Playwrights Initiative

Endstation Theatre Company is pleased to announce a call for script submissions for our 2025 Playwright’s Initiative Reading Festival, showing during the Central Virginia Fringe Festival, June 14-21.

Submissions (and questions about Playwright’s Initiative) may be submitted to casting@endstationtheatre.org!

To be considered, please include the following information: 

• Brief biography (1-2 paragraphs)

• One paragraph play synopsis

• Ten pages of sample dialogue OR a full length script

Submission parameters:

• Plays must be written by a Central Virginia playwright OR the play must be set in Central Virginia. We are particularly interested in stories that are historically or thematically relevant to the Central Virginia community.

• Plays must be unpublished and must not have had a full professional production.

• We are searching for full length plays (70-120 minutes), so samples must be submitted with a goal of finishing a full length draft by May 2025 (in time to prepare for the Staged Reading Festival). 

• Plays must be submitted electronically.

Submission deadline: February 15, 2025

Stipends will be provided to playwrights whose work is selected for the festival. It will be expected that these playwrights will work with the ETC artistic staff to refine and develop their scripts.

The 2024 Playwright’s Initiative Reading Series included the following titles:

Whirlwind by Cris Eli Blak - Every sport is more than a game, and every moment of change is made possible by someone opening a door that was previously locked. This is the lesson learned by Grady, a high school tennis player with a chip on his shoulder who finds himself traveling to Lynchburg, Virginia, to be trained and coached by Dr. Robert Walter 'Whirlwind' Johnson. A medical doctor, coach, former college athlete, activist, respected community member - Dr. Johnson seems to have it all, and Grady wants to better himself to get to that level. Little does he know Dr. Johnson is trying to knock down a wall of his own, both in terms of fighting against the past and trying to forge into a future of tennis being an integrated sport. 

Good Birth by Patrick Earl is a new play about The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. This facility, right across the James River, is now called The Central Virginia Training Center. It became known for its forced sterilization of the poor and people of color. It was also the facility at the center of the 1927 Supreme Court decision Buck v. Bell that upheld a physician’s right to forcibly sterilize a patient. Good Birth is a fictional tale of a young girl asked too soon to fight for her right to bear a child and suffer society’s misguided view of intelligence; all while facing down the brute force of the American Eugenics Movement in the early 1900s.

The Transported Man by Russell Nichols follows an escape artist as he recounts his world-renown magic act: breaking from the chains of slavery by mailing himself from Virginia to Pennsylvania in a box. This play is based on the memoir, NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF HENRY "BOX" BROWN WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.

Dry Bones by Jim McManus tells the tale of four childhood friends fight to get by in a dying town, but when the last factory closes, the bonds of friendship and love are put to the test as they struggle with their own demons and the price of living in an America where the jobs leave but the people remain.

The Motive of Fannie Braun by Makaila Henderson is a mystery about Fannie Braun and her daughter. They have been living with Robert Miller and his children for over half a decade. Working as his housekeeper, Fannie’s world gets shaken when she is accused of poisoning her boss’s son. As she is put on trial, she and her broken family must accept the conclusion that only one person knows the motive behind it all.

Original Theatre about Central Virginia

Since the first years of Endstation Theatre Company, we have worked to tell stories related to Central Virginia, its history, and its people, beginning with The Bluest Water: a Hurricane Camille Story in 2008 and most recently with T-Room…The Musical in 2023.

Endstation Theatre Company invites playwrights who are working on stories about the Commonwealth to share their work with us. Are you a playwright? Performer? Poet? Is there a story you would like to tell about Central Virginia? Let us know, and we can consider your project for development!

Previous Initiative Participants