The Official Vimeo Channel for The Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival.

The Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival started in 1975 and is Manhattan’s oldest, continuous short play festival. In the first 35 years of the Festival, over 500 theatre companies and schools participated. Applicants included companies from coast to coast as well as abroad from Canada, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. The Festival has given emerging playwrights the opportunity to have their work produced with the support of such theatres as The Public Theater, The Royal Court, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Flea Theatre, The Living Theatre and Naked Angels, and with the backing of prestigious university playwriting programs such as The New School for Drama, Columbia University, University of Iowa, and Tisch School of the Arts’ Dramatic Writing Program.

The Festival has served as a doorway to future success for many aspiring playwrights, and has helped launched the work of notables as Theresa Rebeck, Shirley Lauro, Sheila Callaghan, Bekah Brunstetter, Steve Yockey, Saviana Stanescu, and David Johnston. In many cases, Festival participation has sparked agent contracts for Festival finalists and all of the final forty plays selected to be perform in New York are guaranteed to be seen by an Artistic Director of a major theater, a professional playwright, and a theatrical agent. Many past Festival playwrights have gone on to win major Playwriting awards and honors, as well as to have major theatrical productions of their works staged.