CulturalDC’s Source Festival combined the forces of rising talents with established artists. Driven by creativity, collaboration and invention, artists from across the nation collaborated on new works over three weeks. The relationships built there laid the path for the next generation of outstanding performing artists.

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In its ten years, Source Festival built a reputation as a vital launching pad for new work and a proving ground for the district’s actors, directors, and designers. The Source Festival Full-Length Plays were finalists for the American Theatre Critics Association Steinberg Award. Topher Payne’s remarkable PERFECT ARRANGEMENT (Source Festival 2013) won the ATCA’s 2013 Osborn Award and Nathan Alan Davis’ outstanding DONTRELL, WHO KISSED THE SEA (Source Festival 2014) received the ATCA Steinberg Citation in 2015. COLLAPSING SILENCE, an Artistic Blind Date that debuted at the 2011 Festival, inspired the launch of Washington’s interdisciplinary arts organization Force/Collision. The Festival engaged deeply with playwrights and the Washington community as a whole though script development workshops and partnerships.