Thank you for your interest in submitting your play to InterAct!
Before sending it our way, we strongly encourage you to read through this page to make sure your play might be a good fit for our mission and aesthetic. We have already selected plays for our 2024-25 season, and we are now in the process of reading plays for consideration in our 2025-26 season. If your play is a good fit for InterAct, we will be in touch in the fall of 2024. If you have already submitted a play, but would like to send an updated draft, please be in touch with our literary manager, Chaz T. Martin.
InterAct Theatre Company in Philadelphia is one of the few American theatres that is explicitly and exclusively dedicated to producing new and contemporary plays that explore the social, political and cultural issues of our time.
Over the past 36 years, we have sought to provoke thought and stimulate civil discourse among our audiences through a consistent body of work that values complexity and nuance, and that engages multiple and/or surprising points of view on the full spectrum of societal issues. We like plays that dig in, that grapple, that wrestle, that interrogate, that argue, that challenge, that ask questions rather than giving answers.
Despite sometimes being perceived as a “lefty” or “social justice” theatre, InterAct is not interested in rehearsing liberal talking points. For example, a play that merely says “racism is bad” is not for us. Everyone in our organization, all of our artists, and everyone in our audience can agree that racism is bad! We are interested in plays that offer situations or conflicts in which issues of race are more complicated than they seem, or plays that examine some less-explored or commonly misunderstood ways that race plays a critical role in the lives of actual people.
Finally, within our mission and aesthetic, we are always particularly eager to read comedies, plays with small casts, and plays that center global themes and non-American stories and characters.
A small sampling of plays we’ve produced that exemplify our mission and aesthetic are:
CAUGHT by Christopher Chen
THE NETHER by Jennifer Haley
PERMANENT COLLECTION by Thomas Gibbons
THE NICETIES by Eleanor Burgess
MAN OF GOD by Anna Moench
HEARTLAND by Gabriel Jason Dean
THE ELABORATE ENTRANCE OF CHAD DEITY by Kristoffer Diaz
WE ARE PROUD TO PRESENT… by Jackie Sibblies Drury
GOING TO ST. IVES by Lee Blessing
What do all these deeply political plays have in common?
They neither announce nor affirm their political sentiments, but instead offer compelling human points of view in conflict with each other. They do not present characters whose “rightness” and “wrongness” are unassailable, but instead offer compelling, complex, flawed characters who are neither unimpeachable victims nor dismissible perpetrators. And they offer something more substantial and surprising than a “point” or a “message” that merely affirms liberal sentiments.
Ready to send your play?
Please submit your play through the form! This helps us keep track of your submission. Cold emails are easily lost in the shuffle, and we want to make sure we’re giving your play proper attention.