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Playmarket New Play Award

This is the third year of our annual award, open to ANY new unproduced New Zealand play.

The deadline for your submission this year is December 4th, 2009. Please note that submissions should be emailed, and MUST include page numbers, a brief synopsis and a list of characters.  Playmarket staff will be the judges and the winner(s) will be announced by the end of March 2010.

NB:- The best play submitted by a woman will also be eligible for submission to The Play Press as their entry for the annual Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (submissions by invitation only; www.blackburnprize.org).  As only a third of Playmarket’s clients are women, we hope this will encourage a few more to get serious!

All submissions and enquiries to Jean, scripts@playmarket.org.nz.

The winner in 2008 was Ninna Tersman, whose play Fucking Parasites was workshopped in London, directed by Lorae Parry with script advisor Tanika Gupta. The prize this year is also a professional workshop, or similar development assistance depending on the play and the wishes of the winner.

But don't worry about winning - take this opportunity to have your play read by our experienced staff and to get it on the Playmarket radar.  We would loe to see our work. You might get on the short list - and who knows, you might even win!  All good for the CV.

Some suggestions ...

We would like to encourage you to imagine and write for your absolutely ideal theatre. It has no cast restrictions, attracts only brilliant actors, designers and directors, is physically magically flexible, has a huge loyal intelligent audience who are longing to see plays exactly like yours ... have we missed anything out?  Add any other characteristics that are important to you!

We are trying to encourage playwrights to banish all self censoring, all worries about 'what theatres want', what is affordable, what they think audiences want to see.  We want you to trust your instincts and really push your play in exactly the direction YOU want it to go.  Be as irresponsible as you like - anything goes.

This is a competition for the BEST play, not the most stageable one - and we think too many playwrights are getting a bit safe, a bit stuck in a rut.  If you think you could be one of them, use this excuse to explode yourself out of it!  Playmarket's job is to encourage theatres to stage the plays that playwrights want to write, not the other way round!