Powered By Off-Center
Call for Proposals
Deadline: Sunday, August 12 at 11:59pm
NOTE: The August 12 deadline for submissions has passed.
Powered By Off-Center is a new artist residency program at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. We are excited to offer the local artistic community a new space to play and a platform to experiment. Our goal is to power your creative ideas, giving you the opportunity and resources to try something new. In March and April 2019, we will pilot this program with two separate residencies.
Colorado artists of all disciplines are invited to submit a proposal for some kind of live theatrical performance that they would like to develop. We are open to a range of different art forms and artistic experiences, but there must be some kind of narrative thread (not necessarily linear or verbal) and it must culminate in a live showing with an audience. The residency provides artists with pre-production support, access to DCPA equipment and stock scenery, props and costumes, one week of fully-staffed tech time in The Jones Theatre, and up to $5,000 to make it all happen.
We hope this investment in the local artistic community can help inspire new ideas, build new creative partnerships, and support Colorado’s vibrant artistic ecosystem.
For more information, please read the following material and review our FAQs
What You Get
- A residency fee of up to $5,000. This fee is meant to compensate all artists involved and cover any additional costs or materials not provided by DCPA. Final fees will be based on proposed project budget.
- Support from DCPA staff in the four months leading up to the residency (starting in November 2018). This includes everything from recommendations for additional collaborators to production and technical guidance to artistic feedback.
- Access to a DCPA rehearsal room for 4 weeks leading up to the tech week (as available).
- Key DCPA production staff available during tech week:
- 1 production manager
- 1 stage manager
- 1 light board operator
- 1 sound operator
- 1 dresser/wardrobe assistant
- A team to support load-in and strike
- Plus 1 additional union crew member necessary to operate your show to be determined with production management. This may include the following:
- Stage hand
- Projection operator
- The project must work within this support staff. You will not be able to bring in additional operators, dressers or run crew, due to our union obligations.
- 6 days of exclusive use of The Jones Theatre (196-seat theatre with basic light, sound, and video setup). This includes:
- Lighting: a rep light plot with minimal additional specials based on availability. You direct the programmer/operator to create the looks and cues you want.
- Sound: you provide the content, we program it and play it back on the house sound system
- Projections (optional, requires dedicated union crew): you provide the content, we program it and play it back on a house system with one 10k front projector
- Note: You must be able to direct our operators in how your content should run, including levels and fades. Operators will not be able to make design decisions or edit/change your content once you bring it in. If your project requires a lighting, sound, or video designer, that would need to be covered in your residency fee budget outlined in the Final Round.
- 1 week of tech and performance time (48 hours over 6 days) with the following schedule: Tuesday through Sunday 12-4pm, 6-10pm. This schedule is not negotiable and all showings must take place within these designated hours. Residency 1 dates: March 26-31, 2019. Residency 2 dates: April 9-14, 2019.
- Access to DCPA stock scenery, soft goods, props and costumes.
- Specific items must be requested and approved two months in advance of the residency and are subject to availability.
- Quantity and scale must fit into the scope of the project and load-in/strike timeline.
- Items pulled from stock (scenery, props, and costumes) cannot be changed or altered in any way.
- Marketing, box office and front of house support.
- The DCPA marketing team will run a limited marketing campaign, sell tickets and manage front-of-house personnel and procedures.
- The project will be featured on the DCPA News Center and DCPA website.
- Each residency is expected to culminate in at least 2 public showings/performances.
- We will work with the artists to determine the best schedule and number of performances (no more than 6 total).
- Tickets will be priced at $5-10. Each residency will receive 20 comp tickets and a pre-sale opportunity to share with friends and fans to make sure they get first access to tickets before the general public. All ticket revenue will go to DCPA to help offset production costs.
- We will create a video archive of one performance that will be available to the artist(s) to use however they want
- After the residency ends, the artist(s) can keep anything they created for the project that doesn’t belong to DCPA. The ideas and intellectual property of the project belong to the creators; the DCPA only requires a credit in future iterations stating: “This project was developed in 2019 as part of Powered By Off-Center at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.”
