32nd Annual Samuel French Original Short Play Festival

The Samuel French Original Short Play Festival is now in its 32nd year.

Click here for the list of shows performing on each individual night.

The Samuel French Off-Off Broadway festival started in 1975 and is Manhattan’s oldest continuous short play festival. Over 360 theatre companies and schools have participated in the Festival’s first thirty years, including companies from coast to coast as well as abroad from Canada and England. This festival has served as a doorway to future success for many aspiring writers. Over the years, 163 submitted plays have been published, and many of the participants have become established, award-winning playwrights. The unique aspect of requiring authors to collaborate with a producing organization and present their work in performance encourages the collaborative and creative process of playwriting.

Initial selections of Festival participants are made based on a rating system developed between Samuel French, Inc. and Love Creek Productions. Each submission is read by both the Samuel French, Inc. editorial staff and Love Creek Productions artistic staff.

Each of the first twelve nights of the Festival a full program of original short plays is performed, with a panel of judges, comprised of New York area theater professionals, critics, and educators, on hand to nominate one or more of the evening’s plays as finalists, who will then perform on the last day of the Festival. Members of the Editorial Department of Samuel French, Inc. will attend the final performance to offer publication contracts to authors of selected plays.