Kumu Kahua Theatre And Bamboo Ridge Press Announce The Winner Of The February 2025 Go Try PlayWrite

The February Go Try PlayWrite winner is Bella Poynton for her piece GIRLAXY WARS! -or- Hell For Dude-Bros and Other Misogynist Jerks.

Bella Poynton is a playwright, actor, and theatre historian. Her plays have been published with Samuel French, Broadway Play Publishing, Next Stage Press, Applause, Smith & Kraus, and can be seen in The Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2024, The Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2019, The Best American Short Plays 2018-2019, The Weirdest Plays of 2020, and WE-US: Monologues for Gender Minority Characters. Her scholarly work can be found in Comparative Drama, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Global Performance Studies, and Theatre/Practice among others. Poynton is currently senior co-chair of the Playwriting Symposium at the Mid America Theatre Conference and manager of the Playwrights Wing at First Look Buffalo Theatre Company.

Recent accolades include The Mighty Maisie at ART of WNY, The AI at Delphi at First Look Buffalo Theatre Company, The AI at Delphi at Bennington Theatre New Works Series, The Appliance Department at The Hudson Valley Theatre Festival, and Anniversary at Otherworld's Paragon Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Play Festival. Poynton is an Assistant Professor of Theatre History, Criticism, and Playwriting at SUNY Oswego. 

Each month Kumu Kahua Theatre co-sponsors this playwriting contest with Bamboo Ridge Press in their combined effort to nurture local playwrights and authors. Each month a different judge is pulled from amongst the theatre practitioners in the Hawaii theatre community. All plays submitted are read by Kumu Kahua Theatre Artistic Director, Harry Wong III. 

February 2025 prompt. A hell of a prompt. Write a ten page maximum scene or an eight page maximum monologue where you send someone to hell. This is as open as can be; all that matters is that someone did something or a number of things that receives eternal punishment. Writers, consider this prompt primal scream therapy.

Contest Rules: Each entrant must write a 5-page monologue and/or a 10-page scene based on monthly requirements. Each month a new prompt will be chosen by Kumu Kahua Theatre's Artistic Director. The prompt will be given on or by the 1st of the month and the due date will always be the last day of the month. All entries must be written in traditional play format; instructions on this format can be found here: https://www.dramatistsguild.com/script-formats.

There will be one winner each month. Scripts will be submitted to the judges anonymously. So please do not put your name on the cover of your script. Winners will receive $100.00 and a subscription to Bamboo Ridge Press. We are now accepting entries for the March Go Try PlayWrite Contest!

March 2025 prompt A purgatorio prompt. Write a ten-page maximum scene or an eight-page maximum monologue of someone who may end up in purgatory, unless. This is the moment when they can choose an action that will either land them in heaven or hell. If they make no choice, they end up in purgatory. Think of the world we're in now, and the choices we're facing.

Click Here to Enter 

Kumu Kahua productions are supported in part by The Kim Coco Fund for Justice of the Iwamoto Family Foundation, the NME Fund of the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation, the Island Insurance Foundation, The State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, through appropriations from the Legislature of the State of Hawaiʻi, The AAPI Community Fund, The Richard Aadland Fund, The Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser, The John R. Halligan Charitable Fund, Spectrum/Charter Communications, ABC Stores, the Gloria Kosasa Gainsley Fund, Hawaiʻi Public Radio, H. Hawaii Media, Simply Storage, HUB Coworking, Vacations Hawaiʻi, Zippy's Restaurants, Highway Inn, Generations Magazine, CVS/Longs Drugs, HMSA, Hawaiian Electric, MonkeyPod, and other foundations, businesses, and loyal patrons.