On Saturday, August 13, Christ Church Neighborhood House (CCNH) will present our inaugural short play competition at the Neighborhood House Theater. We asked 4 Philadelphia-based playwrights to submit short works (10-30 minute pieces) with the theme of “revolutionary spirit.” This theme elicited an eclectic mix of creative artists using varied mediums.

The top 2 plays (which will be selected by the audience and our judges) will each receive $1,000 from CCNH to cover production costs for an expanded version of their piece for the Fringe Festival 2022 show on Saturday, September 10, plus the use of our fully equipped Neighborhood House Theater, rehearsal space, technical assistance, and publicity.

HOW IT WORKS

Upon checking in for the festival, audience members will be presented with a pencil a note card, and a voting card. After each play, the audience will have time to write down their thoughts or some notes or questions about the piece. At the end of the final performance, ushers will collect the voting cards from each audience member. After the show, audience members will have the opportunity to mingle with playwrights in the theater lobby to discuss their pieces.

All votes will be counted and our judges will deliberate and the plays moving on to the Fringe Festival will be announced via Instagram, Facebook, and email.

Wine, beer, and snacks will be available.

While the Neighborhood House Play Fest is free admission, we greatly appreciate any donation you are able to make to the CCNH program. The Neighborhood House has served populations in need and the immediate Old City community since opening its doors in 1915. Today, Neighborhood House is a performance venue and gathering place through which Christ Church Preservation Trust supports arts programming and cross-disciplinary performing artists through subsidized rehearsal and performance rentals.

Your donations help artists continue to imagine new and experimental works in our ADA-accessible theater and throughout the broader historic Christ Church campus.

ABOUT THE PLAYS

Man of La Manchin
By Nick Jonczak
Music by James Allen
Lyrics by James Allen and Nick Jonczak
In this musical dark comedy about Senator Joe Manchin, Aldonza offers a radical proposal to feed the soul of our nation.

Here Lies Harper
By Chelsea Eaton
In this one-act, one-woman play, a thirty-something woman grapples with entering the Witness Protection Program. Staring into the bathroom mirror at the Federal courthouse in Center City Philadelphia, she eulogizes her old identity as she tentatively steps into her new one.

Life After Me
By Peter Christian
A solo requiem in five parts to honor the memory of a loved one lost to suicide. The music incorporates dozens of vocal layers and loops drawn from recent and ancient memory. The listener is immersed in a rippling world of impossible questions, eventually finding solace in simple melodies and hopeful reflections.

Neonatal
By Joe Madsen
A woman walks into her apartment to find a half-naked masked man chained to her radiator. She has no clue how he got there, and she’s equally perplexed by his demands to be released as if she were his captor. This is how ‘Neonatal’ begins. Taking the theme of revolution at a very personal level, the play tells the story of where redemption can start between two people who once loved each other but fell apart over years of grief and destruction. Thrust into an unwittingly mortifying situation that shatters the ice between them, they dissect whether they can rebuild, if they even want to, and what the rebirth of their bond might look like.