Overview
The GreenStage Artists’ Awards were created to support the development of new work by professional Connecticut performing artists and to provide a vehicle for premiering new work at the festival.
GreenStage has allocated funds to grant as many as three Artists’ Awards in 2024 to Connecticut performing artists who use the award to create or complete new work and premiere that work at the 2025 GreenStage Live Arts Festival—tentatively scheduled for August or September 2025. We will be accepting applications in dance, drama and music based on merit; see below for details.
All genres of the above art forms are eligible. The drama category includes poetry, storytelling, stand-up comedy and other forms of spoken performance. All performances will be limited to 60 minutes. Applications will be accepted until 11:59 p.m. on Monday, July 22, 2024. No late entries will be considered. Recipients will be notified in early September; they'll have approximately one year to complete their work and ready it for performance. A link to the online application form is at the bottom of this page.
Each award comes with a grant of $5,000, which will be paid in two installments of $2,500. The first payment will be made upon the artist’s selection as a recipient, the remainder upon performance of the work. Award recipients will receive a prime performance slot in the 2025 festival and the services of volunteers and appropriate technicians for load-in, setup and strike, lighting and sound, etc.
Rules
All professional performing artists who are Connecticut residents are eligible. Members of the GreenStage board of directors, committees and volunteers, as well as members of their families, are not eligible. It is the intention of the festival that its judges will have no personal or professional association with applicants, and any judge who has such an association with an applicant will be required to disclose that information and recuse him- or herself from voting. Previous Artists’ Awards recipients are not eligible.
Work created with support of the award must be premiered at the 2025 GreenStage Live Arts Festival. Material that has previously been recorded, performed, etc., by the applicant or another artist is not eligible, nor is reinterpretation of material in the public domain. Should the artist premiere the work before the festival, the award will be withdrawn and the artist will be required to return all money paid for the award. Should the artist fail to complete the work on time and/or fail to perform it at the 2025 festival for reasons under the artist’s control, GreenStage has the right to withhold the final payment and seek reimbursement of all money paid to date.
Artists will be required to provide a detailed project scope, budget, timeline, staging and technical requirements, which will be part of the evaluation criteria. Award proceeds may be used for travel, research, writing/composing, creating and rehearsing the work, but not for education. Selection of recipients will be made by festival programmers and independent judges. The judges’ decisions are final.
GreenStage will report award payments to the Internal Revenue Service and will provide artists with a form 1099 for tax reporting purposes.
Selection Criteria
Applications will be evaluated on artistic merit, originality, innovation, and cultural and social relevance consistent with the festival’s mission, and the ability of the work to be performed with quality during the festival. Because of restrictions on our available performance spaces, the festival cannot accommodate large, complex and highly technical productions. Each work will be performed once during the festival. A number of venues are available to us, but few conventional theaters. For that reason, we encourage simple productions, site-specific works and shows that can go up on a 28’x40’ stage or in dance studios, galleries, churches or other community spaces. See specific criteria by genre below.
Dance: All genres of dance and movement, including those incorporating multimedia elements, are eligible. Performances must be a maximum of 60 minutes in length. Please note that we will not be able to consider works with complex staging, lighting cues or technical elements whose setup and takedown would require more than a total of one hour’s time.
Drama: All genres of theatrical performance, including traditional and experimental, multimedia and spoken word, are eligible. All types of spoken word are eligible, including poetry, storytelling, stand-up comedy and other forms of spoken performance. Because this is a performing arts and not a literary festival, emphasis will be on the performance and audience-engagement aspects of the work. Because of venue and funding limitations, we will not be able to consider works whose performance requires a large number of performers, significant set construction, lighting cues or complex technical elements in which setup and takedown would require more than a total of one hour’s time. Performances must be a maximum of 60 minutes in length. The output of work could be a fully staged play, a concert-style performance, a stage reading, a developmental workshop or series of workshops with stage reading(s), a residency or something else.
Music: All genres of music and musical theatre are eligible. Performances must be a maximum of 60 minutes in length. The festival will provide an appropriate venue and sound system. For musical theatre, see the staging and performer limitations for Drama above.
Send questions to Peter Hawes.