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2012
New Plays from the Heartland:
Midwest One-Act Play Competition

Theme: “Summer in the Heartland”

If you live in a Midwestern city, summertime may mean opening up a fire hydrant to beat the heat or a raucous street fair that lasts well into the night. If you live in the suburbs or a small town in the Midwest, summertime may mean the annual Miss Heart of the Heartland Pageant, cutthroat golf at the country club, or corn that’s as high as an elephant’s eye. Fireworks, parades, vacations, summer jobs, weddings, picnics, trying to find a patch of shade, competition for the best lawn, a cool Margarita on a hot patio, the most beautiful sunset in the history of the universe, air conditioners on the fritz, hot dogs, the siren’s song of the ice cream truck, a garden overflowing with zucchini, sunburn, fireflies, frying an egg on the sidewalk, sending the kids off to camp, struggling to get to a beach or a pool or to fit into your swimsuit…

All we need is a one-act play that speaks to that Midwest summertime experience, when the temperatures rise, things get lazy and crazy at the same time, and kids and adults alike yearn to enjoy every bit of summer before the first chill of fall.

Read the NPH Competition Rules.

Use the online entry form.

Funded by Paul and Sandra Harmon, and the NPH Sponsors Circle, Heartland Theatre offers its Fourth Annual Original Short Play Competition open to nine Midwestern States: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin.

New Plays from the Heartland (NPH) provides Midwest playwrights a chance to share their original plays with residents of Central Illinois. Heartland Theatre Company recruited new, never produced one-act plays from writers in these states. The project encompasses an eight-state playwriting competition, residency of a nationally known playwright and staged readings of three finalists.

Play submissions are judged for excellence by a corps of local theatre practitioners – stage directors, critics, playwrights and theatre educators. These judges review the submissions and qualify the top six entrees, and then they are sent blind-covered to national playwright, who chooses the final three plays for a staged reading at our theatre.

Mike Dobbins, Managing Artistic Director at Heartland leads the project and stages the plays with the theme of "Summer in the Heartland" this year, with local actors. It is Heartland’s goal to maximize the interaction with writers, critics, theatre artists and general audience.

HEARTLAND THEATRE COMPANY IS DEDICATED TO PROVIDING NEW PLAYWRIGHTS A FORUM FOR RECOGNITION IN OUR THEATRE AND OUR COMMUNITY.

This project is funded by Paul and Sandra Harmon and the NPH Sponsors Circle:

Jay and Sue Edmondson
Myra and George Gordon
John and Pat Groves
Marc and Darlene Miller
Jim and Pam Raymond
Robert and Marilyn Sutherland

For more information call Heartland's Box Office at 309/452-8709 or newplays@heartlandtheatre.org