Submissions

This New Works Festival is meant to feature local writers and composers of plays and musicals. Each writer/composer included will have up to 10 minutes or four songs presented in a festival currently slated for January 2025 in Houston, Texas. Thunderclap will provide four actors (2 women/2 men) and a pianist for the event, and we hope to feature several local writers of plays and musicals in a showcase lasting at least an hour.  

Eligibility

1. Residency Requirement: This call is open only to writers and composers living in the greater Houston area (within a 75-mile radius of Houston, Texas). For collaborative works, at least one writer/composer must meet this residency requirement.
2. As this is intended to feature new works, you may only submit works that will not have received a professional performance in the greater Houston area before January 2025.

Deadline

Submissions must be received (see the button below to submit) no later than June 30, 2024 at 11:59PM CST.

What to Submit

1. Writers may submit up to 10 minutes of excerpts from their plays or musicals (if a musical, the 10 minutes should include any embedded songs, and guidelines for recordings should also be submitted, as indicated below). If you submit a script that’s longer than 10 minutes, only the first 10 minutes will be considered.
2. Composers & lyricists may submit up to 4 songs for consideration. You may submit four songs from a single work or songs from multiple works. If you submit more than four songs, only the first four submitted will be considered.
3. Submissions should be for a maximum for 4 actor/singers: up to two women and up to two men.

File Formats

1. For songs, please submit demo recordings as mp3 or wav files. Please also submit lyrics as pdf or Microsoft Word files. Within the pdf or Microsoft Word files, you may include a brief description of the dramatic context. Submission of a score is optional, but if you’d like to submit one, please submit that as a pdf file.
2. For script submissions, please submit them as pdf or Microsoft Word files.

FIle Submission

Upload all of your materials (all of which must be blinded; see below) into a single folder in Google Drive or Dropbox. Set all materials to be viewable by anyone with the link. If you submit a link that we cannot view, you may be disqualified.

• • • On Google Drive, go to Google Drive, right-click on the folder, and click on Share → Share ().  Under “General access,” click the down arrow () and select “Anyone with the link.”  The drop-down to the right of it should be set to “Viewer.”
    • On Dropbox, log in to dropbox.com. Hover over the file or folder you’d like to share and click the share icon (rectangle with an up arrow). From the dropdown, select Can view. If a link hasn’t been created, click Create. If a link has been created, then click Copy link. The link is copied to your clipboard. You can then paste into the submission form.

Blinding

Audio files, lyric sheets, scores, and scripts should not include the writers’ names, including in the file names. Please be sure to scrub the meta-data from your audio files too, so that your name is not present there.

Legal

By submitting your work, you agree to these terms:

1. By submitting your work, you affirm that you have full legal rights to the work submitted and to grant non-exclusive performance rights.
2. If selected, you agree to allowing Thunderclap Productions to produce your work as part of a new works festival currently slated for January 2025.
3. Thunderclap Productions may film, record, and photograph your work and use these materials for marketing, streaming, or posting on our website or online. We will not sell audio or video recordings of your work without your permission.
4. You retain full rights to the work you submit.
5. The board of directors of Thunderclap Productions has the final say on which works are accepted for performance.
6. Thunderclap Productions reserves the right to cancel or modify this event and the work it will present as part of it at any time.
7. Writers of any age may submit, but writers under 18 will require a parent/guardian to sign their contract if their work is selected.

Team Submissions

1. If work is submitted by a team of writers, at least one of the writers must meet the residency requirements above.
2. Only one submission per writer or per team.
3. A writer may be listed on multiple submissions provided that the differing collaborators for this writer meet the residency requirements listed above. For example, if John is submitting one musical cowritten with Jane and another musical cowritten with Jim, this is permitted, so long as Jane and Jim both live within 75 minutes of Houston.  However, if only John does, then he may only submit one of these collaborations.

Orchestration

1. Musical works may be accompanied by piano or orchestrated audio track in performance. They may be performed a cappella only if this is written as an a cappella musical.
2. At the selection stage, writers may use anything available to them to create an audio track. That could be a fully orchestrated track, voice and piano, or even a MIDI track with a singer added. Recordings should only be submitted a cappella if the work is meant to be performed without accompaniment in final performance (i.e., an a cappella musical).
3. In performance, the works may be performed with a piano or a track. Neither option will be favored in the selection process.
4. Please note that works may need to be transposed from the original keys for eventual performance, but you can submit them in any key you’d like.

Selection

1. Submissions are due July 31, 2024.
2. While this may change depending on the number of submissions received, we anticipate notifying selected writers/composers by September 1, 2024.
3. Each selected writer/composer will receive a $100 stipend in addition to the performance of their work.