Submission Guidelines

Guidelines

  • Please submit plays and musicals suitable for performance by community theatres and junior and senior high schools. We welcome shows on all subjects; however, shows with explicit adult content or graphically defined situations do not fit our market. For musicals, please include an audio sample of several songs and a few pages from the score.
  • Plays and musicals should run a minimum of 30 minutes.
  • Include a cover letter giving us a brief description of the story of the play, its running time, its performance history, and if it has earned any awards. In addition, we would like to know a little about your writing experience.
  • Let us know if this is a simultaneous submission.
  • Our standard royalty contract is 50% of royalties and 10% of copy sales. Playwrights are paid twice a year.
  • Please note that we receive hundreds of manuscripts a year. We give each manuscript careful attention. Once you have submitted your manuscript, please allow 8 weeks for our response. Do not send more than one manuscript at a time, as flooding us with your work will not be to your benefit.

 

Special Tips for Submitting

  • We like all kinds of plays and are always open to new ideas. Generally speaking, our customers like plays with more female than male roles or flexible casting in which roles can be played by either men or women. This is not a hard-and-fast rule, however.
  • Don’t worry too much about formatting.  Our editors are more concerned with content.
  • We strongly recommend having your script workshopped, read, or performed.  Scripts rewritten after this process are of a much higher caliber.
  • Include any web locations of any reviews, production photos or videos, if available.

 

To Submit

Using your cover letter as the message, attach your play as a Microsoft Word or PDF document and e-mail to: NewWorks@histage.com.

For musicals, please include a small-sized audio sample or web-sharing location where we might hear more.