A Redwood Coast Festival of New Plays!
Brochure available (PDF) September 24 - October 2, 2004

Opening its first year in 2004, Earth Matters on Stage (EMOS) is an unprecedented effort to bring focus and development to "ecodrama" an emerging genre of theatre. At the core of EMOS is the Ecodrama Playwrights Festival, an international playwrights’ competition that received nearly 150 scripts from playwrights across the US and Canada, as well as a few from the British Isles, Israel and Australia. The competition is being adjudicated by a distinguished national panel, and the top award includes $2,000 in prize money. For the 2004 Festival, play submissions closed April 5th. Selected plays from those submissions will receive workshop productions or readings September 24 to Oct 2, 2004. In conjunction with the readings and workshops, two Humboldt theatre companies, Dell ‘Arte Players and Redwood Curtain Theatre, will be producing new ecodramas of their own - Shadow of Giants and Bindlestiff's Dance Hall. The entire event will be known as Earth Matters on Stage: A Redwood Coast Festival of New Plays.

Defined in part through the research and scholarship of Dr. Theresa May, a member of the HSU Faculty, ecodrama encompasses more than works that take environmental issues as their topic, hoping to raise consciousness or press for change. Ecodrama is any work that shines a theatrical light on the inextricable link between the human and non-human world, and ventures into the myriad of ecological questions that we face as cultures and communities. Ecodrama is any play - comedy, drama, musical - where an ecological sensibility is being pursued by the author. The Festival seeks to broaden the understanding of ecodrama through work which, for example, addresses environmental justice or deepens a sense of place. The Playwrights Festival seeks to inspire, foster, and encourage such work from a diverse range of new and established voices in the theatre.