What You Provide
- Management of your residency fee.
- All original artistic content for the project and the time needed before tech week to create it all.
- Engagement with our team through the four months leading up to the tech week and reasonably prompt responses to communications (within two business days).
Application Process
Preliminary Round
Artists are invited to submit a two-page proposal through by Sunday, August 12 at 11:59pm.
Page 1: Idea Overview and Artist Statement
Please clearly answer these questions in order:
- What is your idea?
- What outcomes do you envision? List your top 1-3 goals for the residency.
- How would you and your project benefit from this opportunity?
Page 2: Artist Information
- List of key collaborators, their role(s) in the project, and their contact information (email and phone). If these collaborators are part of another organization, please make that known. If you anticipate wanting additional collaborators but haven’t identified them yet, please list the specific roles/types of artists you will want to include in the project.
- Bios of all listed collaborators (these should be brief – just give us a sense of your work)
- Links to work samples, inspiration, and other supporting materials
Formatting and Style Requirements
Proposals must meet all of the following requirements in order to be eligible for consideration:
- Each page must have 1” margins
- Text must be 11-point font or larger
- Pictures and illustrations are welcome but must fit on each single page
- Hyperlinks are allowed on page 2 (Artist Information) but not on page 1 (Idea Overview and Artist Statement)
- We welcome your creativity, but ask that you make your proposal easy to read and concise
- Document must be in PDF form, no more than two pages total
Eligibility
Every artist/collaborator listed on the application must be:
- A full-time, year-round Colorado resident
- 18+ years old
- Available for periodic daytime meetings in the months leading up to the residency (Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm)
- Available full-time for the entire residency week (Tuesday – Sunday, 10am – 10pm)
- Only attached to one Powered By Off-Center submission – multiple submissions per artist are not allowed.
Final Round
After reviewing all Preliminary Round proposals, we will invite up to 25 finalists to submit more detailed proposals with budgets for consideration. Specific requirements for finalist proposals will be shared when finalists are notified in September, but they will generally include the following:
- A more detailed overview of the idea
- Residency fee budget (up to $5,000)
- A proposed calendar of how you want to use the tech week and public showings
- Lists of additional potential collaborators and/or specific production needs
Timeline
- August 12, 11:59pm: Preliminary Round submissions due
- Mid-September:
Finalists invited to submit detailed Final Round proposals - October 7, 11:59pm:
Final proposals due - November:
2 projects selected for residency, first creative conversations - February, 2019:
Major production requests due - March 25-30:
Residency 1 - April 8-13:
Residency 2
Selection Criteria
Proposals will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
- Does the project contain at least three of the following ingredients of the Off-Center Recipe?
- Immersive – Audiences influence and interact, they don’t just watch
- Convergent – Incorporating a variety of art forms or influences
- Connective – Building community
- Inventive – Challenging the rules, formalities and definitions of theatre
- Now – Relevant to today
- Is this idea theatrical/performance-based at its core?
- We are open to a range of different art forms and artistic experiences, but there must be some kind of narrative thread (not necessarily linear or verbal) and it must involve some kind of live performance.
- Is the artist/team trying something new? Are they taking a creative risk?
- The idea doesn’t have to be new to the world, but it should be something the applicant has not tried before. It can be an evolution of an older idea but must be distinctly different from past work.
- Would the artist(s) and project benefit from this opportunity?
- If the applicant has an existing platform for their work (i.e. dedicated space, regular programming, cultivated audiences, etc.), is it clear why this opportunity would be beneficial?
- Is the scope and scale of the project realistic for this timeline, budget and level of production support?
The selection committee has the sole discretion over the manner in which the works are judged, and its determination of the selected projects will be final.
Frequently Asked Questions
Please review our list of FAQs here. We are keeping this as a Google Doc so we can continue updating it with answers to new questions that arise.
