With the Senior Play Reading Festival announced for this coming October, The Players Follies Group is on the hunt for material, putting out the call to local playwrights and writers of all sorts for original short play submissions to populate the festival.

“We didn’t want to do plays that were already published, we would rather call on the community,” said Follies acting coach and festival coordinator Cinda Goeken, adding that the festival has reached out the community for four years running and never been disappointed. “We’ve always had a very enthusiastic number of people submit.” In the intervening years since it began, the festival has grown and today some submissions come from as far as Germany.

In addition to being original and unpublished work, plays should be between 1-10 minutes in length and call for no more than eight performers to produce. Musicals will not be accepted, but authors may submit up to three plays for consideration at no cost. Prospective playwrights should also keep in mind that the Follies is a 55 and older troupe and submit accordingly.

New this year, the festival will have a theme for its submissions – “Plays on the Front Porch” and “Plays on the Back Porch” – corralling prospects for a more coherent festival. “We wanted to shake it up a bit and not get the same old kinds of plays,” said Goeken. “Make it a little more interesting and definitely different.”

The deadline for submissions is July 31, at which time bound and typed copies must be within the Follies’ hands, with selected plays announced by Aug. 29. Typically twelve or thirteen plays are selected.