2026 Programming
Who: Troy Foundry Theatre - Troy, NY
What: 2026 Half-Baked Festival of Emerging Work: Becoming
Where: Submit to: tftsubmissions@gmail.com
When: Submission Deadline is August 17, 2026, at 5:00 PM
*NO SUBMISSION FEE*
Troy Foundry Theatre, a nonprofit theatre based in Troy, New York, is seeking submissions for the 2026 Half-Baked Festival of Emerging Work—a celebration of bold, unfinished, and in-development performance projects.
Now in its fourth year, The TFT Half-Baked Festival of Emerging Work celebrates the unfinished, the audacious, and the revolutionary in theatre-making. We believe some of the most exciting artistic discoveries happen during development—when work is still breathing, evolving, and finding its voice. Half-Baked exists to support projects that are searching, questioning, transforming, and taking creative risks. If your work is strange, ambitious, unsettling, genre-defying, impossible to categorize, or beautifully unfinished, we want to see it.
For this year's festival, we are particularly interested in:
Projects inspired directly or indirectly by genres and themes like:
Horror, body horror, cosmic terror, folk horror, gothic horror, romantic horror, psychological thriller, dystopia, speculative fiction, monsters, hauntings, transformation, sex and death, the uncanny, apocalypse, grief, obsession, desire, and the grotesque.
Or creators and writers like:
Angela Carter, Ari Aster, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Carmen Maria Machado, Caryl Churchill, Curry Barker, David Cronenberg, Guillermo del Toro, Han Kang, Helen Oyeyemi, H.P. Lovecraft, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Jane Schoenbrun, Jennifer Kent, Jeremy O. Harris, Jordan Peele, Julia Ducournau, Karyn Kusama, Kelly Link, Margaret Atwood, Mariana Enríquez, María Irene Fornés, Mary Shelley, Nia DaCosta, N.K. Jemisin, Octavia Butler, Osgood Perkins, Sarah Kane, Shirley Jackson, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Suzan-Lori Parks, Tananarive Due, Toni Morrison, Young Jean Lee, and Quiara Alegría Hudes.
We welcome and accept:
Projects that engage with these influences literally, loosely, or in spirit. We are interested in work that explores fear, transformation, power, desire, the body, the supernatural, memory, myth, and the strange possibilities of being human. Projects must be in development and may not have received a full professional production. Selected artists will work with the festival team to determine a performance schedule; projects will not perform every day of the festival.
In the form of:
New plays and devised works-in-progress that challenge theatrical form
Lecture-performances and research-based artistic investigations
Experimental, interdisciplinary, and short-form performance projects
Provocations, works-in-process, and other emerging theatrical experiments
Other forms not dreamed up or imaged yet
Submission Directions
Submission Email: tftsubmissions@gmail.com by 5pm on August 17th, 2026.
Please submit as many of the materials listed below possible in a SINGLE PDF to tftsubmissions@gmail.com.
1. Contact Information
Name
Email
Phone number
Location (city/state or region)
2. Artist Statement
Brief introduction to your artistic practice and creative mission
3. Project Information
Project description: What is your piece? What world does it inhabit?
Themes, questions, or artistic investigations driving the work
Current stage of development
Working title
Any Script excerpts, images, video, audio, or other supporting materials (if available)
Brief synopsis
Number of performers
Current runtime
Creative team roles and needs (casting, directing, collaborators, etc.)
Technical requirements beyond basic festival lighting and sound capabilities
4. Development History
Previous workshops, readings, presentations, or public showings, including dates and venues (if applicable)
WELCOME TO AMERICANA COSPLAY!
Troy Foundry Theater & Die-Cast are teaming up again to bring you Americana Cosplay, a new immersive, mixed-media performance created by Die-Cast and directed by Brenna Geffers, that interrogates the myths underpinning American identity, all performed at the historic Paine Castle in Troy, NY. The United States of America may have been conceived in 1776, but it was born in the turmoil of the decades following the Civil War. Americana Cosplay is a rowdy, raucous look at how we reimagined American identity in the years 1870 - 1890 and then somehow forgot that we made that whole identity up. From solo gunslingers of the west to the new capitalists in the north, we are still basing our current mythos on these imagined anti-heroes. Join us for a new immersive performance that invites you into a private club for a little american cos play. There are political assassinations, backroom business deals, gothic stories of forbidden love, and some good ol' fashioned TikTok line dancing. You get to choose your fantasy, but only up to a point. Just in time for America’s 250th birthday! Yeah!
WHAT:
AMERICANA COSPLAY
Created by Die-Cast
Directed by Brenna Geffers
Produced by Troy Foundry Theatre
WHERE:
Paine Castle
49 2nd St, Troy, NY 12180
WHEN:
Wednesday March 4 @ 8pm
Thursday March 5 @ 8pm
Friday March 6 @ 8pm
Saturday March 7 @ 8pm
Wednesday March 11 @ 8pm
Thursday March 12 @ 8pm
Friday March 13 @ 8pm
Saturday March 14 @ 8pm
PAY WHAT YOU CAN TICKET LEVELS FOR 2026:
*All of our performances are pay-what-you-can The levels below are available online for pre-purchase.
You can give ANY amount at the door, but we only accept cash, PayPal, or check.
Online Levels:
$15 Caster
$30 Moulder
$50 Bellfounder
$100 Iron Turner
$500 Galvaniser
A portion of our proceeds from this performance will go to support The Ability Experience, with a mission of empowering people with disabilities and reshaping the way society views disabilities. If you would like to make a donation to support The Ability Experience, please CLICK HERE or visit https://www.abilityexperience.org/.
