Have you ever watched a play and thought “I could write as well as that?” (or even better than that). Well, now’s you chance to prove it.
The curiously titled Papatango New Writing Prize, now in its eleventh year, is accepting submissions until 9pm on 17 February 2019.
The winner will be announced in June, after which the successful play will be developed ahead of a production at Southwark Playhouse from 30 October to 23 November 2019.
The competition is popular with beginners because winning also guarantees a new writer publication by Nick Hern Books, a royalty of 10% of the gross box office, and a £6000 commission with full developmental support for a follow-up play.
It’s free to enter and open to any resident of the UK or Ireland. All entries must be anonymous, have a running time of at least 60 minutes, be original and previously unproduced, and sent in Microsoft Word or PDF formats with a contact telephone number on the front page.
Scrupulously fair, each play is assessed anonymously by a reading team which identifies as at least 50% female and is at least 25% BAME. Every entrant receives feedback on their script. Pretty impressive as the competition regularly attracts over 1000 entries.
Recent prize winners: The Funeral Director by Iman Qureshi, Trestle by Stewart Pringle, Orca by Matt Grinter and Tomcat by James Rushbrooke have received 9 nominations for Off West End Awards including Best New Play and Most Promising Playwright.
Papatango’s production of Iman Qureshi’s The Funeral Director will tour in spring 2019 to Edinburgh, Manchester, Nottingham and Oxford in a co-production with English Touring Theatre.
Writers launched through the Prize have won BAFTAs, OffWestEnd, and RNT Foundation Awards, been nominated for the James Tait Black Drama Prize and twice nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, premièred in over twenty countries worldwide, and gone on to work with the National Theatre, RSC, Hampstead Theatre, Bristol Old Vic, Theatre Royal Bath, Royal and Derngate, Bush Theatre, Headlong, English Touring Theatre and The Old Vic, as well as in the West End and for the BBC and HBO.
So get writing!!
Full details are available at www.papatango.co.uk.
Over the next few weeks, in the run up to Christmas, many theatres will stage an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ seasonal ghost story.