to your production.
• Sell, or allow Festival staff to sell, Festival Passes, buttons and merchandise to patrons in the lobby during the 10 day duration of the festival.

To participate in the festival you will need to fill out the online registration (link below) along with a registration fee ($75 for PATA member companies, $100 for non-member companies) detailing what you will contribute to the support of the festival and what benefits you will receive. The registration fee is non-refundable, but will guarantee you a listing in the Festival booklet for an upcoming event, even if your festival project falls through.

Please fill in the details relevant to your company through our online registration process below. Applications received after September 30, 2008 will be subject to a $20 late fee.

Go to the online registration.