ABSTRACT
The Hilton Head Island New Play Festival was initially informed as much by practical considerations as it was by artistic ideals. In 2009, one year into the recession, regional theatres specializing in new works were being forced to tighten their budgets, send out broad appeals for help, or even close their doors. Seeing the increasing dearth of script development opportunities for American playwrights, fellow ART alumnus Nick Newell proposed that we start our own new play festival. Where did he want to do this? There was a small regional theatre with an active audience base on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. In preparing to pitch the festival to playwrights, we asked ourselves: What does this festival have to offer beyond a staged reading with professional actors and a weekend on a resort island? There would be no agents there and not much likelihood of being “discovered” hours away from any major theatrical hub. What, if anything, could feedback from a regional Southern audience offer playwrights that they could not get from American audiences living in major theatre cities? We did not realize it at the time, but what we feared would be the festival’s weakness, its location in the American South, turned out to be its biggest strength.
