Applications are now open for the Fall 2025 Spark Theatre Festival.
Sept. 8 – 28, 2025
312 W 36th St., 3rd floor, New York, NY 10018
Spark Theatre Festival NYC allows artists of various disciplines to present one performance of a polished “work-in-progress” with audience feedback. Visit the theater any evening during this three-week event. You’ll find yourself transported in a number of surprising ways: by a single performer embodying a whole host of characters, by a diverse array of choreographers whose work will entertain and engage, by a cozy two-person show exploring relationships, or perhaps by a bouncy new musical that will have you humming. Emerging Artists has always been about new works, talents, and voices. That’s never been more evident than now.
Click Here to learn more and submit your application.
EMERGING ARTISTS THEATRE (EAT) is an award-winning theater company known as an incubator for new voices from the page to the stage. EAT was founded 32 years ago to provide a dynamic home for diverse artists to explore their work and guide it through development to full artistic realization through our bi-annual Spark Theatre Festival NYC.
Emerging Artists Theatre has built a reputation as a champion of equity and opportunity in theatre, ensuring that financial constraints do not dictate artistic opportunity.
Unlike many theatre companies and festivals that impose financial hurdles on artists, EAT does not charge submission fees or participation fees. While other organizations charge artists between $25 to $75 just to submit a script—followed by participation fees ranging from $100 to $700—EAT offers artists a radically different model: submission and participation are entirely free. Furthermore, EAT shares 50% of the box office proceeds with participating artists, a rarity in the industry.
EAT’s impact extends far beyond the traditional theatre community. Over the past three decades, EAT has premiered more than 5,000 works, with artists representing a vast array of abilities and backgrounds, including African American, Caribbean, Chinese, Cuban, East Indian, Hispanic, Iranian, Iraqi, Japanese, Korean, LGBTQ+, Persian, Turkish, and Ukrainian communities. Notably, two-thirds of EAT’s artists are women, reinforcing the organization’s commitment to amplifying marginalized voices
In celebration of Emerging Artists Theatre’s 30th anniversary, we presented three new World Premiere Off-Broadway plays running in repertory in Fall 2023 at the 28th Street Theatre (also known as TADA!). The two-month engagement featured Anne Being Frank by Ron Elisha, Doris Day: My Secret Love by Paul Adams, and Sex Work/Sex Play by Caytha Jentis. Each of these three plays was developed at EAT’s Spark Theatre Festival NYC.
